In 1997, we set up an integrated risk management system. It does have some weaknesses, but that year, in 1997, we established our call centre to try to collect the accounts we received more quickly.
Second, the OAG mentioned in the report that we have established labour pools, whereby all new accounts were given priority processing rather than being sent to collectors throughout the country, because the collection potential is greater in the case of young debts.
In the case of old accounts, often taxpayers are temporarily unable to pay or circumstances are such that the debt cannot be written off under the Financial Administration Act. If we were in the private sector, a number of these debts would not have a high collection potential, but we are talking about cases where the taxpayer has not died. The debt exists, and often we have to work over long periods of time. We provide a type of credit counselling for taxpayers. The fact that the debt is old does not mean that it cannot be recovered. It is often active, but it may take several years before you can collect the balance. So there are a number of factors that come into play.
Our objective is to reduce the age of accounts as much as possible and to collect most of them as soon as we get them. We do not want to exacerbate the problem.