Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
I'm a little disappointed in your presentation. It is the first opportunity I have had to meet with officials from the Canada Revenue Agency. You said that five years is too short a time to be able to make fundamental changes. If as members of Parliament we had five years to prove ourselves, I believe we would be very happy. I was elected in 2004. Seventeen months later, there was another election, and I had to produce something more than three pages of text in large print to show that I had done a good job.
What do you base your statement on when you say that you have achieved the following three objectives: provide a better service to Canadians; becoming a more efficient and effective organization, and establishing a closer partnership with the provinces and territories. You say you are convinced that you have made significant progress in these three areas.
Personally, I cannot be convinced: you have not prove it yet to me and I do not have the means to carry out an inquiry in your office. I am disappointed to see that after five years, you are not giving us any evidence of your performance.
Do you have any performance criteria? How can you determine that you have increased your effectiveness?
Having been a taxpayer for at least 40 years, I am worried, like many taxpayers, about the number of people who do not pay tax because they know how to find ways to avoid it. Sometimes in Quebec, where I live, we hear about a particular Quebec government operation under which several hundred extra employees are hired and the cost of this is covered by the additional claims that are recovered. That is somewhat reassuring.
On this issue, I'm wondering if there is a partnership with the federal government in these cases. Is the federal government aware of the additional money that a provincial government, be it Quebec's or another, recuperates by setting up additional enquiries? If so, does it ask for its share? What are you doing about that?