Thank you, Minister.
Thank you for the kind words. I know that all of the agency employees appreciate the kudos that we get from time to time for how we delivered during that very, very stressful time. As we've moved into the compliance end of things, maybe some of the halo has come off a bit, but we're very proud of what we were able to do.
On your question, yes, the automation of benefits is part of a move at the CRA. We're trying to make it easier for people to get the benefits. You do have to file a tax return, so how do we make it as simple as possible? It could be automatic; you don't have to do anything. Like we just do with the carbon rebate for small businesses, they don't have to file anything; we just send that out. We can't do that in every case, but we're doing that where we can.
Also, what we're doing through the CVITP program the minister talked about and other efforts is trying to make sure that people are aware that these benefits are out there. If they file their return, as you know, they'll become eligible for them. I say this because there are people—a falling number of people—who don't know about these benefits. They don't know to file their return so that they can get access to these benefits. We are making a big effort at raising awareness to make sure that people do file to get these benefits.
You asked a number about quantum. We issue over $50 billion of benefits per year. I think that's over 150 million payments, so it's a big business. That's an area where the agency has grown over the last couple of decades from just dabbling in benefits to now having a number of them—in the hundreds federally—and we also administer them for the provinces.