Mr. Chair, I think very definitely that the chief service officer will help with the kind of perception you have talked about, which I don't like to hear about, frankly. I don't want people being treated like criminals on phone calls, as a starting point. The conversations may evolve down the road depending on how things go—people have to face the consequences of their actions—but we are very much about changing the culture at CRA, as I've said, to being a service provided to the taxpayer and the client.
What I would like to see us do and what we are doing, and where the chief service officer will help, is focusing more on the conversations about educating both sides of the conversation. For us it's making sure that we're explaining to Canadians what they need to do and why. Sometimes, because we deal with so many people, those can be shortcut conversations. They can be abrupt. We're trying to make sure that they are not, that they are fulsome explanations for people. That takes time and resources, but we need to do that to fulfill our service commitments.
We are also going to be paying attention to the feedback we get—because we hear some of the same things that you hear—and make sure that we listen to it, as I've said, but also to try to factor in what we can do about it, how we can correct those issues.
It's not to say that there will never ever be an issue at the CRA, but we need to make sure that we're correcting as many of them as possible, and that as many people as possible feel like they are being treated fairly and respectfully by the CRA. I would want that to be the case in every single interaction that we have.
When we talk about service culture, though, it isn't just the people picking up the phone and talking to you. That's obviously an important element of service, but we are also trying to embed a service culture within the audit and enforcement activities. Yes, we will ultimately need to make sure that the proper amount of taxes are paid, but we need to go about it in a way that tries to educate first. Let's make sure that there's an understanding and work through it, and that way maybe get some long-term compliance. If people understand the obligations and we understand their situation, hopefully we can get on a path of long-term compliance.
Having said that, if there are still issues, we will have to enforce the law and make sure that the proper taxes are paid, because that too is important, for the perception of fairness by other Canadians.
I'm very confident that the chief service officer is going to help us refocus our efforts to provide better service to Canadians. Some of the changes have started, but I look forward to even more changes down the road.