In order to do the study that you requested and also a study that a senator requested us to do on the tax gap, we requested information on the microdata from CRA. Essentially, we wanted to look at the taxpayer data.
CRA takes the view that it is not permitted to give us that information, because there is tax information there.
We do not agree with that assessment, because we believe that under the Parliament of Canada Act, we have the right to information that would allow us to fulfill our mandate, and given that doing a tax analysis is part of our mandate, we felt that would be permitted. In fact, the CRA uses section 241 to deny us the information, but in fact, section 241 of the Income Tax Act allows the CRA to provide:
taxpayer information to...any person otherwise legally entitled to it under an Act of Parliament solely for the purposes for which that person is entitled to such information.
We believe that section 79.3 of the Parliament of Canada Act allows us to have access.
However, after about a year of back and forth and negotiations with the CRA, they recently informed us that they are willing to provide us data, but they are going to anonymize the data and stratify the data. They're asking for $141,000 as the cost of doing that and they need six months to provide that information to us.