Public Accounts Committee on Nov. 30th, 2017

[Alex Nuttall, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

The question from Mr. Christopherson was along the lines of accurate reporting, which was also outlined by the Auditor General.

It is giving misinformation when we customize the amount of information we're going to put out there to make it seem like one thing when it's actually another. If the real number is a 36% success rate but the reported number is 90% and we change the criteria a little bit here and there to try to make it look good when it's not, on the best day I'm having of the year, being the kind person that I am, I have to call that misinformation. The rest of the days, I'd probably call it something else, but that's not appropriate for this committee.

How is that the case? That's even worse than the wrong answers to members of the public, because it goes from the stage of mistakes made on the phone line to crafted political messaging to show that we're something that we're not.

[Bob Hamilton]

Mr. Chair, what I would say is that I'd like to improve that information we're giving, to make it more accurate and more comprehensive.

[Alex Nuttall, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

It's 36% to 90%, Mr. Hamilton. It's 36% versus 90%. This is not a thing about improving. This is somebody determined that they were going to include something and not include something else to make something look really good. I'm not sure what the structure is of those who make these decisions, in terms of their pay structure. Do they get bonuses based on these things? Is this part of an annual review?

Somebody somewhere crafted this to be able to go out and say, “I pat myself on the back, 90%”. Meanwhile, as soon as we open that door, it's actually 36%.

[Bob Hamilton]

I think, Mr. Chair, this goes back to my earlier point. One can construct different measures of how one is doing. Again, the 80% in two minutes is one measure. What I prefer, and my commitment, is to make sure we're presenting the total picture. We can talk.... I'll let Frank speak a little bit about the potential, I think, of 87% or 90%, which could be caller acceptance—

[Alex Nuttall, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

There is only one perspective that matters here. That is the perspective of the people we're serving. Those are the people who are calling in. Those are the callers. From the callers' perspective, it's a 36% rate. From your department's perspective, it's a 90% rate. That is a huge variance. That actually is the best example of the culture issues that are so obviously existing. I don't think there's a member around this table right now who is thinking, “Yeah, we don't really have culture issues; we need a little bit more transparency and maybe we need to train some people better and get some better technology, and CRA is off to the races”.

I don't think that is a thing. That's the message I'm hearing, and I don't think that's a thing that exists around this table. I think you need to go back. I want to know who came up with the system to say that over half the callers aren't actually callers. I want to know who came out with these results, because they just don't make sense.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

We have about a 20-second answer coming.

[Bob Hamilton]

I think I will be able to satisfy what you want. I think in the new world that we're embarking into, we will give a comprehensive picture. We will know how many people got through, how many people didn't get through, and how long people waited on the phone. By giving that complete picture.... And I think transparency does change culture, because we will know and we will be accountable for everything that's happening, whether it's good or not so good. We will know, Canadians will know, and you will get the statistics you need, and I hope to be starting to provide those on the website as early as next month, on a monthly basis.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

[Bob Hamilton]

We will be reporting to Canadians in a way that I think makes sense, and whether it looks good for the agency or bad for the agency, we will report those numbers.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Hamilton.

Mr. Christopherson, you're going to have the final say today.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Just to close off that accuracy issue, we've had this in the past with these departmental results reports. We may need to go back, every now and then, to just randomly pull one and hold a hearing on it. We found in the past that there were some corrective measures, but the arguments Mr. Nuttall just made.... This is exactly what is unacceptable in terms of talking to Canadians. This looks like it was contrived, I agree. That's why it upset me so much.

One of the reasons we televise this is not just so that Canadians can hear but so that the rest of government can hear. I'm hoping there are departments and deputies who are understanding that monkeying around with these departmental results reports, playing with the numbers to make them look good, is eventually going to come back to haunt you. We will find you.

If I can, Chair, though, I want to return to this. It's just nagging at me. The national quality and accuracy learning program, this whole thing....

My questions are going to go to Mr. Ferguson. For instance, one of the methods they use.... I'm talking about this entity itself. It looks pretty Mickey Mouse to me. It's supposed to be a professional entity that gives a reflection of what's going on. With the certified listener thing, where you actually sit down beside them and monitor it, of course people are going to modify their behaviour if their examiner is sitting right beside them. That's what I'm worried about—the shallowness of the thinking of this.

Another method was to have agents make anonymous calls to other agents and ask non-account-specific.... In these cases, agents often recognized the caller's voice since it was one of their colleagues. In many cases, the telephone system identified that the call was coming from a testing line.

Help me understand what is going on in this Mickey Mouse outfit, Mr. Ferguson. Really, is there any wonder we have a lot of these problems, when these are the training methods?

Mr. Ferguson, maybe you can give me a calmer reflection on this than I have done.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Ferguson.

[Michael Ferguson]

Certainly the issue we were raising was exactly as you described. If somebody knows that their response is being monitored, they will modify their behaviour. For example, they would be more likely to go and look up the answer in the computer system than to try to just answer it off the cuff. In fact, I think our auditors will tell you that in the course of our calls—which were anonymous—there would have been a correlation between the people who took their time and that you could tell were trying to look it up versus the agents who were giving an answer more quickly. I think that's the type of behaviour change that will happen if an agent knows that they are being monitored.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Do you know what? I don't think you need you need a Ph.D. in anything to get that. That's what struck me. The level of common sense seemed to be missing.

I touched on something earlier, and I want to come back to it again. It's about the Office of the Taxpayers' Ombudsman. It's related, to the extent that $2.3 million of taxpayers' money was spent through this department. Again, I want to remind colleagues that this is the report that said, “our role is not to be an advocate for taxpayers,” and then three paragraphs later, “we serve taxpayers”. Give me a break.

In this report, there's $2.3 million a year for this ombudsman, who by the way, is not an agent of Parliament. This is an ombudsman attached to the minister. I'm not even sure they should be allowed to call themselves ombudsmen, in light of that. However:

Our office has received numerous complaints from taxpayers and representatives in recent years, claiming it is very difficult to connect with the CRA's general enquiries telephone lines.

You think?

A recurring complaint from taxpayers is they reach a busy signal, regardless of the time of the day they call, forcing them to make multiple calls. Given the announcement of increased funding for telephone access and initiatives underway by the CRA, our Office is not opening an examination at this time, but we are monitoring this issue.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Be very brief.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

What I'd like is just a very quick response from the Auditor General in terms of value for money with regard to this ombudsman's office. The biggest issue was the ability to get through. They found that there was a problem, and once the minister said, “I'm putting money on it,” they shut down.

What value are we getting for our $2.3 million here, Auditor General?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Be very quick, Mr. Ferguson.

[Michael Ferguson]

Obviously I can't answer the question from that point of view. We haven't gone in and done the analysis. However, it's very evident that this issue about access and accuracy is extremely important. I think the agency has said that they are going to try to fix it, but as has been the case with a lot of the questioning today, really this issue needed to have been dealt with earlier.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

Mr. Hamilton, you have 20 seconds for a very quick comment.

[Bob Hamilton]

We referred to the departmental results report a few times. I'm not saying we can't do better; we can.

However, if you look at the report, we do report for individual and business lines in a way that is not dissimilar to what the Auditor General's results are in terms of the number of calls answered by an agent, how many went through to self-service, and how many received a busy signal. I believe this is the start of us getting the complete picture that people need to have so that we can understand the problems from our perspective and Canadians can give us the feedback that we need to improve the system.

In there, what we report is not dissimilar to the results that the Auditor General had. There are a couple of minor differences. We are trying to be more transparent.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, and thank you for appearing here today.

Just to finish off, to reiterate what I said earlier about the number of calls coming in, in rural Alberta we have an expression. I don't know if it's even politically appropriate to call it what we call it. When you try to find the light at the end of the tunnel, on the farm they say that you try to make a silk purse out of a pig's ear. That's a bad analogy, and maybe I shouldn't bring it up in Parliament, but it's to make something pretty out of something ugly. That's what I want to do. I thank you for being here.

I will say that with all the constituency work we do, I appreciate the liaison that the CRA has with the offices of members of Parliament. From what my staff tells me, people call our office because they are so frustrated. They're at the end of their rope with CRA. Our staff has the ability to connect with someone in CRA and typically get, I would hope right answers, but answers. Thank you for that.

To bring that level back to the general public, who really all parties want to help and support, we can only do it with your help. It's similar to the people at the border crossings coming back from the States. When they meet a Canadian border crossing agent and that agent is friendly and welcoming, it's appreciated. When people come back into Canada and meet someone who's upset and mad right at the beginning, I hear about it. Our offices hear about it: who do you have representing you at that border?

It's the very same with the CRA. Who do you have representing the CRA on the phone? They are the face of the CRA. It's not Mr. Hamilton; it's not Mr. Vermaeten; it's the person on the phone. That's why many of our constituents get frustrated.

You can expect a callback; I'll pretty well guarantee it without even going to committee business. There will be a callback, and hopefully in the interim we will see some good progress.

Thank you very much.

We're going to ask you all to leave as quickly as possible because we have some committee business. The last 10 minutes will be in camera, in confidence.

[Proceedings continue in camera]