Thank you for the question, Mr. Chair.
The voluntary disclosures program has existed for years within the agency. In a nutshell, it's a program that allows people who have not been fully compliant with their tax affairs to come forward, and as long as they pay the tax and the interest, they won't be subject to any penalties. There are various conditions, obviously, in the program; they have to come clean and give us all the information we need to assess their returns.
Over the last number of years, our numbers in VDP have been going up steadily. There are many reasons for this. I'd like to think.... One of the major reasons is that there are fewer and fewer places for people to hide their money. Canada has a number of information exchange agreements with various countries. Our tax treaties have been updated. In the last few years a number of measures have been brought in to help us on the offshore front. The CRA has invested heavily in the offshore area. Because of all these items, we're seeing that people are deciding it would be better for them to come in on VDP. A term we like to use is “come see us first before we come see you”.