Public Accounts Committee on May 9th, 2019

[René Arseneault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

They did not manage to speak to an agent.

Forgive the abrupt change of subject, but I'm moving on to a different report, the one on e-commerce taxes.

I don't remember who said it earlier — perhaps it was Mr. Le Goff —, but it appears that the Canada Revenue Agency does not have all the necessary legislative means to collect taxes. At least, that's what I thought I heard. Moreover, when it does have those means, it doesn't or can't do all the work needed to collect those taxes. What do you mean by that?

[Sylvain Ricard]

It has to do with two things, basically.

We'll start with cases where the CRA has the legislative means, but doesn't do enough audit work.

[René Arseneault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

You only have one minute.

[Sylvain Ricard]

I will be short, then.

In the case of taxable goods for which the CRA should conduct audits, we noted that it didn't do enough.

In other cases, it simply didn't have the legislative means to collect taxes, including when goods are not taxable. In the report, we also refer to the possibility of encouraging foreign organizations and businesses to follow a simplified process to register with the CRA and to voluntarily pay taxes, as they already do in certain provinces and countries. It so happens that these tools and legislative means don't exist in Canada, so the CRA can't act.

[René Arseneault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

The CRA has no authority in those cases.

[Sylvain Ricard]

It doesn't have the authority to act.

[René Arseneault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

If you had suggestions to make about that, what would you recommend?

[Sylvain Ricard]

We have no suggestion to make, because it's a political decision that is up to the government. It's not for us to set those regulations.

[René Arseneault, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Yesterday, I saw Mr. Le Goff on the RDI network. In 2017, the government missed out on 169 million dollars worth of revenue. The number sounds scary, but I was surprised that it wasn't higher given the scope of e-commerce these past 5 to 10 years.

I know this wasn't part of your audit, but is it possible to compare that amount to the one that the government collected for e-commerce activities conducted by businesses on Canadian soil?

[Philippe Le Goff]

I don't have this information, but we could obtain it and send it to the committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much.

We’ll now move to the second round of questioning, a five-minute round, starting with Mr. Davidson.

[Scot Davidson, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Thank you.

Good morning.

Just in listening, and even earlier, there's been a word that's come up three times, and it's actually been used by the three of you, the word “overwhelmed”, regarding two reports, one, the processing of asylum claims, and obviously the other one, call centres. Looking at your report, I see that the funding that was set aside in 2012...processing 22,500 claims a year, and yet this year alone there are 55,000 claims. Then in the 2019 budget we're only going to be processing 40,000 claims and in the 2021 budget, 50,000 claims. It seems to me we are going to be overwhelmed because we're getting behind the curve. Was that something that was shocking to you?

[Sylvain Ricard]

You're referring to new funding that was given in the new budget. You'll understand that we haven't done any audit work on that to assess exactly what the money is for, what the impact will be. We haven't done any work on that. But it remains that the backlog at the time of the audit was 71,000 files, with, on average, two months to get a decision. We made a recommendation that they find a way—I guess I'll say it this way—to become more nimble in addressing spikes in the demand. Right now, the business model is a fixed capacity, and that's what the problem is.

[Scot Davidson, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

That's right. That's what I'm saying. Even with the new budgeted numbers, we're still going to be overwhelmed. Given the backlog and the new asylum claims, even the new money dedicated by the current government isn't going to cover that.

Secondly, we have a government that says they're out talking to Canadians. I know how frustrated I am. Really, we're not listening to Canadians because we haven't even talked to half of the Canadians who have called the government. I'm just looking at the updated call centres. There were eight done in five years. Did that give you pause to look at the number of call centres that had to be upgraded, the other 221? If we're doing only eight over five years, how is that going to translate to their ever being updated? By the time they are updated, they've going to be outdated.

[Sylvain Ricard]

No. It's for the department to do their own planning and assess how quickly they can modernize those systems. That could be a good question to ask the department.

[Scot Davidson, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Okay. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

We now go to Ms. Yip.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Thanks for coming.

Do Canadians across the country have a chance to provide input on what topics or issues your office chooses to examine?

[Sylvain Ricard]

Yes, we always welcome any ideas from any source, whether it be from members of Parliament or from the public. We have our own internal process where we reflect on the best audits we could do to have the best impact, more value to Canadians. Yes, input from the public is always welcome, and we do get some at times.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Do you put a consultative link out there on your social media or on the website?

[Sylvain Ricard]

We do receive some by regular mail and we do receive some electronically.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

But does your office actually put out a link that Canadians can just click on, like the CRA? It is seeking to improve its services right now. It has a consultative link and it invites all Canadians to engage.

[Sylvain Ricard]

We are using social media, like everybody, and the public reaches out to us through that means.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Referring to Marine Atlantic and the national museum of science issue and that significant deficiency, it looks like they have some problems that were discovered in your 2009 audit. Why have the problems not been addressed? It's now 10 years later, and the same problems are still being brought up.

[Sylvain Ricard]

That's a question for the organization. I couldn't tell you. When we did the audit and noted that the issue was still there, we just took note of that and reported on it.