Ninety per cent of Canadians believe tax havens are morally wrong and 87 per cent think the law should be changed to ban their use, according to a new poll released Wednesday.

“We knew there was broad support out there to end tax havens, but the response was overwhelming,” said Diana Gibson, a policy expert with Canadians for Tax Fairness, one of the groups that commissioned the survey.

Gibson said typically people are more hesitant to endorse a change to the law, but the unequivocal response shows the government must act on preventing the abuse of tax havens, which deprives public coffers of an estimated $15 billion every year.

Article Continued Below

“The government has been facing some hurdles around closing tax loopholes. But it’s really hard for anyone to oppose shutting down tax havens when you see how many people want it to change.

“This should be something the government can do — and they need the revenue,” Gibson said.

The online poll, carried out by Environics, surveyed 1,012 Canadians coast to coast and found the strong condemnation of tax havens was evenly spread across provinces, gender, income and language.

“It shows that there’s near-consensus on this issue. No matter their political stripes, politicians should come together on making corporate tax havens illegal,” said Brittany Smith, a campaigner for Leadnow, an advocacy organization that also commissioned the poll. “(Prime Minister Justin) Trudeau ran on a promise of tax fairness. A poll like this should send a clear signal that that is exactly what Canadians want.”

Article Continued Below

The poll comes a week after the European Union released its blacklist of non-cooperative tax havens that includes Barbados, one of the most popular tax havens used by Canadian companies.

Click to expand

This demonstration of public disapproval comes 20 months after the issue of offshore tax avoidance vaulted into public consciousness with the release of the Panama Papers. The Star and CBC, the Canadian partners in a worldwide journalistic collaboration, exposed how the offshore industry facilitates massive amounts of tax evasion and tax avoidance.

“This corporate tax dodging is quite outrageous. That’s why we’re seeing such strong opposition,” said Smith.

“Corporations use tax havens to dodge $15 billion a year in taxes. This is public money that’s sorely needed for things like child care, the housing crisis, actually delivering clean water to First Nations reserves.”

Last month, reporting on another massive leak, the Paradise Papers, detailed the offshore activities of three former prime ministers and two generations of Liberal party chief fundraisers.

Investigations carried out by the Star and the CBC revealed how tax havens shelter Canadian university endowments and mask the activities of mass ticket scalpers. The leak also detailed how a senior Canadian civil servant gave strategic advice to a tax haven lobby group.

While some of the behaviour exposed in the leaks pointed to illegal tax evasion, far more tax dollars are lost to corporate tax avoidance, which is technically legal.

Canada’s world-leading network of tax treaties and tax information exchange agreements (TIEAs) has made it very easy to move billions of dollars in and out of the country, tax-free.

“The government needs to shift the focus over to corporations, because there has been so much attention on individuals,” Gibson said.

The poll had a margin of error of 3.2 per cent, 19 times out of 20.