Finance committee  Very quickly, Mr. Chair, in terms of prosecutions over the last several years, we have gone to 1,532 charges that have been laid both domestically and internationally. In terms of the results from that, as of last year we had convicted 1,282 taxpayers, of which we've received 1

Finance committee  Standardization is very difficult. As a result, it's great to think about that, but it's turning out to be quite difficult to identify, and the OECD obviously comments on that periodically.

Finance committee  Certainly, Mr. Chair, since the time that the IFRS standard came into play, nothing has been brought to my attention that it is an issue.

Finance committee  Mr. Chair, apart from the OECD, several organizations operate in the tax administration universe. Canada is a very heavy player in several of the regional tax administrations, for example, CIAT, which is an organization for tax administration in the Americas and South America.

Finance committee  That is a question that's being looked at internationally. The OECD is very active in looking at that question.

Finance committee  We do have members who sit on the working party that discusses that. We participate in that.

Finance committee  Mr. Chair, the short answer is that as part of our exercise of reviewing the audits of those multinationals, we are bringing on board economists, in-house, to assist us with that question.

Finance committee  Perhaps I can start, and then I'll refer the question to Mr. Ernewein. With respect to the tools we need, we have a very long-standing practice within the agency of identifying any gap that we might have in terms of information that is not available that could be available to us

Finance committee  Since I became a member of the deputy commissioner's committee, we have not had that discussion about second-tier membership.

Finance committee  If money were to come to the agency, Mr. Chair, it would be applied in the manner in which it is given to us. For example, we often refer to that as fenced funding, and we would apply it to whatever part of the organization has been asked to augment the work in that area.

Finance committee  Mr. Chair, I can only speak anecdotally. My understanding, completely unsubstantiated by documentation, is that Australia spent somewhere in the neighbourhood of $850 million attempting to align their systems.

Finance committee  Not being an IT expert, I feel uncomfortable responding. It's really an IT question.

Finance committee  The whole JITSIC arena is growing, Mr. Chair. You've mentioned China, Japan, and Korea coming on board. France was the last full member to come on board, and now Germany is about to come on board. The JITSIC operation exists in Washington and it exists in London, in the U.K. Can

Finance committee  Without going into detail, obviously for the protection of the treaty interests among the countries, there have been assessments issued from the work that's come out of JITSIC, yes.

Finance committee  Certainly as a member of the deputy commissioner's committee that sits on JITSIC, we do have that discussion periodically, and it's balancing the benefit that comes from a small group of like countries to expanding it to a larger group that would start to look like some of the wo