Quite frankly, the legislation talks about records; it doesn't necessarily specify that they must be paper. But it is the position of the tax department, in almost every audit we encounter, that those records need to be paper-based to be produced--in most cases.
But look at today's business world. Let's take a self-employed individual. You have Bell Canada, you have your Internet, you have all of these offering you e-bills to try to help improve and make things more efficient. I still have to print those off in order to have a copy, just in case I get audited three years down the road. Why should it be a problem for me to maintain my business records in that electronic format, provided that this electronic format is readily readable and available to the auditor who comes in?