Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the opportunity and the invitation to be with you this evening.
For those watching at home, it's a very odd experience for a member who is normally questioning witnesses to be in the witness chair, but I have a feeling that not many people will be watching. Anyway, we'll see how it goes.
I take this opportunity very seriously. When a member of Parliament has a chance to make a change to the statutes, it's a lottery system. I was very lucky to be drawn high in the lottery this time. I had a chance in the last Parliament as well—I was lucky enough—but I would say that I learned from that experience. I believed that I had a great bill then, and I still believe it was a great bill, but I didn't do as much work behind the scenes as I should have. It was a good learning experience.
With this bill, I didn't want to waste my opportunity. I think I've put forward a bill that should in principle receive widespread acknowledgement and support.
There is a growing trend where large debts that corporate taxpayers owe the treasury are being written off. We've just heard from the finance minister about the health of the finances of the nation. The good news is that I want to help. I think that if we have a better understanding of the debts that are being written off by the government, maybe we would write off fewer debts and we would be better at collecting those debts. Taxpayers would have more taxes, more revenue, in the coffers to be used to support social programs or maybe even used to cut taxes for the rest of us.
It is patently unfair that the primary tax authority, the CRA, will aggressively chase regular citizens and companies for very small amounts. As you know, if you are late on paying your taxes and you owe even nominal amounts of money in the hundreds of dollars, the interest clock starts ticking on the day you are assessed as owing that amount. The CRA will keep coming after you until you pay, but behind closed doors, hundreds of millions of dollars that corporations owe the government are being written off. For corporations that owe the government these kinds of monies and have that debt written off, I think there should be no expectation of privacy.
Effectively, these are public funds that are not being collected on behalf of Canadians. These are amounts that have been assessed and that these taxpayers owe, and for whatever reason they're being written off. The government used to disclose the largest single writeoff: just the amount, but not the name of the taxpayer. Something has changed in the last couple of years, and now the government will no longer even answer what is the single largest writeoff. That is going in the wrong direction.
When we had the opportunity to probe a previous minister of CRA and officials, I was not satisfied that they were taking this issue very seriously. That is the reason this bill is before Parliament today. I believe that taxpayers deserve more transparency, and effectively, I think that's going to help all of us in this room do a better job. We can hold people accountable for the decisions they're making, and we can help to collect the money that people owe the government and effectively owe Canadians.
With that, I would appreciate any questions from my fellow colleagues.