Finance committee  When I take a look at my notes here, it looks pretty consistent from 2014-15 forward, but it will vary from year to year. For example, this year there was increased awareness and advertising on the climate action incentive, which was particular to this year. Each year you'll have things coming in and out, but I think that level is relatively constant.

Finance committee  Mr. Chair, I have just a couple points on that, because you'll recall that a few years ago the Auditor General did a study on our call centres and found us not to be providing the level of service that he was expecting and, frankly, that we would have liked. Since then, I would say, a couple of things have caused us to improve.

Finance committee  Wait times go up and down. As you can imagine, if you take the pulse at the end of April, when people are frantically calling, it will be longer. We're just in the process of figuring out with this new technology what an appropriate service standard is for us. For example, we'll want to make sure that within the average wait time we will serve most of the people within x minutes.

Finance committee  I know my answer was lengthy, so I'll try to keep this one short. On the general issue of transparency, we're doing a number of things to make sure that the information the CRA has that would be helpful to people is made transparent. For example, we are making publicly available the tax gap analysis we are doing to try to identify the gap between taxes that should be paid and taxes that are paid.

Finance committee  On that general idea, we're taking a number of actions. On the specifics of this case or of settlements in particular, we're in the process of trying to find a way to increase transparency. I certainly would prefer a situation in which we could talk about what actually gets settled.

Finance committee  Yes, we have ongoing discussions with the Parliamentary Budget Officer and we do provide information to his office on every tax gap study that we do.

Finance committee  I'm certainly happy, Mr. Chair, to give the committee a more fulsome response than what I can do off the top of my head, but we do, through social media and putting out tweets, etc., warn people about the scams that are out there. We have other vehicles, on websites and other places, whereby we can try to inform Canadians about this, and I can certainly give you a more detailed written explanation of all the things we're doing.

Finance committee  Mr. Chair, I'll comment on the two parts of that. First, on the debt writeoffs, it is true that each year in the agency we have a certain number of tax debts that we have to write off. That can come from a number of different reasons. There can be bankruptcies. There can be people who are in financial hardship, where we defer, or in some cases we eliminate their tax liability.

Finance committee  —and to try to find a way to balance the section 241 obligations with transparency.

Finance committee  Hopefully we'll be able to do something there.

Finance committee  There's one quick thing to add—I'm sorry—just in response to the earlier questions about the minister's engagement. I can say that she was not involved and engaged in this decision at all. She was informed about it after the decision was made. I wasn't sure if that was 100% clear in the commentary and questions, but I wanted to say that.

Finance committee  I assume so, that it's five years. I'd have to go back and check on the specifics about it.

Finance committee  Yes, it's five years.

Finance committee  Okay. I'll try to address all three of those, Chair. The first thing that I would say is on the community volunteer income tax program, the CVITP. It's very important, certainly for Canadians who are looking to file their taxes; but you're right, in that it does have a benefit for us as well, to the extent that we get more accurate forms that comply with what we need to have.

Finance committee  Again, just to say that the two issues you're relating, about whatever testimony and then the modifications to the website, are unrelated—