Senator Gold: I will certainly make inquiries as to what resources are being dedicated to the open banking file, and I have confidence that the CRA is going to do its very best to treat all taxpayers — and all Canadians — fairly as we approach this happy time of the year when we have to face the music in our taxes. Thank you for your question.

[Translation]

Hon. Colin Deacon: My question is for the Government Representative. Senator Gold, tax season is upon us. New digital technologies are rapidly allowing for simple, secure, faster and more accurate processing by tax authorities. For example, the United Kingdom’s implementation of open banking and their payment initiation services have caused tax payments to be processed with zero payment errors and no increase in resources.

His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and U.K. citizens are seeing meaningful savings in both time and administrative burden when taxpayers are using open banking instead of paying by credit card, manual bank transfer or cheque. Needless to say, it also saves a huge amount of frustration. I have personally experienced that it can take up to three years for the Canada Revenue Agency, or CRA, to correct their own data input errors.

Senator Gold, saving time, money and frustration when paying taxes are just a few of the multitude of benefits that can result from implementing open banking. Can you please inform us as to the CRA’s ambitions on this matter and how they are preparing to deliver on the benefits that open banking can deliver to Canadians?

Hon. Marc Gold (Government Representative in the Senate): Thank you for your question, and thank you for your continuing advocacy and for drawing this chamber’s attention to this issue and other important issues of innovation, both generally and in the financial sector in particular. I will have to make inquiries to answer the specifics of your question — in regard to how they are embarking — but I would say this: The government is determined and committed to ensuring that our financial sector operates with the highest regard for privacy and security; it’s primordial. And that’s why the government launched its Advisory Committee on Open Banking to review the potential areas of new financial technologies, and how they can best and safely be used.

The government is reviewing the advisory committee’s recommendations. It’s developing its next steps regarding moving forward with a made-in-Canada model of open banking, but I don’t know more than that, and I will have to make inquiries.

Senator C. Deacon: Thank you, Senator Gold. It’s great to hear that — looking for the button to be pushed at some point. One of the reasons is the CRA has 55,000 employees, and I think you may agree that freeing up some of those resources — from an entirely preventable administrative burden — could help the government focus on delivering on its important commitment, as reaffirmed in September 2020, to implement free, automated simple tax return filing for Canadians, as well as deal with problems like offshore tax evasion and fraud — I think Senator Downe might agree with me on that one. The freeing up of the resources might be useful.