Finance committee  Thank you very much. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. It's truly a pleasure to address this committee today and to be here in a different role than in the past. As the former Comptroller General of Canada, I have worked with many of you and with many parl

Finance committee  I will start the answer to your question and then I will ask my colleague Mr. Ball to complete it. When you look at the overall tax code in Canada, you see that it's over 3,000 pages. It's very difficult for people to comprehend the various complexities in the tax code. A better

Finance committee  Thank you. To build on what Professor Lareau said, I think nobody has the magic formula today for how to deal with this situation. It's a very complex matter. Criminals have different ways of doing it. Are there some better practices in various countries? Well, nobody has the pe

Finance committee  My colleague Monsieur Bruce Ball is much more of an expert in taxation issues than I am, so maybe I could ask him to help me out with this one.

Finance committee  Thank you for the question. The recent budget, budget 2021, is providing significant new resources or additional resources to the CRA. This is very much welcome. There are more resources on the legal side that are also provided to the department, and also more help is on the wa

Finance committee  I have no further comments to add on this matter. Maybe my colleague Bruce does.

Finance committee  Thank you very much for that question. I think we saw that the last budget was talking about investing a lot more money in tracking the tax data, getting better systems and getting more legal firepower to the CRA to help combat tax evasion. This is the way we read the announceme

Finance committee  Thank you for the question. On the question of litigation for taxes, there are a lot of dynamics around it. Many taxpayers say they'll go to court because they have an expectation that they will win. They have a valid case. People don't just do it for fun. I think there's that d

Finance committee  It's the size of the penalty.

Finance committee  That could help.

Finance committee  I was going to agree with Mr. Vaillancourt. The system in question will then provide new means to prevent this kind of thing. It won't be perfect. When there are criminals, there are criminals, but at least there will be one more tool to reduce risk. So we fully agree with the r

Finance committee  I'll add a point on the $25 billion. No doubt it is a very important number. It's very, very important that everybody pays their fair share of taxes. It's a civic duty. There are many things that can be done from an enforcement perspective, but it's also a question of education

Finance committee  Thank you for this question. There's no doubt, when we see those reports from the AG and others, that we have to say this is not helpful. The CRA, like other departments and all of us, needs to do better. They're investing in more people. They're investing in new information sys

Finance committee  As we've said a number of times to members, we find the current tax code very, very complex. This committee has made a recommendation many times. By making it more complex, you're making it more difficult to comply. The average Canadian has great difficulty. It's a 3,000-page cod

Finance committee  I think we could ask my colleague to answer the question on voluntary disclosure.