Thank you so much, Mr. Chair, and of course I'm going to start off the same way everyone else has.
I too want to thank you so much for you leadership. You'll be extraordinarily missed. You are absolutely a noble example for all MPs. You very much set an example of the kind of MP that we strive to be—at least I do. I'm only mad that you're leaving before we could have an oyster and lobster festival, so we might have to visit you in P.E.I.
With that, I will start with my first question.
At our last session, we learned that the federal government has indeed made, over the last five or six years, significant investment in tackling and combatting tax avoidance and evasion. We've actually recouped $5 billion from that $1-billion investment.
We've also heard that globally we're ranked about nine or 10 out of 80 in terms of identifying tax and being very successful in our efforts. Of course, we could always be more effective.
We also heard a little bit about some of the encouraging signs we've seen in voluntary disclosure, which has been great. I'd like to know how we can encourage more voluntary disclosure.
I have a second question around that. We know that a lot of the complex cases are coming before our courts. It's because it's cost-effective for these big companies to pay a million or two million to avoid paying $40 million in taxes.
I wonder what more we can do to make it less attractive to engage in these types of tax court cases.
Perhaps I could start off with Mr. St-Jean and Mr. Ball. Could you respond to that?