Thank you.
Mr. Chair, there aren't very many occasions on which there is a very negative audit, the department comes in, and the perception of the department goes down, but this is one of those. I feel like I'm sitting in an episode of Yes, Prime Minister or Yes Minister, for those who know what I'm talking about, and I feel like the overall attitude from CRA is kind of laissez-faire, “I don't care”, “It just is what it is.”
I'll use this analogy to our friends at the CRA. You keep saying “technology”, and it's like driving a car, crashing it, and saying, “Well, we just needed a new car”, and that is not what's needed. The driver needs to be better trained. There needs to be an entirely new culture. Technology can drive efficiencies, it can be a product, it can be a core to a process, it is a sector of our economy—it is not a culture. This is a culture issue.
If it weren't a culture issue, we wouldn't have tables here in this report—and I know these are showing how bad it is—and the best on these four tables is showing a 52% incorrect response. You couldn't even hit 50%. It's mind-boggling that we're now talking about technology. I don't want to hear about technology. We're going to hear enough about technology with Phoenix.
I want to hear what culture change is going to take place within this department, within the entire CRA.
It is no secret that this is a bit of a rat's nest, and I want to understand what's going to change so that my constituents and the constituents of every member of Parliament who sits in this place are not going to be coming to us complaining about all of the issues we get complaints about all of the time. Our job is to ensure you're coming to us. When you've come today to try to show accountability and transparency, and you're saying, “We're going to be transparent, and we're going to get technology, and we're going to institute training changes”, that is not good enough.
I can't believe that we've had access to this report now for two weeks, and it's been publicly produced. I'm not sure how long you've had access to this report, but this is not good enough. I don't even have a question, because I just don't think you can answer any of them. It is that bad. I don't understand where this is going. I'm not even sure what we ask to come back to in a year except to say, “Okay, is your incorrect response rate now at 50% instead of 84% on this one question?”, or “Is it now at 25% instead of 52%?” I'm not even sure where we go, because what's going to happen next year is that you're going to say, “Well, we instituted the technology but it takes about six to 12 months for it to get through the system.” We're going to be three years down the road and we're still going to have these crappy results coming out of CRA, and it needs an entire culture change, not a new piece of technology.
That's all I have.