Finance committee  Mr. Chair, that initiative had been under way for some time. What we were looking at, in terms of modernizing our charities website and information base, was just to try to make sure that it's modernized and updated and giving people the information they want. There was a decision taken not to keep the information for longer than five years on the site.

Finance committee  The only harm, I guess, that I could put, is that we need to focus our efforts on putting the information out that's most useful to people. We have taken great strides to be more transparent about what we do. This was a case where people in the agency looked at who is using this information and what is the most accessible and determined that rather than have a bunch of information out there that people aren't using, let's make it publicly available, the most important—

Finance committee  —but make sure that people can still get access to the information if they needed it.

Finance committee  —but what I would say is that in general at the agency we have to think about the data we have, and if we never take anything off or we never respond to the most useful pieces of information for people to have, we will have frankly too much information that people can't access.

Finance committee  Mr. Chair, I totally expect you to believe that because it's true. What I would say is that—

Finance committee  —if you're talking about an area where something inappropriate is happening with some part of the tax system, including charities, charitable foundations, there's no one more interested in finding out about that than we are. All of the efforts we talked about, about the additional resources we're putting into looking at high-net-worth individuals and issues of tax evasion, we want to be able to use.

Finance committee  I'll highlight just a couple of things. Again, maybe I'll ask Ted if he wants to add anything that I forget to cover. Certainly the resources we've been given in this area are very helpful to us in a number of ways. One, we can hire more auditors to ensure that we have people who can look into these cases on a risk-assessed basis—so there's a people dimension—and to make sure that those people have the right skills that are needed to be able to look at some of these complex transactions, to understand them and to figure out the right tax outcome.

Finance committee  I would say that, yes, the issue of the scams out there and how they are affecting people has come to our attention quite a few times. I have received them myself. So what are we doing about it? We're certainly concerned. We have tried to institute programs to educate people and make them aware and alert to the fact that these scams are out there, as well as what they can do and who they can report them to.

Finance committee  All I can say is, on behalf of the agency, where the auditors look at a case, they have a focus on the facts as they see them, on the information that's provided, in doing the risk assessment or ultimately if there is an audit. I can give you that assurance.

Finance committee  Mr. Chair, thank you for the question. I can't answer specifically whether or not there has been an audit of a particular taxpayer, but what I can say in response to that is an example where we try to use every source of information we have to uncover the risks—

Finance committee  —and uncover the areas that we have to look at. That can come through our own internal databases or from some of the information sharing that I've talked about.

Finance committee  [Technical difficulty—Editor]

Finance committee  I typically do not comment on audits of particular taxpayers.

Finance committee  We are—

Finance committee  First off, we, as officials, are bound by section 241 of the Income Tax Act to not discuss taxpayer-specific information, and we abide by that. In a particular case, sometimes there are things in the public domain, but we certainly have to respect the information that we have on taxpayers and not disclose that unless it has been authorized by the taxpayer.