Finance committee  I think I can say without any hesitation that it certainly would have been more. This is an obligation on the banks. I've made the point more recently, in another discussion, that I'm sure the banks aren't tickled by this, even with what we have done. I do think they have taken t

Finance committee  Thank you. This is purely an information agreement, so it's about collecting information from financial institutions and providing that information through the Canada Revenue Agency to the IRS. As to what systems and collection provisions we have with the United States, there i

Finance committee  If they are not a Canadian citizen.

Finance committee  It's a very good but very involved question. At a high level I will say this. We already require entities and other taxpayers who are making payments to non-residents to identify those payments and to provide that information to Revenue Canada. When the payment is going to a re

Finance committee  It does, so we'll be collecting some additional information from the U.S., particularly in relation to what I've talked about as taxpayer identification numbers. I do want to say though, for completeness, that it's not at the same level at the outset. The U.S. has asked the cou

Finance committee  We are not talking about individuals alone. We've often, because that's where the conversation has led, talked about U.S. residents and citizens, but there's some relevance to entities as well. If you'd like, we could give you some more information on the entities.

Finance committee  Well, I'll answer that question first, and then if you're still interested we can talk about how the rules work in relation to entities. It's the same restrictions on the use of taxpayer information that I talked about earlier that would apply there. There is a question of relian

Finance committee  That's right. There's a question of—as I say—the reliability of our treaty partner. We do take the view that we can rely on the U.S. to limit it's use of the tax information as, indeed, they rely on us.

Finance committee  Yes. That would be inconsistent with their commitments to us and their legislation, so it would only be on the basis that they were violating the agreement that it could happen.

Finance committee  Well, the answer is no, because we challenge the premise of the question—

Finance committee  We exchange information already with the U.S. and with other treaty partners, on which we rely on the terms of the agreement we have with them.

Finance committee  Forgive me, I'm not sure if I understand how they're affected in the way you suggest.

Finance committee  I don't know of any. To take the specific example you raise, if there's a person who's living in Canada while a green card holder...so they're actually living in the U.S.?

Finance committee  All right. Well, in those circumstances they'd be exposed, if you want to call it that, to the U.S. tax system already. Their income would be subject to U.S. tax by virtue of the U.S. employment.

Finance committee  Not that it occurs to me.