Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Investing in countries—be it tax havens or other countries—is not illegal. I don't have those figures on hand today, but I know that Statistics Canada estimates foreign investment for a certain number of countries. At the Canada Revenue Agency, we make no c

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  I would say that Canada, like other countries, participates with the OECD in Working Party No. 6, which is transfer pricing, and we look at that area; we look at all the different areas. At the CRA, we train our auditors to ensure that we look at all aspects of the problem. We ar

Finance committee  I thank the member for his question. The cuts you are talking about represent a restructuring of our criminal investigations programs. As Mr. McAuley explained earlier, no cuts have been made in the areas of international audits and audits of abusive practices. None of our audit

Finance committee  Thank you very much for the question. Should the government estimate the tax gap? That is a matter of tax policy. I don't want to pass the baton to my colleague, but this is, after all, something the government should decide on. It is up to the government to determine whether an

Finance committee  We audit both individuals and companies. If I understand the question, you are asking me whether more focus is being placed on one category than the other. The answer is no. What's important to us is to identify cases of tax evasion, regardless of who is committing the violation.

Finance committee  If I have understood your question, you are talking about voluntary disclosure.

Finance committee  I am not in a position to discuss Great Britain's system. However, I would tell you that the Canadian voluntary disclosure program has been very successful thanks to all the work we have done internationally—be it when it comes to information exchanges or our tax agreements with

Finance committee  Good morning. Thank you for the question. As Mr. Ernewein explained earlier, Canada's approach regarding the OECD does not include any specific calculations of the tax gap. You are correct in saying that Great Britain and the United States have tried to calculate that gap, but

Finance committee  Canada's approach is similar to those used in other countries. An estimate is worth what it's worth and, instead of making estimates, as Mr. McAuley explained earlier, we identify and address cases of tax evasion and international tax issues.

Finance committee  I'd like to clarify one thing. I would hate for the honourable members to leave here today thinking you can negotiate a deal with the voluntary disclosure program. The voluntary disclosure program is a program that allows people to come forward and declare the income that perhaps

Finance committee  Every country must decide on its policies in accordance with its requirements. I have been working in the taxation field for some time. We have always thought that the Canadian way was to ensure that the law was being enforced and that our resources were being used to ensure that

Finance committee  Earlier today we did talk about this and I attempted to sort of explain the difference between what I'll call the civil side versus the criminal side. It's basically a burden of proof. When we raise tax assessments based on tax avoidance, it's simply a question of preponderance

Finance committee  As a lawyer, I would tell you that the simple answer is that it takes a long time. In any sort of criminal case there are different reasons why it takes time. We have an approach in the agency where we like to obviously publicize our successes in criminal cases. As a result, we

Finance committee  I would say in a perfect world there would be less tax evasion. It's a combination of many, many things. My colleague from the Department of Finance talked about the tax exchange of information agreements that will enable us to get information from various countries to enable us