Public Accounts committee  It was an interesting article, and I felt the blog afterwards was even more interesting in terms of the difference of views on that particular aspect, which I think was indicative of this complex issue. Specifically on the deduction of mortgage interest payments, I think the evidence would probably show that when countries provide that, it gets capitalized in the price of houses, so it becomes a zero-sum game.

Public Accounts committee  I'll attempt to do that. I believe the question related in a general sense to the complexity and growing complexity of the tax system, specifically the disability tax credit as an example of that. In terms of the complexity of the tax system, I can't sit here and tell you that it's not a complex tax system.

Public Accounts committee  In relation to the first-time homebuyers tax credit, in the period in question, which I think is 2008-14, we closely monitored the credits and, in the context of the department's broader monitoring of the housing market, we covered aspects such as the credit's relevance, its fiscal cost, and possible compliance and administrative issues.

Public Accounts committee  As I mentioned earlier, this is one of the eight measures whereby we don't think we evaluated it, but I think part of our response to the Auditor General's recommendation is to ensure we have a system in place to cover all the bases in terms of evaluating these measures.

Public Accounts committee  It rather goes to the issue of what's a tax expenditure. As I mentioned earlier, we define a tax expenditure as any deviation from a benchmarked tax system. We define our benchmarked tax system as broadly as possible, so we report on as many tax expenditures as possible really.

Public Accounts committee  I think what we're saying is that our view is that we effectively evaluate tax measures, that we monitor appropriately and so on, but we accept that we need to be able to demonstrate that, both to others and to ourselves—

Public Accounts committee  —so we will systematically look at our work and make sure there are no gaps, and to the extent that there are gaps, we will make sure they're filled.

Public Accounts committee  That's correct.

Public Accounts committee  We've committed to do that, and we will do it.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you.

Public Accounts committee  That's correct, but we did provide evidence and monitor it.

Public Accounts committee  It's the one I referred to, the first-time home buyers' tax credit.

Public Accounts committee  I do, yes.

Public Accounts committee  You did.

Public Accounts committee  As I say, I don't know the specific risk, but there are always risks and issues with tax measures, given their nature.