Thank you, Madam Chair.
Good day to all.
It's a little unusual that we can sit here in a situation like this and actually be facing really good news. I've taken a look at your comments regarding the different areas of evaluation, in particular.
As a matter of fact, when the member across the table, Mr. Wrzesnewskyj, and I sat on public accounts and went through the public opinion research, we saw the sad tale of woe that took place at that particular time. Of course, the committee made a number of recommendations based on your comments back then. I would like to comment briefly on that.
But before I get to that topic to discuss some of the areas and ask for you comments on some of the successes we have had in dealing with it, hopefully patterning other actions in other departments to parallel those kinds of successes, I have one area of concern I wish to touch on. It's on international taxation and the loopholes, and/or potential loopholes, or who knows what loopholes regarding a potential loss of revenue for the Canada Revenue Agency.
On these tax loopholes, be it Barbados, the Caymans, or whatever tax haven that is used, you've stated in your report, at page 5 of the status report, the agency has yet to deal with the low level of expertise in international tax audits, particularly ones that handle high-risk files. This lack of expertise could result in inconsistencies, and it could go on to problems also remaining in the matching of non-resident tax data.
Given the size and scope of this file, you mentioned as well that we're talking about over $1.5 trillion in transactions and up to $5 billion in revenue in taxation to the Canadian government at this particular time. If we have a discrepancy that's unknown, it's disturbing.
What I'd like to know is this. Do you think this is an issue that should require more scrutiny on our part? And if some additional action should be taken, what do suggest that should be?