QUESTION PERIOD — Finance

Government leader, just so you’re clear on the problem, when we asked about Liechtenstein — that one bank many years ago — about how much money they collected, and when we saw how small the amount was and criticized them for the lack of collection, the solution for the Canada Revenue Agency was not to disclose what they’re collecting everywhere else, which is totally unacceptable to Canadians.

You may be wondering how other countries did in the Panama Papers. Germany collected $87 million; Spain, $175 million; Australia, $44 million; Mexico, $25 million; Malta, $16 million; and Iceland, $25 million. The population of Iceland — I was just looking it up as we were talking — is 402,000 people, and it collected $25 million. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has stated how much is owed to the Canadian government. The question Canadians are asking is why they won’t disclose what they have collected.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer, when he testified before the Senate, indicated there are millions, if not billions, lacking that should be paid to the Canadian government because Canadians are hiding their money overseas. These tax cheats deprive the rest of the country of their money. The rest of us have to make up the shortfall.

Every time the government turns around to do something, everybody says, “That’s a good plan. How are you going to pay for it?” This is how you’re going to pay for it. The government should come clean on what they’re collecting or not collecting.

This is my last question. I got all my questions for the whole session in one go. I will save you the trouble. I won’t send you all the boxes of information I have collected over 15 years, but I will send you the key files.

The hope is that the Minister of Finance and the Secretary of State for the Canada Revenue Agency can do the work that others have not done and get the agency to do what they should be doing, which is being accountable to Canadians. If they’re not collecting the money, they should tell us and ask what the solution is and what we can do to work on it. The tax gap, which is the bill that passed the Senate and is now in the House of Commons, measures not only how much money the agency is collecting, how much it should be collecting; it measures how efficient the Canada Revenue Agency is. Other countries do that. We do it in a minor manner, and that’s something we could work on. I’ll send you the files.