Finance committee  Absolutely. President Sarkozy will likely push through many reforms in all these areas, as I was reading today. I think he and Angela Merkel will, to some extent, solve these issues, which have both tax and monetary implications, within the European Union. I am impressed by Mr.

Finance committee  Canada's commander-in-chief? Are you referring to the Governor General?

Finance committee  I really can't respond to that in terms of transparency. I'm not sure how you would work that into the trade agreements.

Finance committee  I would imagine, though, Mr. Brison--I don't know, because I don't purport to have expertise in this area, but I would imagine that nearly all the countries with whom you negotiate trade agreements you also have taxation conventions with. So that is the complementarity. I menti

Finance committee  I think so. The work done leading up to the failure of the MAI became a very substantial and important piece of work in terms of the investment provisions that have been introduced elsewhere and have been working through the WTO and so on. All of these are very important instrum

Finance committee  I'm sorry, which part of that...? Do you mean the publication?

Finance committee  Well, they just published a gross number that they thought was lost in tax havens. I don't know how that contributes to government transparency. Transparency may sound like a well-worn phrase, but I happen to believe that it's the most important single thing in government--in fac

Finance committee  Well, on the latter part, I can't really comment on the audit process, except that it exists. I mean, the OECD has probably published the reviews that are going to take place. They have, I think, a 30-man committee, which is broken down into various groups that are responsible fo

Finance committee  That's a fairly searching question. I can imagine some relationships between trade and tax treaties because of the double taxation mechanisms that exist and also the very important issue that we didn't talk about, transfer pricing. Transfer pricing is another critical contributio

Finance committee  For that, you're going to have to wait for the review process. There's a review process under way. We all know that you can sign any number of agreements. The real issue is compliance. Are the countries living up to obligations they undertake? This is going to be done through a

Finance committee  They do. They put you subject to audit occasionally; you'll find companies that are subject to audit. But I think those questions are best addressed to the CRA. I'm sure they would be likely to disagree with you. They probably would say no, they follow pretty closely these issues

Finance committee  Well, I don't look at Canada as being the problem. I think Canada has been part of the solution by being active on the dossier internationally. This supports Mr. Brison's point that Minister Flaherty has said these rules are now going to be incorporated in all these agreements.

Finance committee  I don't know what's wrong with your hypothesis. Basically, what you're saying, I think, is that there are a lot of tax fraudsters out there, and there's a lot of assistance from professionals and banks and so on. That takes us back to the issue of evasion and avoidance to some d

Finance committee  I don't know. I certainly think it's making government more efficient. Here in Canada you can file your tax returns online. I think it's made a huge difference in terms of cost.

Finance committee  I don't have the answer to that question either. I think we could all hope that this period we're going through is a transitional period to a point where the amount of funds in these tax havens will be virtually eliminated. The Italians did it, I think, first. Italians were invi