Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I have a broader point and then a specific point.
The broader point is, in the case of regular Canadians, when we're asking them to substantiate a moving expense, it's true that we would allow 90 days. If they contact us, obviously we're open to extensions. However, there is a fairly narrow ask with a fairly tight frame.
Then you'd ask yourself why we would give the multinational enterprise or somebody with offshore...a series of extensions? Why would we appear to be indulging them? The fact is that those cases are going to court. We are sure, at the million-dollar point, that the taxpayer is going to want to litigate, and certainly when you get into the $300-million and $400-million files, there's going to be litigation.
The CRA has an onus at court to prove its case, so the additional time the CRA is putting into those files is actually to increase our chances at being successful at litigation. That's the general point.
More specifically, we have made timeliness one of our three corporate priorities for audit in the branch, and we are going to court to compel large taxpayers to give us the information we need more quickly. Also, in budget 2021 there was another measure concerning oral interviews.
I think I would explain for the committee that sophisticated taxpayers engage in stalling tactics to weaken the quality of our position at litigation as a deliberate tactic. We have tightened our procedures and processes, and through budget 2021, we've started to get ourselves more legislative power.
I think a longer period of time was actually better for taxpayers in terms of maximizing revenue, because it gave us more time to collect the evidence that we were going to need at court. Having said that, we're also taking those same taxpayers to court faster to get the information that we think we're entitled to.