Evidence of meeting #16 for Public Accounts in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was information.

A video is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Marian McMahon  Assistant Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Richard Montroy  Assistant Commissioner, Compliance Programs Branch, Canada Revenue Agency
Gina Jelmini  Director, Offshore Compliance Division, Canada Revenue Agency
Heather Miller  Director, Office of the Auditor General of Canada

4:40 p.m.

Conservative

Corneliu Chisu Conservative Pickering—Scarborough East, ON

Thank you very much.

Do you have any lessons learned from this Liechtenstein file, if you can tell us?

4:40 p.m.

Assistant Commissioner, Compliance Programs Branch, Canada Revenue Agency

Richard Montroy

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair.

The lessons learned—I talked a bit about it earlier—is that we now know how certain structures are set up. To put it in layman's terms, we know now where to look. It's as simple as that, and that helped us a lot in 2007 to get access to that information. We use it every day on other things.

4:40 p.m.

NDP

The Chair NDP David Christopherson

Very good. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Mr. Chisu.

Moving on, Mr. Simms, you have the floor again, sir.

4:40 p.m.

Liberal

Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL

Way to go, Mr. Chisu, patting yourself on the back for the developments of other countries such as Switzerland. There you go. We've continued in that mode.

You said you worked five agreements. Were they the original five of the TIEA agreements?

4:40 p.m.

Assistant Commissioner, Compliance Programs Branch, Canada Revenue Agency

Richard Montroy

Yes, sir. The original five, yes.

4:40 p.m.

Liberal

Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL

Interesting, so you have quite a bit of experience in this.

Dealing with other countries, such as Switzerland, what do you find is the biggest change in dealing with this? First of all, what have been the biggest advances, and second of all, what continues to be the biggest frustration?

4:40 p.m.

Assistant Commissioner, Compliance Programs Branch, Canada Revenue Agency

Richard Montroy

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would say the biggest change is that there are a number of countries...and I'll use one as an example, the Isle of Man, which was one of the first five countries that Canada negotiated with. The Isle of Man was considered a tax haven and they truly wanted to change the way they were seen in the international community. There are a number of countries, the Isle of Man is one of many, that have wanted to legitimize their economies and wanted to be seen well in the international community.

I would say over the last five years or so, that is probably the biggest thing, that a number of countries have stepped to the front and genuinely want to change the way things work.

The biggest challenge, I would say, Mr. Chair, is that taxpayers and their advisers continue to use every way to impede giving the CRA access to information. So we do spend a lot of time and resources going to court, trying to force institutions and entities to give us the information. It's a very slow process, so I've learned in my job to be very patient. It's a long game, but we now have the tools in place to deal with those issues.

4:40 p.m.

Liberal

Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL

I noticed the proliferation of larger banks around the world, certainly in the past 10 years. Is that an impediment as well for people to hide assets around some of the bigger institutions, or does that help?

4:40 p.m.

Assistant Commissioner, Compliance Programs Branch, Canada Revenue Agency

Richard Montroy

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I don't think the proliferation of banks really has that big an impact on this issue. It's more the tax intermediaries or the advisers who try to find ways to hide money in various places.

4:40 p.m.

Liberal

Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL

In doing the exercise you went through with Liechtenstein, one of the things was timelines. It seems to me that one of the situations....

I'll ask Ms. McMahon. You talk about the timelines and talk about how it has to be delivered in a timely manner, but it seemed during the Liechtenstein experience the timelines were not as defined, per se, for the particular auditors. In doing that, was that an open-ended thing? Were there some areas where timelines were good, but in general, was it too open-ended?

4:45 p.m.

Assistant Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General of Canada

Marian McMahon

As we state, there was no definition for the timelines. There were no standards established for this project, so that's what we had indicated in paragraph 15. Then we indicated in paragraph 16 that, yes, having the standards would be important, so we encourage the agency to set—

4:45 p.m.

Liberal

Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL

I'm assuming this can be responded to by Ms. Jelmini.

4:45 p.m.

Director, Offshore Compliance Division, Canada Revenue Agency

Gina Jelmini

Yes, we've established timelines and they've been communicated to the offshore compliance specialized teams.

4:45 p.m.

Liberal

Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL

This is for all new areas, your TIEA agreements and so on and so forth, and you have a pretty standardized practice.

4:45 p.m.

Director, Offshore Compliance Division, Canada Revenue Agency

Gina Jelmini

That's correct.

4:45 p.m.

Liberal

Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL

How does that go? Guidelines like the wiki...?

4:45 p.m.

Director, Offshore Compliance Division, Canada Revenue Agency

Gina Jelmini

There are a number of them. The wiki is part of the guidelines, but we've sent a package including a number of information areas, one of which is the wiki, and the timelines have been included, as well.

4:45 p.m.

Liberal

Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL

That seems to be quite key here to helping out future auditors as they go through this. Is that correct for CRA, anyway?

4:45 p.m.

Director, Offshore Compliance Division, Canada Revenue Agency

Gina Jelmini

Yes, we're providing as many tools as we can to help them.

4:45 p.m.

Liberal

Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL

I have a final quick question. The commission that's offered to people who are informants is 5% to 15%, is that correct?

4:45 p.m.

Director, Offshore Compliance Division, Canada Revenue Agency

Gina Jelmini

That's correct.

4:45 p.m.

Liberal

Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL

Is that taxable?

4:45 p.m.

Director, Offshore Compliance Division, Canada Revenue Agency

Gina Jelmini

Yes it is.

4:45 p.m.

Liberal

Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL

I have to go out on a high note, sir.

4:45 p.m.

Voices

Oh, oh!