Olivier Le Moal via Getty Images Close up on a file tab with the text tax avoidance, focus on a yellow, note where it is hanwritten legislation, blur effect.

This may come as a surprise to your average Canadian, but Canada is a haven for tax fraud. Transparency International released a report last week, judging the effectiveness of the commitments made at the London Anti-Corruption Summit in the spring. The report was a little dry, but an interesting thing was revealed -- Canada made no commitment to start punishing professional enablers of fraud. In fact, they noted all of the commitments Canada made were "not new." Does it seem odd that we would send people to say we're not cracking down on enablers of fraud? Well, it shouldn't. Canada has actively promoted itself as an entry to lower tax jurisdictions for decades. Unfortunately, the opaque banking system we created to allow this also attracts fraudsters. By turning a blind eye to international tax fraud, regular Canadians are starting to pay the price of these crimes with their homes. Canada doesn't just tolerate tax evasion, we legalized it. Canada's worst-kept secret One of the worst-kept secrets in the business world is that Canada is a massive tax haven. We're one of the few countries in the world where people pay more in taxes than companies. As interesting as that is, that's not the reason it's so attractive up here. The real reason is, unlike in the U.S., we don't charge taxes on earnings of foreign subsidiaries. Sound like gibberish? In more basic terms, companies with foreign branches don't pay taxes on international income. If you're large enough to have branches internationally, your income abroad isn't taxed here. This is probably why the CRA cracks down on freelancers, realtors and tradespeople. Small businesses don't usually ship their money abroad, so they're an easy target. Canada is built for tax evasion Canada doesn't just tolerate tax evasion, we legalized it. The Canadian government has been creating legal and banking frameworks to encourage it. The Canadian government signed 92 tax treaties as of 2016. These treaties are designed to keep Canada competitive, in theory. In actuality, they're ways for Canadian companies to move money abroad tax free. This is likely why we started our tax treaties with Barbados, Jamaica and Malta -- all nice places, but not exactly the Silicon Valleys of the world -- in the late 1980s. It's normally difficult to move money from your tax jurisdiction abroad -- but not in Canada. The Big 5 banks all have divisions located in so-called tax havens. They pitch them as making it more convenient for our large immigrant population to bank. But with the majority of our immigrants coming from China and India, why wouldn't they open locations there? Instead, they opt for branches in the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas and Luxembourg.