Mr. Speaker, I rise to follow up on a very straightforward question I posed to the government House leader last week in question period. I asked if the Prime Minister has any financial holdings hidden away in offshore tax havens.
It is a straightforward question, which the government House leader very conveniently refused to answer. It is a question the Prime Minister has repeatedly refused to answer. The Prime Minister has refused to come clean. He is a Prime Minister with a history with tax havens.
When the Prime Minister was chair of Brookfield, Brookfield registered $30 billion of investment funds in offshore tax havens in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. Why? It was all so the Prime Minister's company could avoid paying taxes in Canada. So much for elbows up. Then again, this is the same Prime Minister who, as recently as the fall, led the charge to relocate Brookfield's headquarters out of Canada to New York City, but I digress.
Canadians deserve to know if their Prime Minister is using offshore tax havens to avoid paying taxes in Canada. Instead of being transparent, the Prime Minister continues to take advantage of a loophole in Canada's ethics laws by hiding his assets from Canadians. Why? It really does beg the question, what is it that the Prime Minister does not want Canadians to know about his financial interests?
There is, frankly, a lot of smoke here. I invite the government to finally clear the air. Does the Prime Minister have any financial holdings hidden away in offshore tax havens, yes or no?