I have a quick question before we go to Ms. Crombie.
I have to agree with Mr. Lee here, and I'm going to put this to the Auditor General. I may be totally wrong, but it seems to me that the issue is the interest rate. The way the markets are now, it appears to me that the interest rate is too high, and as a result companies are using CRA as an investment bank. They're getting more money from CRA than they can get anywhere else in Canada in the short term. As a result, Canadian taxpayers lost about $30 million in each of the last three years, and it probably goes back over the last 20 years. Those findings were not contested by either the CRA or the Department of Finance. The public accounts committee has to accept the findings that were agreed upon, which are that we are losing $30 million a year.
The CRA is talking about an elaborate scheme whereby each account would be monitored. It seems to me to be a horrendous amount of work to monitor each advance payment to see if it is bona fide and to get into that argument before the assessment is adjudicated.
I really think it's the interest rate, and I don't think all this administrative talk will solve the problem at all until you can deal with the interest rate.
Auditor General, do you agree with my assessment?