QUESTION PERIOD — Finance

My question is for the government leader in the Senate about the lack of transparency at the Canada Revenue Agency, or CRA, a problem that seems to be getting worse.

Just for background information, in 2007 there was a leak from one bank in Liechtenstein that had 106 Canadians with accounts there and over $100 million in that bank. The smallest account was $500,000; the largest was $12 million.

Information that I’ve received through Access to Information and Privacy, or ATIP, showed that some of these accounts are intergenerational. As you know, it’s not illegal to have an account outside the country. It’s illegal not to claim the proceeds from it.

CRA investigated and found out there was, indeed, some tax evasion. Notwithstanding that, no one was ever charged and no one was ever convicted, but the revenue agency identified millions owed, and they told me in 2012 that they had collected $5.4 million. I asked a follow-up question in March 2025 about how much more they have collected —

I don’t have much hope for that because when I did a follow-up in March 2025, I asked the identical question I asked in 2012 about this bank leak from Liechtenstein. They then told me, in 2012, they had actually collected $5.4 million.

In March 2025, they wrote back:

While the CRA tracks all of its cases, including the number of international criminal investigations, it does not have specific coding for the information and cannot provide statistics on the matter.