Welcome to our officials here this morning.
I have a couple of questions.
The first thing that I want to drill down into a bit deeper would be the file on charities and how they are governed, both within the bureaucracy of CRA and by the minister.
We have somewhere in the neighbourhood of 86,000 charities in Canada and just a bit north of $14 billion worth of charitable activity in the country. Recently, in a message to all CRA employees, the commissioner and deputy commissioner said:
To be clear, the process for identifying which charities will be audited for any reason is handled by the Charities Directorate alone and, like all our audit activities, is not subject to political direction.
It is one thing for the minister to say that in the House or for me to say it in the House, but I think it's another thing when we hear it from officials. I do believe that Canadians are concerned that this is an arm's-length process. It needs to be an arm's-length process. I would like for you folks to describe how that process works within the department and the absolute lack of any political direction.