Finance Committee on Oct. 29th, 2026

[Pierre LeBlanc]

However, there are two aspects to consider.

First, there is the filing of a tax return. All those individuals would not be subject to income tax, based on the information in the information forms, such as employment income on the T4 slip, old age security or the guaranteed income supplement. Their income is low, so they're not subject to income tax. That's the first step, and it's what is feasible under this bill.

The second step is a separate one. It involves determining whether, on this basis, the agency can pay benefits like the Canada groceries and essentials benefit or the Canada child benefit. In this case, once again, the agency will conduct verifications and proceed only if it has the necessary information, including information on the person's marital status, which is important for these benefits because they are based on family income. The agency will request other information as needed.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

I understand that, if we adopt this amendment, under no circumstances, as you say, will it prevent anyone from receiving their benefits. It may prevent a person from receiving a pre-filled tax return if they haven't provided confirmation. However, under no circumstances will that prevent them from receiving benefits because, in the case of a benefit payment—I think that's partly the purpose of the pre-filled tax return process—they'll still have to provide confirmation. Did I understand correctly?

[Pierre LeBlanc]

Yes. However, to receive the benefits, people have to have filed a tax return. So this really targets people who don't file their own tax returns.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

That's what I'm trying to understand because we're beating around the bush a bit.

Let's say that someone has not confirmed their information or that the information is incorrect and they're sent a tax return because they're not subject to income tax. Legally speaking, they will have filed their tax return. However, if the goal is to pay them benefits because they are in need and if confirming information that wasn't previously verified is required to receive those benefits, they will have filed their return but won't receive any additional benefits.

I'm wondering whether it wouldn't be better to ask the person to confirm their information right from the outset, to simplify the process. That's what the amendment suggests doing. I don't know if there's a logical flaw in what I just said.

[Pierre LeBlanc]

Perhaps I could have been more specific.

In some cases, for the second step, the agency may require additional information. That is the case if the person did not file a tax return that year, but did file one last year, the year before or three years ago, and if their address and marital status have remained unchanged. In that case, based on a tax return filed by the agency, the agency would be able to pay them benefits. So that's—

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

That answers my questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

Thank you, Mr. LeBlanc.

Thank you, Mr. Garon.

I now give the floor to Mr. McLean.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Thank you.

I want to offer some on-the-ground perspective based on some real-life experience in this.

To our officials who are here from CRA, thank you.

The issue with CRA is that they're so backlogged anyways. This is the case: My wife files for a number of seniors at a seniors centre in Calgary every year. There are many seniors who are going to benefit from this program, thankfully. Everybody's very supportive of making sure that the people in that group get that automatic filing from the government. However, there are others whose situations become more complex with filing that's done automatically on their behalf. I can tell you, having dealt with CRA before on many filings, that the onerous process of undoing a mistake made by either CRA or the taxpayer is an endless one that takes hours of both the participant's and the CRA's time.

The backlog is going to increase if we have these. I hope there are some movable minds on the other side of the table here. What we're talking about is that if you catch 90% of your target here, you're winning hands down with that 90%. The other 10% are going to be exceptions to the rule, using ballpark figures, and you're going to create a lot more work both for them and for the CRA, because their situations do change, particularly later in life. Somebody might pass away. There are a bunch of things that happen that are no longer automatic once you reach a certain stage of life.

These are things where you have to consider the reality of the on-the-ground situation and why that little, let's call it, portion of people does not want or need automatic filing. That automatic filing will be detrimental to both them and the system that monitors the payments they have to make and how much undoing is going to have to happen as a result of a fake filing that they never agreed to.

There's where your perspective needs to look at who we're serving here. Serve the 90%. Get them taken care of. Make sure the 10% who may be the exceptions, particularly late in life as their situations change, don't get embroiled in a system that's going to cause them or, potentially, their heirs and successors a whole bunch of paperwork to get through a situation in which it looks like something was acquiesced to by a taxpayer that they had no part in.

We're potentially creating a huge problem here. When we go forward with those who will willingly go into this system, we'll catch 90% of our target audience. I'd like to make sure that we look at that as far as what to do.

While the officials are at the table, let me ask that question of them.

For these people who are usually on straight government filing—here's your revenue, here are your expenses, and it's easy—how often do you have to undo returns in the process of refiling and do the onerous work that goes into that, from your perspective? How many man hours, woman hours or person hours would that take because of the revisions that happen right now but, in this case, would have to happen at a significantly elevated level?

[Pierre LeBlanc]

Thank you for the question.

We can answer from a finance perspective.

I think you raise important issues. One observation we can make from our perspective is that often, when returns are amended, that is done to change your tax payable. If you think some deduction or credit wasn't properly taken into account, in those cases you may think that you shouldn't be paying as much in taxes. None of these people are paying taxes. Their income is too low, so whether they claim...so because of that—

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

I'm not talking about paying taxes. I'm talking about the filing that will sort out their affairs; eventually, sorting out their affairs means their family will sort out their affairs.

We're talking about a stage of life in which we're automatically filing people's returns on their behalf, which, in a certain number of these cases, will not be reflective of their reality at that point. We will have a document already filed, saying, “This is the attestation of this person at this stage of their life,” but it will be done against their will, and we will be moving that forward when it's going to require a whole bunch of subsequent undoing.

It's not the taxes. In this group of people that we're talking about, 90% of them are going to acquiesce to this, and 100% of them probably don't pay taxes at this point in time. In the mechanics of what happens throughout the totality of the tax system, we're creating more confusion here for a number of people than we are solving problems for the 90% we need to address.

[Pierre LeBlanc]

Thank you for the question.

I might add that filing rates among seniors are already extremely high. Very few seniors—

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

I appreciate that.

[Pierre LeBlanc]

Could I finish, please?

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. LeBlanc, it seems you're avoiding the point I'm trying to make here.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Madam Chair, on a point of order, if Mr. McLean wants to ask the officials a question, it would be nice if he actually cared about the response. The gentleman was trying to respond—

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

I agree, Mr. Turnbull, but—

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

Mr. McLean and Mr. Turnbull, excuse me, both of you.

Mr. Turnbull, thank you.

Did you have something to add?

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

With respect, I'm sorry, Madam Chair. I'm just trying to help the official address the question I'm asking, not the esotericism about what the goals are. We know what the goals are. We know how we're trying to meet the goals. I'm trying to point him to—

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Madam Chair, on a point of order, I don't think the officials need help from Mr. McLean to answer a question. They're perfectly competent individuals who can answer his question, which the gentleman, Mr. LeBlanc, was doing by adding facts and evidence about the filing rate for seniors, which was part of Mr. McLean's question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

Thank you, Mr. Turnbull.

Go ahead, Mr. McLean.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

I'll yield the floor to Mr. LeBlanc.

[Pierre LeBlanc]

Thank you.

I didn't have much to add. I was going to finish by saying that certainly we're talking tens of thousands of individuals a year, so not that many. I expect there would be some seniors, but given that seniors already have such a high filing rate, you can expect them to be a disproportionately small number. That's all, sir.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

Mr. McLean, are you done?

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

I think I'm done.

[The Chair, Liberal, Karina Gould]

Thank you.

Mrs. Jansen, go ahead.