Finance committee  I actually do have remarks, Mr. Chair.

Finance committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Thank you for the invitation to speak about Bill C-224. As the chair said, with me is Mr. Wayne Lepine, the director general responsible for federal and provincial relationships at the Canada Revenue Agency. Following my finance department col

Finance committee  Thank you very much for your question. The agency is committed to providing the best possible services to taxpayers, both Quebecers and Canadians. That is why it has taken a number of steps to simplify the filing of tax returns and delivery of its services. The points I have ra

Finance committee  When you look at tax filing—

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Let's talk about the overall context in which it is done. For example, the Quebec government must be able to remit the tax revenue collected. We need to look at the full continuum of tax filing and tax collection in the same way we do for the GST. With res

Finance committee  It is possible because it's being done elsewhere, in other provinces and territories, where the two forms have been combined. The only caveat I'd like to bring to your attention is that, given how complex the two tax regimes are and the differences between them, it's going to be

Finance committee  Thank you very much for your question. Right now, for a number of benefits—we can think about the Canada child benefit or the guaranteed income supplement—all the income-based benefits that we have are usually based on tax data. A person will file and then will get their benefit

Finance committee  I'm not sure how far I need to back up. Basically, we would need to rewire the system, because the income information would not come from the same place. You would have two sources of data, potentially, from Quebec and from Ontario. I would say that the other consideration to

Finance committee  Thank you very much for the question. We are aware of the Robillard Commission report published several years ago. The agency did not do that kind of comparative analysis. Based on the current experience with Revenu Québec's administration of the GST/HST, the costs of the provin

Finance committee  Thank you for the question. I will respond, but I will also invite my colleague Mr. Marsland to comment, since the Department of Finance negotiates these treaties. Our role is to administer them. We each play a role in this area. Our interaction with foreign authorities is gov

Finance committee  Thank you for the question. As I said in my answer to the previous question, the issue is one of procedure. Information is exchanged every day between various departments, including between the different levels of government. Technology allows that. The modalities of the agreem

Finance committee  Thank you very much for the question. Our conversations have been on two levels. We are continuing to work with all the provinces and territories to make sure that the forms used to administer the income tax system are as simple as possible. We have entered into discussions with

Finance committee  Thank you very much for the question. The job losses that I mentioned in my introductory statement would be in the agency's operations that produce tax returns. There is the paper form, the integrated form, and there is the administration by means of which the Government of Queb

Finance committee  We do not have scenarios of that kind, given the current nature of the discussions. We have estimates of the possible fixed costs of such a transition, basing ourselves specifically on the experience with Ontario. I can share that with you now, if you are interested. I can also

Finance committee  Yes, I can send it to you.