Public Accounts Committee on Nov. 30th, 2017

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Good morning, everyone, and welcome. This is meeting number 82 of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, Thursday, November 30, 2017.

I remind everyone today that we are televised again.

We also will try to leave time this morning for committee business. There may be 15 minutes or 20 minutes where we want to discuss one matter of business, and that will be at the end of the scheduled time today.

Today, we are studying “Report 2—Call Centres—Canada Revenue Agency”, of the 2017 Fall Reports of the Auditor General of Canada. As our witnesses, from the Office of the Auditor General, we have Michael Ferguson, Canada's Auditor General. We also have Martin Dompierre, principal, attending with him. From the Canada Revenue Agency, we have Bob Hamilton, commissioner of revenue and chief executive officer; Frank Vermaeten, assistant commissioner, assessment, benefit, and service branch; and Gillian Pranke, director general, call centre services directorate, assessment, benefit, and service branch. I thank you all for coming.

I understand that we have opening statements from our witnesses, and I would invite our Auditor General to begin.

[Michael Ferguson, Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General]

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, thank you for this opportunity to discuss our fall 2017 report on Canada Revenue Agency's call centres. Joining me at the table is Martin Dompierre, the principal who was responsible for the audit.

Every year, taxpayers have questions about their taxes. The agency's telephone call centres are an important way for members of the public to obtain tax information, especially for those who do not have Internet access, those who are uncomfortable using computers, and those who cannot find answers on the agency's website.

Our audit looked at whether the Canada Revenue Agency's call centres provided Canadians with timely access to accurate information. We focused on calls received on three of the call centre's telephone lines—one for individuals, one for businesses, and one about benefit payments. We also examined the agency's methods of assessing and reporting on its call centres' performance.

Overall, we found that the agency did not provide timely access to accurate information.

We found that the agency blocked 29 million calls, which was more than half the calls it received. The agency monitored how long callers waited to speak with an agent. When the average wait time approached two minutes, the agency either blocked calls, usually by giving them a busy signal, or directed them to the automated self-service system.

The agency told us that callers would prefer a busy signal or an automated message to waiting more than two minutes to speak with an agent. However, the agency had not surveyed callers to verify this assumption. As a result, callers had to make an average of three or four call attempts in a week, and even after several attempts, some callers still didn't reach an agent.

Through our tests, we found that the rate of agent errors was significantly higher than what the agency estimated. Call centre agents gave us inaccurate information almost 30% of the time. This is similar to the test results of other assessors and significantly higher than the error rate estimated by the Canada Revenue Agency.

We found that the agency’s quality control system didn't test the accuracy of agents’ responses effectively or independently, so the results of its tests were unreliable. For example, in most cases, agents knew that their calls were being monitored, which may have encouraged them to change their behaviours to improve their performance.

Finally, the agency reported that about 90% of callers were able to reach either the self-service system or call centre agent. However, we found that percentage didn't account for the calls it blocked, which were more than half its total call volume.

Only 36% of all calls made to the agency's call centres reached either an agent or a self-serve system and lasted a minute or more. Furthermore, by blocking calls or redirecting them to the self-service function, the agency was able to report that it achieved its two-minute service standard for agent wait times.

We are pleased to report that the Canada Revenue Agency has agreed with all of our recommendations and has committed to taking corrective action.

Mr. Chair, this concludes my opening statement. We would be pleased to answer any questions the committee may have.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Ferguson.

We'll now move to Mr. Hamilton, please.

[Bob Hamilton, Commissioner of Revenue and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Revenue Agency]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to appear before the committee today.

As you mentioned, I am accompanied by Frank Vermaeten and Gillian Pranke from the agency, who have responsibilities in overseeing the CRA's call centres.

In my first year as commissioner, I can attest to the commitment of CRA's employees to improve services to Canadians, combat tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance, and provide a fair and equitable administration of Canada's tax and benefits system.

I am here today to speak to you about the Auditor General's Fall 2017 Report concerning the CRA's call centres.

Mr. Chair, the Auditor General recommended that the CRA take action in three areas to address service delivery standards offered by its call centres: improving accessibility; strengthening the quality and accuracy of its responses; and enhancing program measurements and reports.

The agency agrees with the recommendations. We need to do better.

Service to Canadians is at the heart of the agency's mission, and it is a fundamental component of the minister's mandate, as articulated by the Prime Minister.

As requested, Mr. Chair, a copy of our action plan was provided to the committee members in advance for their review and consideration. The action plan identifies how the CRA will implement the Auditor General's recommendations and outlines its approach to support staff development, introduce new technology, and improve its operating systems and processes.

Let me assure you, Mr. Chair, that the staff who work at our call centres across the country, together with their colleagues responsible for information technology and reporting, are committed to implementing this plan. They have demonstrated integrity and innovation in their work to find solutions to improve the services they offer to Canadians, and I'm proud of the work that our employees carry out every day.

An important element of the action plan is to provide additional training and improved tools to these call centre agents to ensure they have the information and tools they need to deliver the services upon which Canadians rely. These improvements will include the introduction of tools to better assess agent readiness and proficiency.

The agency is also in the process of adopting a new and more modern call centre technology platform that will allow us to improve the services we provide to Canadians.

The action plan also identifies how the agency will update its service standards and reporting for call centres. We are committed to being more transparent with Canadians to ensure they know the level of service they can expect from the CRA and how we are performing against those expectations.

In advance of introducing this new technology, the agency has already taken a number of steps to improve and modernize its call centre service during the past year.

We have hired more call centre agents and we have improved our existing systems and processes to enhance Canadians' access to our call centres.

We have extended wait times from two to five minutes to reduce the chance of getting a busy signal, in line with one of the Auditor General's recommendations.

We have expanded the options available to callers through our interactive voice response system, which provides callers with self-serve options if they cannot access an agent immediately. Through these self-serve options, we have reduced the demand on our call centre agents so they can dedicate the time required to assist callers with more complex questions.

As a result of these changes, Canadians have higher success rates when they attempt to access the call centre telephone lines.

Since receiving budget 2016 funding, we have reduced by 50% the chance that a caller will get a busy signal when calling the income tax enquiries line. On average, Canadians will call the CRA approximately twice to speak with an agent, as opposed to four times as at the time of the Auditor General's report. We are now responding to approximately 50% of the calls.

While we know that there is still room for improvement—and we will improve—this represents some progress, which has been met with increased client satisfaction, as indicated by our caller surveys. As we develop increasingly sophisticated methods to provide better services, Canadians can count on the CRA to deliver its programs in a fair and trusted manner.

Last year, the Auditor General reported on the agency's appeals process and noted areas for improvement. We created an action plan to address these issues.

I came before this committee to discuss that plan. I'm pleased to report that we are following through on these commitments and have made progress. Rest assured, Mr. Chair, that CRA will implement the action plan on call centres with the same commitment and determination.

I welcome any questions the committee may have about our responses to the Auditor General’s recommendations or about our action plan. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much to all who have given their opening remarks.

I just want to say that every member of Parliament's office receives calls from people who are obviously frustrated with CRA. Many times it's seniors who don't understand the wait times and perhaps don't understand why information hasn't been given or why false information has been given. It's good that you're here and that you've recognized some of this. There hasn't so much been an apology today, but you have recognized where we've been deficient and where we need to do better.

We're going to go into the first round of questioning, and we'll go to Monsieur Lefebvre for seven minutes.

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

On your comments, most of the calls in our offices—I'd say almost 50%—are with respect to people having a hard time reaching CRA. When this report came out, unfortunately, I don't think any of the MPs were surprised by the challenges of reaching CRA. What has come to light, though, is why that was the case and where we are now.

The one major challenge I have is with the idea that responding to or answering only 30% of the calls is an acceptable practice. When did that happen? I practised tax law. We could actually get through to a desk at a CRA office. We could go see somebody there and actually talk to somebody there. We could actually make phone calls and get quick responses. That was almost 15 to 20 years ago, and now it's as if there's a wall. There's a wall like, “You can't talk to us.” I'm asking when that culture started to happen. It's extremely concerning now. Having an acceptable level of 30% is basically the norm for us.

[Bob Hamilton]

To respond to that, I'll just back up a little bit, because I think it's important to understand how this transpires. We would like more people to get through. I don't deny that.

However, we have a technology that doesn't allow us to do a number of things, including giving people predicted wait times. We have adopted a service standard that says that if you get through our lines, we will connect you with an agent within two minutes, 80% of the time. When we have excess demand in the system, in order to meet that commitment, we then have to give some people busy signals. That is a trade-off we make when we're designing the system. Other countries may take a different approach and say that you'll just sit on the line as long as it takes, and if it takes half an hour, so be it.

A decision was made in the early 2000s that we would adopt this service standard. In order to fulfill that, we need to control how many people get in, and that results in busy signals. It's not that it's an acceptable practice to deny those people. That is just the way we run the system. And we do look forward to the new technology coming in that will allow us some more flexibility to operate a call centre more as our colleagues do.

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Thank you.

I'd like to talk about the new technology. How old is the technology being used right now?

[Bob Hamilton]

I believe it's 20 years old, but I may be wrong on that. Frank can correct me, but it's definitely old and outdated.

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

I would agree. If it's 20 years old and we're talking about a telephone system here, it's pretty old.

What will this new system do to ensure that the response rate goes from.... I know you're now aiming to go from having people wait two minutes to having people wait five minutes. Is that one of the goals you're looking at?

[Bob Hamilton]

We had this two-minute standard, and as I said, you can choose between how many people you let in and how long people wait. We experimented earlier this year with letting more people through but then the people who were there had to wait a bit longer. We tried it out and we thought it actually worked reasonably well. We got some positive responses, so we're continuing with that. We'll have a little bit longer lead time but that would allow more people to get in. As a result, we're seeing fewer busy signals than before. That's not to say that it's perfect, but we tried that out.

We will continue with that. We're trying to take action now in advance of the new technology, which we will have next year. However, we can't just wait until next year and not try to make progress. We are trying to make progress at the moment, and then when the new technology arrives, we won't have to do so much manual routing of where the calls go. We'll have much more flexibility in the system to help us manage the calls and tell people their wait time will be x minutes and that they can choose to wait or to call back.

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Thank you.

How are you measuring that right now? Obviously, you're saying it's improved and that things are getting better. What are you doing to measure all of this? Who is measuring it and how?

[Bob Hamilton]

We have a post-call survey that we're implementing to ask certain people at times, “How was it?”, “What do you think?”, and “How did you enjoy the experience?”, if I can put it that way. We're getting reasonably good feedback on the longer wait time. People don't like longer wait times, but they're happy to be able to get through more quickly.

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Will the new technology allow you to get better data? That data of human experience is.... I'm not sure that it is always how you actually interpret the data you're getting. Will this new technology allow you to better track the way that you're responding to people who are asking questions?

[Bob Hamilton]

Yes. It will allow us to better track what's happening and also, more importantly, better control how we route the calls. Will we be able to get them to free agents more efficiently? Will we be able to direct them to people with the right skill set? We have different tiers of people who answer calls—some can answer simple calls, and some can do more sophisticated calls—so we'll be able to route them better. Frankly, the new technology will allow us to record calls and will allow us to do better monitoring of how the call went.

That comes to another issue that the Auditor General has raised, which is accuracy. How will we be able to identify when an accurate response was given or when we needed to correct something? We can better train our employees to respond more accurately to the calls.

[Paul Lefebvre, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

You're transferring to new technology. At this committee, we've seen major challenges, on many occasions, with respect to any government agency changing to new technology. I know you have nine call centres. Are you doing it all in one shot? Are you changing all the technology at once or are you going to be testing it out centre by centre before you roll it out?

[Bob Hamilton]

We will definitely be doing extreme testing before we implement this, and it will be phased in at different places. The business inquiries, for example, will come out ahead of the individual inquiries.

However, in terms of the technology, while it will be a big step forward for us, it is not a new cutting-edge technology. It's a technology that has been used in call centres. We are quite confident that, when we roll it out, it will work, but we are going to be very careful to make sure that we test it properly.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much.

We'll now move on to Mr. Nuttall, please, on the opposition side, for seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Sorenson.

Thank you to the Auditor General, his team, and members of CRA for joining us this morning. Before I ask some questions of CRA, perhaps, I'd like to ask the Auditor General's office, if they had this information before today. When we're talking about accuracy and the questions that were asked, if you were to take out the “I don't know” or referral to a senior agent, do we know what that percentage was on each question at this point?

[Martin Dompierre, Principal, Office of the Auditor General]

Yes. The numbers of referrals, we were told during the survey, was 21 and then the accuracy rate would be 36%. In that case, you would exclude these 21 referrals to the tier-two level during the call.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Was that 36%?

[Martin Dompierre]

If you redo the calculation, the accuracy rate would be 36%.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Go ahead, Mr. Nuttall.

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

Mr. Hamilton, you started going into the accuracy side. Just to preface this, no matter how bad audit results are, there is always going to be somewhat of an awkward feeling when this is done publicly and not privately, but this is brutal. This report is atrocious.

I can tell you that in any of my jobs, with any of my staff, if 84% of the time there was an incorrect response—let's just pretend that the 84% included “I don't know,” even though it's the other way around—we wouldn't be around for long. I can tell you that the people of Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte would make sure I'm not around in two years if 84% of the time, on any single question, we couldn't get it right.

I know that's the outlier, the extremity of the audit results, but none of them, quite frankly, instill confidence in what CRA does. Based on these audit results, I'm wondering what your results are today on this question. Do you take the questions that are asked by the Auditor General and then try to measure, going forward, based on the exact same question, so that you can have an apples-to-apples measuring process?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Ferguson.