Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to the committee for kindly inviting me to this meeting, which is actually a resumption of last week's meeting. I attended here last week, and you can well imagine that I had spent several hours preparing my testimony. However, I waited in vain for over an hour for the meeting to start. Evidently, a majority of you chose to ignore the meeting, for reasons having to do with political squabbling. That is up to you, but I would remind you that your committee deals with ethical issues. When I was very young, my mother taught me that when you invite people to your home, you should be there and receive them properly.

That said, I will begin my presentation.

I should first note that I am not an expert in computers or privacy. My expertise as a retired professor is limited to tax law.

The CRA, the Canada Revenue Agency, is the custodian of the money given to it by taxpayers, in accordance with the obligations set out in tax laws. In a nutshell, it is the trustee of that money, and must act diligently in performing the assignments given to it. It must also make sure that taxpayers are able to maintain a high level of trust in it, or else their adhesion to it might decline significantly.

On the subject of the CRA's obligations, I would note that under subsection 152(1) of the Income Tax Act, “The Minister shall, with all due dispatch, examine a taxpayer’s return of income… assess the tax for the year…”. The CRA then sends out notices of assessment on that basis. According to the way the CRA does things, it must act quickly, act very expeditiously, in order to comply with the act. Of course, there are situations in which the CRA may take action within three years after the return is filed. Nonetheless, it must act speedily.

The frauds that were investigated by CBC/Radio-Canada are based on an increasingly sophisticated use of digital data and they shine a light on two distinct problems.

The first involves the challenges the CRA faces when it comes to detecting these digital fraud mechanisms, particularly when the fraud arises from theft of personal information. The CRA must therefore make every effort to be able to combat these strategies; otherwise, obviously, taxpayer trust will be eroded.

Along this same line, in May 2024, the tax authorities in the Netherlands were placed under the supervision of an agency responsible for protecting personal information in the country for a five-year period, to achieve:

“a sustainable improvement in the protection of personal data of citizens and companies.”

So the agency was placed under supervision.

The second problem concerns the protection of personal data when taxpayers use external platforms to send in their tax returns, such as H&R Block and UFile.

I will point out that these entities permit the personal information of taxpayers—their clients—to be transferred, without their knowledge, using Google, Meta, and so on.

This raises two new questions.

First, what is the role of the Canada Revenue Agency when it comes to protecting the confidentiality of taxpayers' rights?

On this point, the Canada Revenue Agency's website sets out its commitment to Canadian taxpayers: “We are committed to protecting your privacy by making sure that the personal information we have is appropriately managed and protected, and that your right to access your information is respected.” It clearly says “we have”.

The protection is provided in section 241 of the Income Tax Act, whose purpose is to prevent disclosure of tax information by officials to unauthorized third parties. That provision could potentially enable officials to disclose certain information to the privacy commissioner. That might be a topic to consider.

The Canada Revenue Agency's website directs us to the Taxpayer Bill of Rights as the basis for its commitment to protecting privacy. It draws our attention particularly to right no. 3, which provides: “You have the right to privacy and confidentiality.”

However, the CRA does not say that the Taxpayer Bill of Rights is not legislation and does not offer taxpayers any form of judicial protection.

Yes, there is a taxpayers' ombudsperson, whose office is clearly motivated by a desire to protect taxpayers' rights, but the ombudsperson—

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