Finance committee  Take, for instance, a financial institution. It could be headquartered in one province but have subsidiaries or other activities in another province. It can become fairly complex for our auditors to ensure that, at the end of the day, the proper province is getting the proper amount of revenue from that particular tax entity.

Finance committee  We work with all the provinces on this. Obviously Quebec is involved, because many companies do work across the country. So the short answer to your question is yes, Quebec would be involved.

Finance committee  This particular investment is primarily addressed to those provinces with which we have tax collection agreements.

Finance committee  Sure. Without going on at length, there were many measures in the 2006 federal budget that impacted the Canada Revenue Agency. They related to income tax; they related to corporate tax; they related to the GST. They related to a number of new tax credits, several of which I managed to enumerate before the committee, all to say that this is the amount we've identified as required to allow us to serve Canadians properly with these tax changes.

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will be brief in my remarks in order to provide as much time to members of the committee as possible for questions. First, I'm joined by Jim Ralston, our chief financial officer, and Mary Jane Jackson, our deputy assistant commissioner, the number two in that branch.

Finance committee  Mr. Chair, there are two things. I'll give you a bit more detail, breaking out the $30 million. The money is being requested in the current fiscal year because of course for us to be ready for the tax year, we have to invest many months in advance, in particular in terms of our information systems, but as well in training.

Finance committee  Mr. Chair, we do assess our performance relative to other countries. It is extremely hard to do it on a numbers basis because every tax administration is different. For instance, we collect provincial taxes that most national tax administrations don't. We also collect outstanding benefit payments and so on.

Finance committee  Mr. Chair, members may have read the response to the public accounts committee report that I believe was tabled on September 30. You will find in that, for those who haven't had a chance to study it in detail, a very detailed plan to revitalize the collections program over the next few years.

Finance committee  The officials share the concern about the activity in international tax havens and aggressive tax schemes that syphon money out of the country. The key is information. We lead a group with OECD, with seven countries. We've set up a four-country information sharing group. We've also created centres of excellence across the country within the last year that bring together our international tax experts and our tax avoidance experts, and they are really starting to have a more impressive impact on our ability to counteract this.

Finance committee  Yes, a division of our Compliance Programs Branch focusses on compliance. Links were established with FINTRAC and we work very well together.

Finance committee  Typically it would be with the upcoming policies, but I'd want to confirm that.

Finance committee  We would have administered the policy as it was directed by the Department of Finance.

Finance committee  What we would have considered, Chair, were the administrative requirements in order to be able to deliver that benefit as of July 1, to make sure that families received it. Any consideration of options around the policy formulation would have been undertaken by the Department of Finance.

Finance committee  There's continued work with the Department of Finance to work out the administrative provisions.

Finance committee  We would administer it.