Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank my colleague for putting forward this motion. I think it was put with good intent. When we see a strike go on, we think, “Oh my gosh, there's a strike. Maybe it's going to impact people who are filing taxes.”
Mr. Chambers and colleagues, I don't believe that because there is a strike we should be moving forward with delaying the tax filing deadline—for a number of reasons.
I think everybody knows that we have the IT systems. It's all set up to send out benefits and tax credits as of July 1. It's automatically set up. If there's any delay with the filing of the taxes, it's going to impact those IT systems. You have to recalibrate it. That apparently takes weeks to do. That's actually going to impact the benefits and credits of thousands of Canadians. That's one thing.
Two, in my riding, we help so many people and direct them to many different places on how to be helped to get their filings done. None of that is being impacted by the strike. They're all going to local community centres. They're going to places that offer these free tax filing services. None of that is being impacted by the strike.
I will also say—I think Mr. Morantz asked this earlier—what it actually says on the CRA website:
The tax filing deadline has not changed. Canadians should take steps to ensure that their return is filed by May 1, 2023.... The CRA will continue to accept all returns during this labour disruption. Those that are filed digitally will largely be processed automatically by the system without delay.
We want to make sure that people's access to these benefits and tax credits will not be delayed, particularly when everybody is feeling the pressures of the high cost of living.
My understanding, as well, is that CRA is not the only tax authority. There is also going to be, if there's a delay of accepting tax filings, implications for Revenu Québec. We understand that they don't have a desire to move their filing deadline.
The last thing I would maybe say is that there's only been once in history that we've actually delayed it, and that was during the pandemic. That was for legitimate reasons, because we didn't know what was happening in the pandemic.
Right now, you have CRA continuing to encourage people to file their taxes. From my perspective, I don't think there's anything that would hinder Canadians from being able to continue to file their taxes. We want to do everything we can to make sure that benefits and credits that are due to thousands of Canadians are not put at risk because of this.
Although, Mr. Chambers, I think you've put this forward with good intentions, I don't think that in the end it's going to have the desired impact you would like it to have.
Thank you.