Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his question.
It gives me an opportunity to say what a wonderful job he did chairing the public accounts committee during these debates. This is the gentleman, not the government, that controlled the committee. The questioner himself was the person who chaired the public accounts committee during the debate.
I thank him because that is the only committee chaired by the official opposition. I agree with the fact the official opposition chairs the committee.
The questioner is now saying his committee is not good enough and that there should be a public inquiry. He wants us to spend some more money and to forget we have had two public and transparent committees, one in the control of the hon. member asking the question. Again I thank him for the job he did chairing the committee.
I want to answer him directly. He raised by innuendo some speculation that there is perhaps something funny about giving rulings in December or just before Christmas. The hon. member was in the room when the testimony was given at committee. He knows Revenue Canada statistics show that issuing a great number of rulings in December is the norm because it is the year end and the last date for cutoff.
In past years we had floating years for corporations, but most business people in Canada understand that a great many corporations have January 31 as their cutoff for the year. It is changing in some respects, but it was the norm at the time these rulings were issued.
I will deal specifically with the member's question. I will give an example. Nineteen rulings were issued in the last week of December 1991. In 1992, 33 rulings were issued in the same period. In 1993, 42 rulings. In each of 1994 and 1995, 28 rulings were issued in that week.
In actual fact the bulk of of the rulings of Revenue Canada occur in the last quarter of the year. That is not unusual. To get to that point some work has to be done in advance.
The Canadian public needs to know that Revenue Canada is in a service business. We have clients who pay us taxes so we can do the work of good government as the Government of Canada. We require the funds but we also have committed to advance rulings which are not very useful if they are given after the fact.
When somebody comes to us with a problem and says "here is what we need to do by this date so please give us an advanced ruling", we work toward making sure we meet that deadline. That is common sense, that is good government and that is service.