Mr. Speaker, the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency finds the motion unacceptable for the reasons outlined as follows.
With reference to Marleau and Montpetit's House of Commons Procedure and Practice , chapter 10, “Responses to Orders for the Production of Papers—Exemptions” at pages 402 and 403, the documents as requested are:
Papers, the release of which might be detrimental to the future conduct of federal-provincial relations or the relations of provinces inter se (the release of papers received from provinces to be subject to the consent of the originating province).
Second, I refer to item 7 which says:
Papers of a voluminous character or which would require an inordinate cost or length of time to prepare.
Furthermore, the information as requested would likely be exempt from disclosure as the confidentiality provisions of section 241 of the Income Tax Act preclude the customs and revenue agency from disclosing any information concerning the income tax affairs of an individual taxpayer.
I would therefore ask the hon. member to withdraw his motion.