Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My question is directed to CRA officials. I want to go back over some recent history. Before this crisis happened, there were two recent reports highlighting significant difficulties with CRA, particularly around the accuracy of service and call centres. There was a CFIB report showing that only 51% of callers received an answer to their inquiry regardless of wait times. Only 60% of callers received complete or above and beyond guidance information, with 41% receiving incomplete or incorrect information. The CFIB gave the agency a grade of D minus. Of completed calls, only 51% were rated as good, 28% as acceptable, and 21% as poor.
That was the CFIB report, but what I find even more interesting is that there was another report, called “Serving Canadians Better”, which was actually retained by CRA. They hired Stantec Consulting to do a report on their call centre service. That report said that 83% of respondents felt that they had service that did not meet their needs, and 71% of respondents felt that they haven't yet reached their service improvement goal. Only 28% were confident in CRA's future direction, and some of the words they associated with CRA were “slow”, “incompetent”, “bureaucratic”, “difficult”, “complicated”, "inefficient” and “frustrating”. That was from a report that CRA actually requisitioned for its own information.
My question is this. Given this massive amount of resources and new programs required because of the crisis and dedicated to the COVID-19 response, and given these historical difficulties with the agency that I've talked about, how are Canadians to have confidence in CRA that they will receive timely and accurate information in this time of need and, more importantly, that they will receive their refunds and benefits, including the late-coming wage subsidy, on a timely basis?