Mr. Speaker, I rise to follow up on a question that I posed to the government: How much does the Prime Minister have in offshore tax havens?
After all, the Prime Minister has a notorious track record of using offshore tax havens to avoid paying taxes in Canada. Before he ran for the Liberal leadership earlier this year, the Prime Minister served as chair of Brookfield. Brookfield happens to be Canada's biggest corporate tax dodger. According to analysis from the Centre for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research, Brookfield managed to avoid paying a staggering $6.5 billion in taxes in only five years. To put $6.5 billion in perspective, that is more money than the government spends on the RCMP.
That is right. The Prime Minister's company managed to avoid paying more in taxes than the Prime Minister's government spends on Canada's national police force. Brookfield has managed to dodge paying taxes through a complex and opaque web of shell companies set up in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, primarily. So brazen is Brookfield's tax avoidance that three Brookfield entities worth $50 billion are registered to a bike shop in Bermuda.
The Prime Minister was not only the chair of Canada's biggest corporate tax-dodger, but also an architect of Brookfield's offshore tax avoidance scheme. This is a prime minister who set up three multi-billion dollar investment funds in the notorious tax havens of Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. One of those funds is the Brookfield global transition fund. This is a fund the Prime Minister registered in Bermuda, a fund that the Prime Minister stands to make tens of millions of dollars from in carried interest payments, in other words, future bonus pay based upon the performance of that fund.
What we have is a Prime Minister who stands to profit, who stands to make tens of millions of dollars, from investments that are shielded from paying taxes in Canada because he set up the fund in Bermuda.
Canadians deserve to know exactly how much the Prime Minister has in offshore tax savings.