Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. From an official's level, I can tell you that in a previous position I had responsibility for domestic compliance. There was no national campaign focused on that sector of the Canadian economy, campgrounds. Based on the feedback CRA officials did, I can tel

Finance committee  Just to follow through with specific examples of what the minister was saying, we have a liaison officer initiative, through which we take auditors who used to go to small and medium-sized businesses to do audits, and now they go to give advice and warn them about potential error

Finance committee  In the international and aggressive tax planning space, multinationals, our revenue generation target for the last fiscal year that ended March 31 was $380 million. We're over $500 million, $512 million. From an ROI perspective, we're there. But I think the deeper question is, ar

Finance committee  Just quickly, there are 400,000 cases a year in terms of taxpayer relief, and it's an important tool. As the minister mentioned, we have to be more timely, and some of the funds here will help to reduce the pressure in that area. I will also just quickly mention feedback. The ap

Finance committee  To bring it back to the $440 million, for example, those aren't the taxpayers who would be the focus, so none of the new monies we'd be voting today would be focused there. In fact, we reorganized our audit function to divide it in two. I have responsibility for the 10% that yi

Finance committee  They are specialists dedicated to people who non-comply offshore, so we have dedicated collections officers who work with those files. If the money is offshore, it's harder to collect.

Finance committee  Yes. In other words, we have a number of distinct programs that would focus on, for example, substantiating credit claims—

Finance committee  In terms of the $444 million, zero. None of the $444 million will be going after salary—

Finance committee  The only thing I would hypothesize, because I don't know the specific cases, is that even in our smaller space, for example, pharmacists who are accepting gift cards, we are increasingly going after an entire population. There was an issue with pharmacists who were asking for reb

Finance committee  We always use FTEs because sometimes officials like myself get in trouble between FTEs and people, but broadly speaking, it's at 200, and broadly speaking, we have 150 or 160 in the door, but there is turnover on a continuous basis. Overall, our audit function is 10,000 people, a

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  I'm going to come back to the question of scope that was raised before in terms of our focus. Roughly 10% of our audit, or 14,000 audits, are focused at people with a high net worth doing aggressive tax planning, and at multinationals. That yielded $8 billion last fiscal year in

Finance committee  Per year.

Finance committee  I think you're right to mention that. We do have a role to play in providing feedback to the Minister of Finance, and we do that on a yearly basis. It is our view that millions of Canadians are able to complete their tax returns in a few minutes using software. I, myself, used m

Finance committee  That is an excellent question. You are correct, legislative changes are essential. We do not control all the decisions. This is mainly under the purview of the Minister of Finance. I can confirm that we have made suggestions. The agency will continue to propose legislative chang