Finance Committee on May 28th, 2014

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

I don't think I'm going to get a round, so I wanted to ask this question.

One of the things I think every member's office gets is complaints about the CRA by people who are having problems with taxes and who feel they are being treated unfairly. What kind of training do you participate in to make sure that you are there as a service industry? You're in kind of a unique position. On the one hand, you're a tax collector, but at the same time, though, we are working for the Canadian public. What kind of training do you put in place and what kind of safeguards do you have regarding that sort of thing?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

You could give just a brief response now, but please feel free to follow up that question with further information.

[Richard Montroy]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We have a number of different kinds of training, some on the technical side to ensure our auditors are up to speed on the latest developments in the tax world, but also some soft-skills training on dealing with taxpayers, conflict resolution, and that type of thing. We have a number of training programs in place. We can certainly provide the committee with a full list of all the various training we have for our people.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

We'd appreciate that very much.

Thank you, Mr. Adler and Mr. Van Kesteren.

I want to thank our three officials for being with us and for responding to our questions. It was a very informative session.

Colleagues, I'd like to quickly do the votes.

CANADA REVENUE AGENCY

Vote 1—Operating expenditures..........$2,877,504,675

Vote 5—Capital expenditures..........$72,447,985

(Votes 1 and 5 agreed to on division)

Shall I report the votes under Canada Revenue Agency to the House?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[An hon. member]

On division.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

I'll do that on Friday.

Thank you so much, colleagues.

The meeting is adjourned.