Finance committee  No, they will all benefit. The way it works is that we list acupuncturists or naturopathic doctors, and they have to be regulated in a province, but as I say, the exemption will apply across Canada. If an acupuncturist is in a province that has no regulation, as long as they meet the qualification to be regulated in another province, that would be good enough to benefit from the exemption.

Finance committee  I'm going to correct you. The exemption applies across Canada for both the GST and the HST. Maybe I can explain why there's confusion here. There are administrative criteria that are used to decide which health care professions would benefit from the exemption, and one of those criteria is that the profession is regulated as a health care profession in at least five provinces.

Finance committee  Oh, you want to know which ones—

Finance committee  We're not aware of any. It was made to be uniform across the board.

Finance committee  It's for the Minister of Finance to make an announcement, not for me.

Finance committee  It can have many forms. It can be a hidden command in the system itself. It can be on a USB key. It can be accessible to a website. It has many forms, but in the end it's the same thing. It's to selectively delete some sales for the purpose of tax evasion.

Finance committee  To my knowledge, some of that software is available on the Internet. Also, sometimes it's a hidden component in some of the software being sold. You may have it and you don't even know unless you have the code to prompt a new screen that allows you to do something of that nature.

Finance committee  I don't have the list with me of all the municipalities involved, but it's available by consulting the files of the Tax Court. I believe there were more than 10.

Finance committee  Yes, there was a dispute, but the federal government is not conceding that the taxpayer would have won. This tax dispute has been going on for a very long time, and it seems to never proceed in the courts. I think from the numbers available from the Tax Court you can find something between $50 million and $60 million.

Finance committee  If the amendment doesn't go forward, basically they will try their appeal and it will be the Tax Court that has to decide.

Finance committee  Mainly the hospital community made comments because they would have been negatively affected. Basically, the reason the government has not included the amendment in this bill is that the government continues to consult with all those affected by this technical measure and its intent.

Finance committee  In GST, HST, I believe it's—

Finance committee  This is a responsibility. In addition to the budget announcement and the news release when these measures were announced by the Department of Finance in September, the CRA is responsible for communicating the message that if you have this software you should get rid of it and not use it.

Finance committee  Yes, it's actually a request from the Canada Revenue Agency to do that. You mentioned coming into force. The provision for coming into force was announced in budget 2013 in March. The coming into force was decided to be the later of royal assent or January 1, 2014 to give time for businesses to stop using it and to do voluntary disclosure if they don't want to be caught in the future.

Finance committee  The Department of Finance doesn't have these kinds of numbers. It's very difficult to have numbers in that respect because it's basically fraud. Nobody reports the amount that they fraud. There can be cases and numbers being extrapolated, but even the people who write on it don't really agree.