Evidence of meeting #4 for Finance in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was advertising.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:10 p.m.
Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Commissioner, Finance and Administration Branch, Canada Revenue Agency
We would have to come back to you on that.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
All right.
Is it CRA's intention or expectation to be able to collect on 100% of the loans outstanding?
5:10 p.m.
Commissioner and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Revenue Agency
If I may, whether it's student loans or tax debt, or whatever, we seek to recover as much as we can. There are situations--bankruptcies, deaths obviously, or people leaving the country--so no, we can never achieve 100%, but we try our best. Certainly, because of the nature of the tax system, if someone, for instance, has subsequent income tax refunds coming to them, we have an offset procedure that allows us to recover over time.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
Is there any room in the transition program for some flexibility? As you said, nobody can collect 100% of bad debts, and I'm talking about Canada student loans particularly. Is there some room in there to turn over the portion, as you have in the past, that CRA can't collect to some number of these agencies for them to try, because they perhaps have some different methods and so on?
5:10 p.m.
Commissioner and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Revenue Agency
Well, that certainly wasn't the government decision in having us take over the collection of outstanding student debts. In honesty, once the CRA has exhausted all of the tools we have at our disposal to collect an outstanding debt, I'm skeptical whether any private company would be able to pick up any more of that.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
So what extra tools do you have today that you didn't have a couple of years ago? Up until this coming July, you would have been turning over some portion of those loans to private agencies. What tools do you have now to give you that confidence?
5:15 p.m.
Commissioner and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Revenue Agency
Basically, it's using the tools we've always had for income tax, GST, and other debts and applying them to student loans. We have a fairly, I think, sophisticated collections machinery, as you can imagine. I believe what we have in place is more than sufficient to address that.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
Are you hiring more folks? Are you creating jobs within CRA to handle that?
5:15 p.m.
Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Commissioner, Finance and Administration Branch, Canada Revenue Agency
Yes, actually. Associated with the savings there was some reinvestment in the program to enhance our collections program.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
Martha Hall Findlay Liberal Willowdale, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I have just one very quick question--well, two actually.
First, with regard to the $19.5 million for implementation and administration, do you have a sense—and I know my colleague asked this before, but I'm just a bit simpler—of what portion is the yearly administration piece? I'm just trying to get a sense of implementation versus administration.
5:15 p.m.
Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Commissioner, Finance and Administration Branch, Canada Revenue Agency
The response would be that for the 2009-10 year we would need to come back. To the extent that there's an additional administration charge that we can't handle within our budget, we'd have to come back for supplementary estimates at that time. We're not prepared yet to indicate what that amount would be.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
Martha Hall Findlay Liberal Willowdale, ON
Okay, that's fair. I just wanted to clarify it.
I have a last quick question. In order to do this, you must have had some forecasts of the number of taxpayers you expect to actually take advantage of this. Do you have a number?
5:15 p.m.
Commissioner and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Revenue Agency
I don't know if we have a number with us.... No, we don't.
Obviously, for us to arrive at the figure, we would work very closely with the Department of Finance, and there'd be some operating assumptions that would go into this. But again, the figures are a little soft; it's a brand-new tax measure. Also, we're in an interesting economic time right now. We'll have to see, when we get through the year, just what the take-up on the program was.
5:15 p.m.
Commissioner and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Revenue Agency
There would have been a certain assumption that allowed us to construct an estimate of administrative costs.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
Martha Hall Findlay Liberal Willowdale, ON
Right, but even if you could provide an estimate or even a range of the number of taxpayers expected to take this up, it would be very helpful.
5:15 p.m.
Commissioner and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Revenue Agency
We'd be pleased to do that.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
