Madam Chair, I can only conclude that the member unfortunately has not read the material and is not aware of some of the points. Perhaps I can correct her.
First of all, moving to the agency is creating a vehicle for options. I do not know why the member is against creating new options so that we can work with the provinces, so that we can sit down and say let us see what the benefits are, let us see how we can work together. It is about creating new options for Canadians as well.
Let me give the hon. member a good example. In the last tax return we asked Canadians if they would like to be on the electoral list. We asked them to checkmark the electoral list. Eighty-one per cent of Canadians chose to be on the electoral list. That means for Canadians we are going to save $30 million for every election because we do not have to do an enumeration. That is about working together for the benefit of Canadians.
Let me give the hon. member another example, the child tax benefit. When the Government of British Columbia wanted to carry out a child tax benefit, it came to Revenue Canada and said can you perform this service for us. Because we have the computer system, the data, we were able to provide the service, to deliver a very important benefit for the Government of British Columbia at millions of dollars less than if it had to build a parallel system to deliver that program. We worked with British Columbia. Creating the agency is about creating a vehicle for choices. It does not force the provinces to do anything. In fact, it includes them.
The member has mistakenly said that we can put anybody on the board. Clearly the legislation says that each province will be able to nominate. The NDP government in British Columbia will be able to nominate people to sit on the board of management to make sure there is accountability.
The bill surely talks about accountability. I know many members have quoted the auditor general. The auditor general's quote was referring to the old model. I have made the changes because of the consultation I have done over the last year to make sure we have full accountability.
My final point is that in the last finance minister's meeting, one of the items on the agenda was the agency. In fact, all the finance ministers agreed to the guidelines regarding what the agencies could collect.
Mr. Petter, the former finance minister of British Columbia, at that time said this is the right direction, it is about reducing overlap, about reducing duplication, about making sure we reduce the compliance cost to business and about giving better service. The ministers agreed.
The member talked about user fees. It is simply not true. That is totally erroneous.
In terms of harmonized sales tax, the agency says you do not have to harmonize. Let us sit together and see if there is opportunity to work together on collecting non-harmonized taxes. If you want to talk about harmonization that is something that the finance people do. We are in the business of tax administration. We have said part of this is to be able to collect non-harmonized taxes.
In terms of the quote from Mr. Krishna, he was referring to the former model. Mr. Krishna is a member of an advisory committee to me as Minister of National Revenue. I have discussed this matter and he was referring to the original model which we have changed to create greater political accountability.
Really what we are talking about are choices. What we are talking about is opportunity. What we are talking about is bringing the federal and provincial governments together. Canadians want us to work in co-operation. They want to make sure we get rid of overlap and duplication to simplify and streamline.
That is what the agency is all about. It is creating a new vehicle for us to work together in co-operation.