Jim Maloway

[Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act, November 23rd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned, because of the lack of government speakers on this bill, we have been unable to determine what the government's thought process was in developing it and whether it consulted with the other seven of the G8 countries to hear what their experiences were with similar legislation and whether it solved a lot of the problems. Hopefully, the government is building on the positive experiences of those other countries.

Let us look at the example of the do not call list. That was very well-intentioned legislation. However, it backfired right away. People on the do not call list were getting more calls than they had been before.

The government has dealt with that issue in this bill. We will be able to phase out the do not call list in favour of the bill. We have brought in very good wording in a lot of the sections do deal with expanding areas in technology. I see a lot of very good parts of the bill, which is why I, my colleague and the NDP support the bill. However, we do have some cautions, and we have mentioned them many times now, about the lack of criminal sanctions in the bill. We perhaps should have looked at that, but time will tell.

As to how many cases we have missed in the past because of a lack of this type of legislation, we do not know. I would have expected the government to explain that to us through its speakers to the bill had there been any. We would have liked to have been alerted to the fact that one of the reasons the government brought in the legislation was to deal with a number of issues in Canada. However, we never heard any examples of missed opportunities. If we have not had any missed opportunities, if we have not had any bad experiences, then what is the need for the legislation?

There should have been more background information and more updates from the government. I am familiar with some ministers in provincial governments who routinely give opposition briefings, and that is very important. Yet I know under the Conservatives in Manitoba, some ministers would give briefings and some would not. However, the ministers who gave briefings were rewarded for it because the members of opposition had a better understanding of the provisions of a bill. They could make suggestions for improvements to it and it was a less confrontational approach. However, other ministers have a very bad attitude. They do not want to help the opposition at all. They do not want to share any information. At the end of the day, they pay the price for not co-operating.

I am not sure just how many ministers in the Conservative government provide briefings on bills to members of the House. If they are not doing it right now, they should consider it. If they are doing it, that is really good. However, they could at least have informed us about some of the reasons for coming in with this bill.

We do not have a lot of problem with the bill. Barring another prorogation of the House by the Prime Minister by the end of the year or a quick election, hopefully this legislation will be in place. When we see what sort of regulations are promulgated by the government, then we will have a better idea of where the government is headed with it. At the end of the day, only time will tell whether this was a good move. If it was not, there is always the opportunity for a future government to bring in amendments to the bill if we find there were some areas that we missed.

[Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act, November 23rd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I also wish the bill would be sufficient in the form it is right now. As I said, I look at the consent orders and think they should solve a lot of the problems. I think a lot of people would be reasonable. The fines are good as well. I do not have any problem with the $1 million for individuals and $10 million for companies. However, I do not see how that would solve the issue of somebody declaring bankruptcy and not paying the fines.

Some sort of criminal offence and jail time should be in the bill to stop people like that from spamming. In future, we may have to revisit the bill and add that in.

I want to mention the private right of action. This is another important part of the bill because it creates a private right of action for individuals who have been affected by contraventions of Bill C-28. A person who alleges that he or she is affected by an act or omission that breaches the key provisions of the act might apply to a court for an order of compensation. This is another outlet for people who think an issue is not being dealt with by the government. There would be a private right of action. It is important for those who are watching today to know that.

[Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act, November 23rd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to Bill C-28. I enjoyed the remarks by the member for Scarborough—Rouge River. He made some valid observations in the beginning about the fact that the delays of the government in bringing the bill to fruition were in some way unavoidable because of the election. However, sometimes delays can actually work out to one's benefit.

I note that because of this process involving a previous bill dying and then the government re-forming it as Bill C-28, the fact of the matter is some improvements were actually made along the way.

Coming out of the committee there were some improvements, even one that the government made itself as a result of representations made by presenters to the committee. They resulted in amendments to the bill.

I know governments oftentimes introduce legislation and they themselves bring in a number of amendments at the committee stage, so it is a process to get it right, a process that involves in many cases correcting oversights and making amendments as we progress.

At the end of the day, we may actually have a better bill than we would have, had we gone with the earlier versions.

We have not heard from the government very often during these debates. One of the questions I would ask is: How many actual cases have not been dealt with because of a lack of this type of legislation?

This type of legislation has been in the pipe since 2004. There were two senators involved with bills of their own. As has been pointed out, we are the only country in the G8 that does not have legislation of this type at this point.

Therefore I would be interested in knowing what the experience has been with the other countries in the G8, with their type of legislation, and how many consent orders have been dealt with in their jurisdictions and how many fines have been collected. If in fact they have jail provisions, how many people have actually gone to jail in any of those G8 countries?

However we have not had any representations from any government members about those particular issues. Surely we could learn from the other countries that have this legislation. If in fact there has been an increase in one type of activity over another in one of those G8 countries, I would assume that the government would have been quick enough to respond and would have been able to cover that off in our legislation.

Having looked at the legislation, I see it is quite comprehensive. The NDP members support the legislation over and above the questions that we have about it on the issue of the jail provisions. It is quite a substantial bill and deals with many areas that need to be dealt with.

Another point I would like to make is that this is a relatively new area. The technology has expanded so much. It has only been since 1995 that emails have become a regular occurrence and certainly e-commerce has been on the radar only since 1999.

At the provincial level, 10 years ago we were looking at bringing in e-commerce legislation, and in Manitoba around 10 years ago we brought in Bill 31, which I mentioned before in the House, which was the best e-commerce legislation in the country at the time. It was following the Uniform Law Conference. I believe that all of the provinces in Canada have since followed suit and brought in their own type of legislation to deal with those substantial issues.

However, that was a response to e-commerce in 1999 when it was very new and people were reluctant to purchase things online. We brought in some consumer friendly amendments to that bill. One of the provisions was that anyone in the province of Manitoba who purchased a product or service online and did not receive the product or service, the credit card company would have to back it up and compensate the customer.

The credit card companies had some concerns about that but it was something that we copied from at least four states in the United States that had that type of legislation in 1999. Those were the beginnings of e-commerce legislation. Today, e-commerce has burgeoned and exploded in spite of any type of legislation. I do not think I could point to many thousands of people in Manitoba who would even know we put in that protection for them in that bill.

That was only part of why we brought in the bill in the first place. We were dealing with the whole issue of databases, which is very controversial. It was shortly after the Jane Stewart experience in Ottawa with databases. However, what we were trying to do was come up with a common business identifier so that businesses in the country could deal with the federal tax department through a single business number. By doing that, we had to have a legislative framework in place to begin dealing with, not only within the government but within companies in Manitoba and the federal government, taxation issues, making corporate tax payments, the whole issue of T4 slips, records of employment and all those sorts of business type issues.

The governments of the day were looking at low-hanging fruit, things that they could control. They were looking at their own government to start with, but the view was to expand out to the private sector companies to try to make them more efficient and make the government more efficient. Before we went with the SAP computer system, we had no idea that the Department of Industry was giving a grant to a company that was in arrears with our taxation department and not paying its PST. In fact, that was happening. I am not sure what systems are now being used through federal government departments, whether it is SAP or a different ERP system, but we wanted to ensure we knew what we were doing in our own house.

This was a very controversial type of legislation that we had to deal with. We had to deal with the sharing of databases. We had interjurisdictional issues. We also had to deal with the existing silos within the provincial government where each department was saying something different. For example, finance was saying that it could not do this because of certain reasons and justice was saying something else. In each department there were five or six involved in the legislation. Since each one had its own concerns, we needed to get them together and say that this was the way we were going and that we would need to accommodate to the changing environment.

That is a big problem and it is a big problem with the federal government as well.

We have had to do a lot in this whole area and the federal government was under a lot of pressure. Why did it wait so long when seven of the eight G8 countries have had legislation dealing with spam for a number of years?

At the end of the day, it is time to pass this legislation and get it through. Some debate will continue about whether we went far enough. There are some provisions that I will get to later but there are so many provisions to this legislation that it is impossible to deal adequately with them in a 20 minute time period. However, a lot of provisions in the legislation may provide some sort of upset or cost to our nation or to the businesses in the country. We will only know over time whether that will be the case.

I know that in dealing with legislation, governments try to the best job it can to have an open process by having witnesses come before committee to give expert testimony. Provincially, we have a system where we allow almost anybody to come and make a 10 minute presentation on a bill.

Having said that, we would have a similar bill to this where we would do a round of consultations over the course of a year and then we would have the hearings and the press coverage. Still, at the end of the day, a year down the road after we had passed the legislation and had the regulations in force, people in the affected business communities would come forward and say that they knew nothing about the legislation and that it was a total mystery to them. They would accuse the government of bringing in the legislation and causing them a lot of problems without having proper consultation, when in fact we could prove that we did a lot of consultation.

In the spite of the fact that we have done all this work and that it has taken so much time, I still anticipate that we will have some problems at the end of the day with people or companies saying that they did not know about it, even after all of the speeches and the consulting that has been done.

Some adjustments may be necessary. For example, small businesses are very concerned about the relationship they will have or will continue to have with their previous clients. The new laws put some restrictions on how they can deal with their clientele. Before the do not call list came into effect, it was routine for a business to contact its customers, in-house, over the phone or through the mail, regarding other products. However, they cannot do that anymore because it is not allowed.

The way the system works now is that customers need to give their agreement for the business to approach them. This will cause a lot of stress for businesses in the country. Every time the government comes out with a new set of regulations, businesses that are doing what businesses do best, which is conduct business, will need to retool their operations and re-educate their employees on what is involved. There is no end to the questions being asked about whether companies can contact previous clients and under what conditions they can be contacted.

We introduced the do not call registry but the government found that the system did not work so well. I think it is working a little better now. However, in the initial periods, some people who were put on the do not call list found that they were receiving more calls after they were on the list than they were before being put on the list. People were accessing the do not call list.

This bill would deal with the do not call list. As a result of the much improved wording in the bill, the government has the option to phase out the do not call list over a period of time. When that time comes, the government can simply invoke the provision of the act that allows it to eliminate the do not call list. The do not call provisions are covered under this bill.

The bill has a lot of good things with respect to the definitions and the wording. With the volume of clauses and changes in wording that we are dealing with, it is impossible to get into all of the minutia in a 20 minute presentation.

A lot of good improvements have been made to the bill. Three or four years ago, people were not aware of some of the technical terms and technology issues, so it is possible that this legislation will be outdated before it comes into effect.

I have mentioned the issue of fines a few times but I want to deal with it again. I want to look at the case involving Facebook. The fellow who had a $1 billion judgment against him by Facebook for spamming, basically turned it into a media extravaganza for himself. He was on all the national television networks as a result of it. He laughed at Facebook. Facebook spent a huge amount of money on lawyers and chasing him down to get this $1 billion settlement and he just declared bankruptcy. If we are dealing with the likes of that fellow and other people like him, how in the world will we be able to deal with them by passing this type of legislation? Let us take a look at what is being contemplated in this bill in terms of enforcement.

I do not have any complaints about it. It is a good idea to look at consent orders. However, we can always be suspicious of regulators who deal with consent orders because they may show favouritism to their friends or may not fine people who should be fined. People who co-operate and people the regulators like will get a consent order and a cease and desist order but no fine. People not in their favour may get fined.

Nevertheless, let us assume for a moment that consent orders are a good idea and will solve a lot of problems. If the consent order does not work, the backup is a $1 million maximum penalty for individuals and $10 million for corporations. That is not bad but I do not know of any corporation that can afford a $10 million fine that will be guilty of spamming in the first place. These big companies have lawyers. They know the law. They will not be spamming in the first place.

Who we will have spamming are offshore people, people who are hard to catch, people who do not have any assets or people who hide their assets. A consent order will not stop them. Fines will not stop them. It seems to me that only a jail sentence will put the skids on some of these people--

[Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act, November 23rd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, as the member knows, the bill gives quite a wide variety of enforcement options to the authorities. For example, there is a provision to deal with issues by way of undertakings, and I suspect that is probably how a lot of the issues will be resolved. Fines will be sort of a secondary option, and if the violators undertake to stop doing what they are doing, that probably will end the issue there.

Nevertheless, we do have these fines, as the member pointed out, of $1 million for an individual and $10 million for organizations, but the bill stops short of dealing with criminal offences. I just wonder whether there is a role or if there should be provisions here for criminal offences.

As I mentioned before, we had that recent case, and there are probably going to be many more, of Facebook suing a spammer and getting a $1 billion settlement. At the end of the day, the fellow who was doing the spamming simply declared bankruptcy and basically laughed at the system and got a lot of publicity out of doing so. Clearly if this act were in place, it would have done nothing to stop him, because he has no intention of paying any fines whatsoever, and I am sure he would have no intention of following an undertaking that the CRTC would offer him or demand of him.

I know the member is a lawyer, and I would like to ask him whether he foresees a problem here with not at least having an extra option of jail time for cases where the other options do not seem to work.

[Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act, November 23rd, 2010]

Madam Speaker, the member for Mississauga South just referenced the fact that there was no information sharing contemplated by the bill. I just want to remind him that in fact it is in the bill. There are provisions in the bill for sharing of information with foreign authorities on this particular issue.

The bill clearly has administrative penalties of $1 million for individuals and a maximum of $10 million for corporations and organizations, but it does not have any provisions for jail sentences. There are no criminal offences in the bill. I think that is a big oversight, because huge corporations normally follow the law and I do not think they are going to be violating the law and paying million-dollar fines. They are just going to stop doing whatever they are doing.

The exposure is for smaller operators such as the gentleman recently who had a $1 billion lawsuit against him by Facebook. He simply declared bankruptcy. He is not paying any fines. He does not have any money to pay any fines. Because there are no jail-time provisions in the bill at all, small operators are going to continue in the same way they have for many years, putting out spam knowing full well that they are not going to pay the fines anyway. Since there are no jail sentences, they do not have a lot of exposure.

They talk about directors' and officers' liability and piercing the corporate veil. All that is great if that is where the exposure is. If the big companies are doing this and they are worried about paying million-dollar fines, then piercing the corporate veil is an issue that has to be addressed, but I do not think that is the reality out there. The reality is going to be smaller operators who do not give a hoot about million-dollar fines and will only be deterred by jail sentences, which are not in the bill.

Would the member like to comment on that?

[Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act, November 23rd, 2010]

Madam Speaker, the bill actually gives the agencies power to deal with information with the international counterparts, as the member has mentioned, of the G8 countries. Canada is the only one without such legislation.

When the legislation is in place it will give the power for co-operation with the other countries involved with this type of legislation.

However, I go back to my original point on the last question about the fact that there are no criminal offences under the bill. The penalty is just a fine.

We have already seen an example where Facebook spent a lot of money getting a judgment against a spammer for, I believe it was, $1 billion. The spammer declared bankruptcy and that was the end of the case.

If there were to be some criminal offences in the bill I would think a spammer might think twice about spamming if the spammer was going to be spending some time in jail as opposed to receiving a fine and the spammer simply declares bankruptcy.

There has been absolutely no effect so far in stopping these people because they simply declare bankruptcy whenever they get caught.

Does the member have any observations about whether criminal offences might have been a positive addition to the bill?

[Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act, November 23rd, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I would like to remind the member that we are not out of the woods yet because there is always the potential for the Prime Minister to prorogue Parliament or call an election and we would be back to square one.

The violations under this bill are not criminal offences. Members are probably aware of the recent case in which Facebook won a judgment against a Canadian spammer for $1 billion. The spammer declared bankruptcy and that was the end of the problem. The spammer received a lot of publicity in the process.

There are only fines and no criminal offences under this bill. I would therefore like the member's thoughts on what has transpired with the recent Facebook case in light of what is in this bill.

[Petitions, November 23rd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I have a petition signed by dozens of Canadians to end Canada's involvement in Afghanistan.

In May 2008, Parliament passed a resolution to withdraw Canadian Forces from Afghanistan by July 2011. The Prime Minister, with agreement from the Liberal Party, broke his often repeated promise to honour the parliamentary motion.

Committing 1,000 soldiers to a training mission still presents a danger to our troops and is an unnecessary expense when our country is faced with a $56 billion deficit. The military mission has cost Canadians more than $18 billion so far, money that could have been used to improve health care and seniors' pensions right here in Canada.

Polls show that a clear majority of people in Canada do not want Canada's military presence continued after the scheduled removal date of July 2011.

Therefore, the petitioners call upon the Prime Minister to honour the will of Parliament and bring the troops home now.

[Gender Equity in Indian Registration Act, November 22nd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary earlier talked about the 45,000 new people who will become registrants. She indicated the government has a group that is trying to resolve the cost issues here, but she did not go on to say how many types of various services it would be costing.

The other issue, of course, the member brings up is the whole issue of timing. It seems to me that, given the track record of the current government, having dragged its feet already on this whole issue, I can see it doing exactly what the member says: study this issue and work on this government task force group forever in an effort to delay the whole issue.

Does the member have any further comments to make about the components that the parliamentary secretary is referring to?

[Tax Conventions Implementation Act, 2010, November 22nd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill S-3 this afternoon. A number of very important parts in this bill do require more debate before it passes on in the House.

The bill originates in the Senate and a considerable number of bills have come to us from the Senate this year. This is an act to implement conventions and protocols concluded between Canada and Colombia, Greece and Turkey for the avoidance of double taxation and prevention of fiscal evasion with respect to taxes on income. The bill relates to Canada's continuing efforts to update and modernize its income tax treaties with other countries. At present, Canada has tax treaties in place with 87 countries, a figure that has been mentioned before. The bill would implement three new treaties that Canada has signed with Colombia, Greece and Turkey.

At this point, I want to get into the double-taxation agreement situation as it relates to Panama and the free trade agreement with Panama that was being discussed in this House and approved and implemented by the government.

As members know, the OECD has a grey list of tax havens but France has a black list of tax havens. Countries on those lists, in many cases, try to do what they can to get off the list. They do that by negotiating these agreements.

In February of this year, the Government of France got tough with Panama and took proactive measures. It put a tax on French corporations and individuals dealing in Panama. Only a few months after it took that ambitious and courageous stance against its own companies, Panama said that it was willing to sign a tax-sharing agreement with France. I do not have the full list with me today but I have spoken on this before.

The rule is that the country must sign, I believe, a dozen of these treaties before it can get itself off the black list. I believe the same rule applies for the OECD grey list. In just six short months after it was put on the French black list and the French government took action against its companies by bringing in huge withholding taxes on companies doing business there, Panama managed to scurry around and get, I believe, eight treaties in place. I believe Italy was one of the countries and there were other countries.

Interestingly enough, on the very day that we were debating the Panama free trade deal here in the House of Commons, the Prime Minister was meeting with the President of Switzerland and was broaching with her the issue of the taxation agreements. However, this was at a time when his own government was debating the Panama free trade deal and yet Canada was not one of the eight countries that Panama had a deal with. It just seems that there is a credibility gap here with the government.

On the one hand, it is negotiating a trade deal with Panama but one would think that it is known by the government that Panama is a tax haven of note, that it is a country that has a problem with the Colombian drug cartels and Mexican drug cartels that launder money through Panama. According to an American source in the American Congress, there are 350,000 companies or perhaps more doing business in Panama.

All this information is well documented. It is a tax haven. It is on the blacklist. It is on the OECD grey list. It is noted by the United States Congress that it is 350,000 companies that are using Panama as a tax shelter and a drug laundering place.

President Obama's group in Congress is using this information as a reason for not proceeding with the free trade agreement with Panama at the current moment.

Canada should be aware that Panama is trying to get itself off the list by signing agreements, and it has not got an agreement with Canada, one of the countries that it is trying to get a free trade agreement with. It is unbelievable that this would happen.

Another reason the Americans are reluctant to pass the free trade deal with Panama is that one of the companies, I believe it is AIG, and the member for Sudbury may know the amount of money involved, but the fact of the matter is that AIG, which got a multibillion dollar bailout compliments of the American people and the American government just two years ago, is now in the process of suing the very government that gave it all these billions of dollars to bail it out. It is suing the American government, trying to recover monies, back taxes, that the Americans say it owes and trying to reclaim this money by virtue of its investments in the tax haven of Panama. These are unbelievable stories that we encounter.

The Americans have good reason for holding back in approving the Panama free trade deal for all the reasons I have outlined, because of these tax treaties that we are talking about.

Clearly governments have to get proactive and force these tax havens, which are a moving target, we must be aware. A country that is a tax haven today may get off the tax haven list, and yet another country will take its place. It will be and is a constant battle that the governments have to deal with.

However, I think we have seen more activity and more proactive intervention than ever before as far as tax havens are concerned since the 9/11 experience.

The Swiss banking system has been rock solid for many years, and it does not give out information on its customers. That is one of the reasons it has so many customers. It has drug dealers, arms dealers and all sorts of shady people who deal with the Swiss banks, and some not so shady too but who put their money in Swiss banks for the purposes of hiding the money.

Their concern is not interest. As a matter of fact, if we ever wonder why the Swiss banks are able to lend their money out at such a low interest rate, it is because they are not paying much in terms of deposits. As a matter of fact, I believe there are some depositors in Swiss banks who actually pay the bank to store the money. Not only do they not get interest on their deposits but they actually pay the bank. They are paying for that shield of secrecy.

For example, in 1987 when GICs in Canada were yielding 18% to 20% for 30-day treasury bills, it was possible to get money in Switzerland for perhaps 6%.

One might ask: How could that be? If the banking system is shrouded in secrecy and clients are being protected by the banks and by the state, then a lot of shady things can happen over there and they can lend that money out and make huge profits at much lower rates. The system stayed intact for many years.

Canadians have been putting money in these tax shelters as well. The 9/11 experience changed things. The Americans finally got tough with the Swiss and some of the other countries because they know that a number of terrorist organizations are funnelling money through these avenues.

That is why the facade is starting to crumble. It is starting to crumble more because of the fear of terrorism and the Americans' putting pressure on the Swiss system. They are now starting to force more of these tax treaties to be signed and more information to be made available.

In the last couple of years there have been at least two high-profile cases, one in Liechtenstein and one in Switzerland. Bank employees were not happy with their employers so they took computer disks. In the case of the Liechtenstein bank, the employee sold the computer list to the German government, which was happy to get it. The German government chased down the people on the list and has collected a substantial amount of money in back taxes and penalties from these tax evaders. I am not aware of any jail terms but they were hit with penalties and back taxes. They collected a huge amount of money from these people.

The experience of the Canadian government is totally different. The German government gave the Canadian government a list of 100 people, most of whom were from B.C. How have these 100 Canadians been treated? First of all, Canada Revenue Agency approached them offering an amnesty. All they had to do was walk to the nearest Canada Revenue Agency office, admit making a mistake by investing in a tax shelter in Liechtenstein, provide the office with the information and volunteer to pay the back taxes and a penalty, and everything would be square. There would be no jail time, no other consequences, and this after the Canadian government was given the information upfront by the German government. Even then, it took the Canadian government forever to get some results.

The member for Souris—Moose Mountain might know how much money the Canadian government has collected. We suggested that nothing had been collected in the way of penalties or back taxes, but a government member did recently stand up in the House and say that some money has been collected from the people in that particular case.

There was a more recent case involving a computer person in a Swiss bank who escaped to France with the records and turned them over to the French government. That has now given us a bigger pool. About 1,600 Canadians invested money in that tax shelter. I believe the number of Americans, with ten times the population of Canada, which is 30 million, is much less than the number of Canadians.

Our tax people have all this information. Guess what? Even with this information, they are still negotiating with these people. They are still offering amnesty to these people. It is little wonder that Canada is viewed as a soft touch and not very aggressive in trying to collect and chase down people who invest in tax shelters. That undermines the public's confidence in the system when they see these things happen.

They see that all sorts of rich people are able to take their money and invest in these tax shelters, and guess what? They get an amnesty, if they get caught. If they are caught, all they do is walk into the nearest Canada Revenue Agency office, make their declaration and they are off the hook. That is almost an invitation to keep doing it.

For the average taxpayers, the working people who get a T4 at the end of the year, when they see that, they lose faith in the system, and well they should. We should be much tougher.

I have asked the government to give us a list of arrears in other areas of taxation. How do we know that the government is not going soft on the collection of arrears in GST, income tax and any other taxes that the federal government is collecting?

For example, in Manitoba a number of years ago we did get a list of arrears. Not only that, but we got some brown-bag information put under our doors that provided a list of some well-known people in the province of Manitoba, the province of the member for Souris and Killarney. Some well-known people were getting money from his former department. It was not when he was the minister, but it was the industry department. They were getting grants from the industry department; meanwhile they were in arrears with their provincial sales tax. The government was rewarding them for this. Thanks to a new computer system that was introduced when the member was in power in Manitoba a number of years ago, we were able to connect the dots and stop that from happening.

I wonder what the situation is with this government. Is it soft on collecting corporate tax, GST and income tax from people in this country? We certainly know that the government has had a very questionable experience on tax shelters.

It surfaces every so often that Canadians get caught in tax shelter situations. In future, perhaps the government should make a very strict announcement to put a time limit on the amnesty. Perhaps the government could announce a program that would give people 90 days to come clean. After that, if people are caught investing in a tax shelter, they should not simply get off the hook by taking advantage of the amnesty, paying the back taxes and some penalties, but they should face prosecution and jail terms. I think it would be interesting to see how many people would actually come forward.

The current amnesty is not working, and it will never work as long as people know that they never have to come forward until they are caught and, when they are caught, they just make the declaration. That policy is in fact encouraging tax evasion and not trying to stop it.

However, this government had poor examples to follow. It was following the Liberals. The Liberals are anything but tough on tax shelters. The former Liberal Prime Minister himself, I believe, was in fact flagging his trans-Canada steamship lines in Barbados. It is hardly an example for people to pay their taxes and be honest with the government.

It is time for the government to break with tradition and the sorry record of the previous Liberal governments in doing nothing on this issue of tax evasion. It is time for the government to get tough with the people who involve themselves in the tax shelters.

We should be pushing with the Americans and other countries. We should be getting together and co-operating with the French government to make it tougher on these tax havens so that we can take them out of business as quickly as possible.