That's an interesting question, given the fight that my predecessor entered into with CRA.
On the quality of data, my office received a first batch in February, and contrary to what people were fearing, we didn't receive boxes and boxes of paper documents. We received USB keys that were secure and protected despite not containing confidential taxpayer data. It was very secure and there was quite a bit of information.
We looked at what we received and determined that we need some more refined information and data from CRA. We have made the request and we have received, so far, very good co-operation from CRA on getting the information that we think will be useful in determining the tax gap.
There are discussions under way still with CRA, because I don't know that it has all the information that Canadians would expect it to have on international tax evasion, and on those who are more likely to get into these arrangements. That's why we are in ongoing discussions with CRA to determine what it is that it has, and what it is that we can get from CRA. It's not by lack of co-operation from officials. It's more out of determining what it is that CRA does indeed have. That's for quality.
Regarding timelines, we expect to be in a position to have an estimate of the tax gap in the spring of 2019, because on purpose it spans a three-month time horizon. If I were a betting man, I would probably go for the latter part of spring as opposed to the earlier part of spring. That is because trying to put a number on the international tax gap is eminently difficult.
It's trying to nail Jell-O to a wall, as somebody explained to me. It's trying to get information on the one hand on the taxes that Canada collects with respect to international income and international activities, but what is difficult is trying to get information on the taxable income. What part is declared and what part is not declared. The part that is not declared, under the radar, is very difficult to identify and estimate. This is not only in Canada, but other countries have faced the same challenges.