Thank you, Minister.
I think this represents a paradigm shift in tax administration by receiving the information proactively. In other words, the tax authorities worldwide are receiving country-by-country reporting from multinationals as a matter of course.
Under the common reporting system, which will come into place in 2018, banking information from Canadians worldwide will be received by the tax agency. This comes to complement the international transfers over $10,000 that the minister mentioned. We now have 17 million of those on file and it also complements the enhanced T1135 reporting by taxpayers regarding their offshore assets above $100,000.
I think the country-by-country reporting is part of a new approach where individuals and multinationals have their offshore affairs disclosed automatically and globally to tax authorities, allowing us to risk assess and also having a huge deterrent impact.