Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you very much for being here. It's a very interesting and detailed report. You do a lot of work without a lot of resources. Hats off to you for all of the work that you do.
You're also heroes, I think, in the Canadian mind in that you pushed the government. It took five years to finally get from the CRA an acknowledgement that tax gap information should be shared with the Parliamentary Budget Officer. That is fight that you had to have with the former Conservative government and now with the current Liberal government. It's a fight that you never should have to go through on behalf of Canadians, but thank you for pushing the government to do the right thing and to provide that information.
My first question is really around that. The tax gap has remarkable impacts in terms of the deficits, in terms of what programs and investments we can make as a country. It's been estimated at anywhere from $10 billion to $40 billion a year. It's money that goes to overseas tax havens. It's money that wealthy and the well-connected are able to simply not pay when everyone else, tradespeople and small business people, all pay their taxes. A lot of very wealthy people don't have to. That tax gap has enormous implications.
What I'd like to know is how the PBO intends to use that information. Are you getting it now from the CRA? Have you gotten it yet? Do you have a plan laid out in terms of publishing that very important information about Canada's tax gap, about the difference between what government should have in common to invest and to support programs and job creation, and what the federal government is actually getting to make those investments because of these offshore tax havens and massive tax loopholes?