Minister of National Revenue Marie-Claude Bibeau has come out swinging against the whistleblowers behind recent reports that the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) is plagued by major gaps in fraud detection and has paid out hundreds of millions of dollars in bogus refunds.

"One should not disclose instructions to defraud the government. It compromises the integrity of the system. It also compromises the investigations that are underway," Bibeau told a Senate committee hearing on Tuesday.

In her testimony, Bibeau said unnamed sources in stories from CBC's The Fifth Estate and Radio-Canada have undermined the CRA's efforts to fight tax fraud.

"It's the first thing the minister is briefed on when they arrive at the agency ... If you reveal [confidential information], you are going to jail," she said.

Bibeau was responding to senators who suggested the reports were in the public interest and asked questions about improving fraud detection mechanisms at the CRA.

The Fifth Estate and Radio-Canada reported this week that an internal briefing note written earlier this year stated senior CRA officials were concerned that the public might learn that it had major "gaps" in its ability to detect fraud, and that it had paid out hundreds of millions of dollars in bogus refunds.

The scope of the fraud and the number of taxpayers affected by hacked CRA accounts has largely been kept out of the public domain.

On Tuesday, Sen. Pierre Dalphond criticized efforts to track down whistleblowers,...

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