The Australian government has announced a new Country-wide Standard Business Reporting (SBR) project, which is intended to simplify the reporting of companies to governments. The program is modelled on the Netherlands National Taxonomy project, and therefore there is expected to be a strong XBRL component. The press release is at: http://www.treasurer.gov.au/tsr/content/pressreleases/2007/084.asp
This would be an ideal project for the Canadian government. There are millions of dollars to be saved, as well as saving a lot of frustration among businesses that need to file using diverse systems. A 2004 CICA Research Study - "Electronic Filing of Information" - recommended the use of XBRL for these purposes.