When we're dealing with tax expenditures in this audit, we are talking about measures that could have been delivered through direct spending types of programs. In paragraph 3.6 there is a quote from the International Monetary Fund, its fiscal transparency code, that states that “because the government policy objectives could be achieved alternatively through a subsidy or other direct outlays, [tax expenditures] are regarded as equivalent to budget expenditure”.
It's important for parliamentarians to understand the extent of these tax measures, particularly what we are referring to as tax-based expenditures, because many of them could have been delivered through direct budgetary spending programs. For direct budgetary spending programs, there are a number of requirements. There are requirements, for example, to do periodic evaluations at least every five years. When departments prepare their reports on plans and priorities, they present three years' worth of estimates for their programs. That type of information doesn't exist for the tax-based expenditures.