Evidence of meeting #171 for Finance in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was information.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Pat Kelly Conservative Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB
Will each side get a second speaker, or is there a hard stop at 5:30?
Conservative
Pat Kelly Conservative Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB
Thank you. I may share my time with Mr. Morantz, if he has a question.
Mr. Hamilton, you may recall that there were some pretty damning Auditor General reports over the years about the department and the call centre.
What percentage of calls currently reach an agent?
Commissioner of Revenue, Canada Revenue Agency
I have someone here who can give that estimate, but we focus a little bit more on how long they have to wait to reach an agent. Right now, we're seeing some improvement in our numbers, but, frankly, they weren't that good earlier. We had a combination of things like a lot of increased demand for calls, and we've had to reduce our staff in light of financial requirements.
Those two factors, in addition to, interestingly, a couple of other factors, like an increase in the population and newcomers—
Conservative
Pat Kelly Conservative Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB
Mr. Hamilton, first I would prefer an answer to my question.
You're going into what are beginning to sound almost like excuses. We heard from the minister that you have 58,000 employees. Now you're saying that you don't have enough to answer the phone.
If you can't tell me what percentage of callers get through to a person, can you tell Canadians what the average wait time is, if that's what you're focused on?
Commissioner of Revenue, Canada Revenue Agency
I'll try to find that percentage, but it's a pretty high percentage that get through. The problem has been more that people had to wait for a long time.
Right now, what we're seeing, just based on the numbers I've looked at recently, is that people are getting through in minutes rather than hours, and that's very recent.
Conservative
Pat Kelly Conservative Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB
Is that like 45 minutes or 50 minutes? How many minutes?
Commissioner of Revenue, Canada Revenue Agency
There was a stretch over summer when benefits periods come up when people had to wait for an hour plus on the phone.
I don't have it as a percentage.
Gillian, if you have the percentage of people—
Conservative
Pat Kelly Conservative Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB
That's okay. I have a lot of questions. I think I have my answer now.
The 2017 Auditor General report found that 30% of people who reached an agent were given incorrect information.
How have you done in that measurement? Do you have a current number for the people who are given accurate, helpful information?
Commissioner of Revenue, Canada Revenue Agency
Yes, I was the commissioner in 2017 when I received that report. It was one of the first ones.
The issue there—and one could quibble with the Auditor General's methodology—is that about 70% of people were getting the right answer, and 30% weren't.
What have we done since then? We have a new system that allows us to record calls, so we get to hear what's going on and then take course-corrective actions if we need to speak to a particular agent about something. The end result, along with a few other changes, is that right now our accuracy rate is over 95%, and that's been steady.
Conservative
Pat Kelly Conservative Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB
Back then, you also thought that your accuracy measure was much higher than the Auditor General found. Has this been independently verified from outside of your own department?
Commissioner of Revenue, Canada Revenue Agency
I'm not sure if anybody has verified it from outside, but we are very confident in it.
I'm looking to Gillian Pranke, who is our assistant commissioner, if she wants to add something at some point.
I'm very confident of that number because we now have the recordings.
Conservative
Pat Kelly Conservative Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB
I look forward to another audit of that.
A different report that came out in 2018 indicated that the agency would automatically assess taxes on tax filers if they failed to provide documents within 30 days, unless they had an offshore account or were an offshore filer. In that case, according to the Auditor General, time extensions were granted, or the taxes were in many cases just waived.
Is that still the practice of the agency?
Commissioner of Revenue, Canada Revenue Agency
I would have to get back to you on that, because I don't remember that issue from 2018, unless one of my colleagues—
Conservative
Pat Kelly Conservative Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB
Let me refresh your memory:
For other taxpayers, such as those with offshore transactions, we found that the time frame to provide information was sometimes extended for months or even years.
Is it still the practice to extend requests for information for months or years?
Commissioner of Revenue, Canada Revenue Agency
I don't know about the specific question you're raising, but the way I would respond to that in general is that we do try, in our compliance efforts, to be as understanding of what's going on as.... That would apply to the individual business that you refer to or somebody in the offshore—
Conservative
Pat Kelly Conservative Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB
How so, when with a small business, you tell them they have 30 days and if they can't provide it in 30 days, they're done? They just assess the taxes.
Commissioner of Revenue, Canada Revenue Agency
Again that's not something I'm very familiar with, so I'd have to check on whether that's actually true—whether it was true then or whether it's true now.
Conservative
Pat Kelly Conservative Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB
Are you questioning whether it was true then? This was the Auditor General.
Liberal
Liberal
Yvan Baker Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.
Commissioner, I'm just wondering if you could speak a little bit about something I raised with the minister at a very high level.
We all have seniors living in our respective ridings; I just have one of the older communities in the country. Some feedback that I get from some of my seniors is that they'd prefer.... I mean, I prefer to work electronically and many folks might. That's a more efficient, a quicker and a more customer-friendly way to work for a lot of folks, but for some folks it's not, especially some of my seniors.
Can you talk a little bit about your allocation of customer service and processing resources to that stream of service relative to the electronic stream? Are you maintaining that or is that being scaled back in any way?
Commissioner of Revenue, Canada Revenue Agency
I'm happy to respond to that, Chair.
There's no doubt that it works better for us and for a lot of people if things run electronically. It can be more efficient. We try to make that avenue work well and encourage people to use it, but there are definitely a lot of people who don't like that. It's just kind of...don't leave anyone behind. Our service offerings have to include those people who would rather not deal with us electronically.
For example, when tax filing season comes around, we mail out paper forms to people. We can often put in a little suggestion that they might want to try it electronically, but we do try to accommodate the way that people want to deal with this. That's kind of the approach we've tried to take in the agency over the last number of years. It's that there's no one service channel, so let's provide it in the way that people want and let them choose. It's kind of a service continuum.
We do try to make sure that with our paper offerings or...for people who want to interact with us in different ways, we keep those up so that all of the service channels are efficient. We might prefer that somebody go to a website rather than call us because that's easier and efficient, but we have call agents. We make sure we try to provide the best service we can on those calls.
We are trying to expand the range of services that we have, so that people like you can deal with us electronically, but people like my mother can deal with us via paper because that's what she prefers.
Liberal
Yvan Baker Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
Linked to that, some constituents sometimes come into our office for help with interacting with your agency in regard to their taxes. One issue that sometimes comes up is that folks want to be able to remit payment by cheque. They want to remit to you folks at the CRA by cheque by Canada Post.
Is that something that you continue to offer and will continue to offer in the years to come?
Commissioner of Revenue, Canada Revenue Agency
I believe so. What's going on in my head is that I recall something about mandatory payments electronically. I'm going to ask Gillian to comment on that.
Typically, we would allow people to pay in a form that they choose and that they prefer. Again, we always like things like direct deposit and electronic payments.
Maybe I'll turn to Gillian and see if she can just say where we are at right now on that issue you've raised.
Gillian Pranke Assistant Commissioner, Assessment, Benefit and Service Branch, Canada Revenue Agency
Yes, Mr. Chair, we actually still have several million citizens who prefer to make payments by cheque. We still accept cheques as a method of payment at the Canada Revenue Agency.
