Finance Committee on June 14th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

Okay.

[Garth Whyte]

She's more succinct than I am.

[Corinne Pohlmann]

I'll try.

As for interviews with business owners, I'm not 100% sure that option is available, though I'm sure it is. But when it comes to waiting times on telephones, it has actually improved quite a bit. There is a business window, a direct line that CRA has for businesses, which allows them to actually get somebody on the phone fairly quickly. The problem is that the first phone call may be in Montreal; the second time you call it may be in Regina; and the third time it may be in Halifax, so you're never dealing with the same people. It's very rapid response, but it's not necessarily the same people you're dealing with all the time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

Thank you.

The next questioner is Mr. Dykstra. Five minutes, sir.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Although you make a lot of recommendations and did a lot of review in terms of making sure that you could apply some numbers and some facts to what you'd like to be able to say, what is your relationship with the CRA?

[Garth Whyte]

Our relation, I think, is excellent. We have good access and we presented this to the entire executive a year ago.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

You've come to some conclusions; you've come with some recommendations. What's their perspective in terms of implementation of what you've recommended?

[Garth Whyte]

I think there have been some changes in ministers in the minority government and there's been a significant changeover in senior management in the last three years. A lot of corporate memory has disappeared and that new corporate memory is starting to come up again.

So it's been slow, I think, to do some of these things. Some things have been great, but as an overall priority it's still not there.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

So your relationship is still under development in terms of when you make recommendations that you get from membership, there will actually be some concrete evidence that they're going to implement the recommendations.

[Garth Whyte]

Yes, it's intermittent.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

One of the things that I noticed small business demands is accessibility to staff. I wonder how they may have responded to your recommendations with respect to issues that you just spoke about as well, in terms of direct contact and resolving issues. For small business, that's what it's all about: make a phone call, say what the problem is, come to a resolution, get back to work.

[Garth Whyte]

Part of it is that CRA has staffing issues as well; the shortage of labour issue is hitting everyone. Some of it could be inexperience, the person on the phone. Sometimes it's the people phoning; they don't give you the full information. I think there are things we can do, and we're stepping up to make this a priority. We're hoping the commission is going to step up, and yes, this is a priority for us too, and we'll work out a strategy.

Then you get down to case studies. When you say information is complex, what do you mean? We have to get to the specifics and we haven't done that yet.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

A couple of days ago, when we did meet with him, the question that I had asked, and you alluded to it, was about the three priorities. You added that one was core capacity, one was maximizing a particular model of governance, and the third was maximizing the delivery of business. You suggested a fourth service priority, which I think alludes to the question I just asked. Could you elaborate a little bit on that?

[Garth Whyte]

We think they should make reduction of compliance a paper burden and improve service as a key priority, and I don't see it in those three that were listed.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

I guess the final question I have relates, again, to the relationship. You mentioned that you hadn't reviewed the auditor's report with respect to the CRA. I wondered if, moving forward, there wasn't some usefulness in doing that in the sense that you go out to your members and survey, and then the Auditor General also has made recommendations with respect to changes and advancements and corrections that should be made.

From your perspective, should you play a role in that, or should you at least be able to augment the research that you do with the auditor's report?

[Garth Whyte]

I think we should, and after listening we will.

It's nice to be put in the same category as the Auditor General, because as far as small business goes, we're the only group that can do this type of service. I'm perceiving from the committee that it's a given, but it wasn't that in the past.

We do believe that they should use both the auditor's report and this report as a benchmark on measuring improvement and service, and that's what we're putting on the table.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

The question I would have is this. If you could just quickly think of a process, as how it would happen, some of the things that you have in your report and some of the things that come out of the Auditor General's report are not dissimilar. That's why I brought them together.

[Garth Whyte]

So obviously we should look at where there are similarities and they should go for that. We should try to identify them.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Good, thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

Thank you, Mr. Dykstra.

Mr. Pacetti or Mr. McKay, who is going to proceed?

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

I will.

[The Chair, Conservative, Brian Pallister]

Mr. McKay, three minutes.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Welcome to the committee again, Mr. Whyte. If you are in fact put in the same category as the Auditor General, we'll have to start calling you Saint Garth.

The essential task of this review is to determine whether the CRA is in fact as efficient as Revenue Canada was when it was Revenue Canada. In your figure 16 you show the cost per tax dollar collected at 2.5%. Essentially over the ten years it doesn't seem to have changed that much. Do you have any comments on why that would be this way?

[Garth Whyte]

I think it spiked when it became an agency, because there were start-up costs, and I'm sure there were staffing issues--a lot of issues there.

It's a proxy measurement. It looks at total revenues collected versus the cost to run the agency. I haven't seen any other measurements put forward, but there should be some measurements to say whether it's more efficient. I would hope this comes down over time.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

That's an interesting figure in terms of trying to make the argument that it should stay as an agency. As an agency and as a department, it doesn't seem to make any difference in terms of cost--