Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for raising this extremely important question, and I welcome the opportunity to speak about the actions that the government and the Canada Revenue Agency have taken to crack down on offshore tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance.
Court records show that it is through the efforts of the agency that the KPMG offshore tax avoidance scheme was discovered and that many of its participants have already been identified. On November 29, 2016, the Federal Court dismissed with cost a KPMG motion challenging the judicial order allowing theMinister of National Revenue to request client information from KPMG. It remains the government's position that all participants in this tax avoidance scheme must be identified and brought into full compliance with their tax obligations.
The confidentiality provisions of the Income Tax Act prevent the CRA from discussing the details of specific cases related to a particular individual or group of individuals beyond what is already on public record, but what I can tell the member is that the litigation uses significant financial and judicial resources with no guarantee of achieving a desired outcome. The CRA takes all steps available to meet its obligations to recover all taxes owed to the crown and to resolve issues before the court in a timely manner. In addition, it is well known that audits and investigations can take months or years to complete, depending on factors such as the complexity of the cases, the number of taxpayers involved, the availability of information and evidence, co-operation from taxpayers, and the various legal tools necessary to establish a case.
Make no mistake: our government continues to ramp up its actions to crack down on offshore tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance. Our government has committed close to $1 billion to cracking down on tax evasion and combatting tax avoidance. By focusing resources in the areas of highest risk both domestically and internationally, and with increased information-gathering capabilities, the CRA now has access to more information than ever before.
Using intelligence gathered through these tools and using experienced audit and investigation teams, the CRA has a robust system in place to tackle tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance on many fronts.
That is what Canadians expect of their government, and that is exactly what we will continue to deliver for them.