Senator Lankin: I would like to thank you and Senator Gagné. The subject matter is difficult to make real and bring to life for people, particularly in speeches in the format we have in the Senate, but both of you do an excellent job. I, for one, am appreciative of that.

Senator Marshall, in particular to you, I think of you as our collective critic on these things. There may be someone else with those skills, but I don’t hear from them; I hear from you, and it helps me tremendously in my work. I want to thank you personally.

I have two questions. You talked again about a number of line items where there are large amounts of money but no particular detail. In some other cases, there is detail about line items but no particular source of the funding is identified. I would say that is something I experienced in the Ontario government when I was in cabinet and when I was in opposition. I’ve seen it in Ottawa under the Trudeau government, under the Harper government and under the Martin, Chrétien and Mulroney governments. I can’t go back further than that.

Has the Finance Committee done any kind of analysis to draw a trend line of these challenges and what they mean to parliamentarians and Canadians that they represent in terms of having in-depth knowledge and being able to refute or understand where your interests lay and are recognized in there? If that hasn’t been done, is that something that would be a worthwhile project for the Finance Committee to do?

Senator Marshall: No, the Finance Committee has not taken initiative on that, but, now that you have mentioned it, I can certainly refer that to the committee.

Everything I have read about the tax gap, and the collection of outstanding taxes, suggests that the focus of the Canada Revenue Agency — and this is also from the minister down — is that they are studying the issue. It sounds like they are studying it — probably internally — but there is no action being taken, or there is the appearance of no action being taken.