Public Accounts Committee on Nov. 30th, 2017

[Michael Ferguson]

Just before that question gets answered, Mr. Dompierre wants to clarify the number again.

[Martin Dompierre]

I made a sort of mistake. In the report, in exhibit 2.4, we say that the overall inaccuracy was 29%. If you exclude the 21 cases where they were referred and we said, “Thank you,”—that was considered to be a right answer—then your inaccuracy rate would be 36%.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

That's inaccuracy.

[Martin Dompierre]

I'm sorry. I had said accuracy, but it would be the inaccuracy rate at 36% instead of 29%.

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

Okay, thank you.

[Bob Hamilton]

Mr. Chair, just to respond to that, obviously, we look at the accuracy of results, and we know that we need to do a better job of training our agents to respond to the questions, and a better job of making sure that we are getting the questions to the people who have the right skill set to respond.

I would say that, in the first instance, one of the most important things will be the new technology that we will be adopting next year, which will allow us a more sophisticated way to monitor what's happening on the calls. Right now, we do side-by-side listening. This is in the Auditor General's report. We have various ways within this technology to try to check on the calls, but they're not perfect. The Auditor General referenced that when we're sitting side by side with someone, that could influence how they react on the call.

In the new system, we will have an ability to record and monitor more independently. I think that's going to give us a better sense of where there may be problem areas and where we need to correct them, but we're not waiting for the technology. We're taking some action now. We have looked at our training system. We have tried to improve.

We give all of our agents six weeks of training before they start. They all get refresher courses each year to reflect any new changes that have happened. We're looking at that, trying to make sure that we're giving them the best tools and the best training that we can at the moment, giving them reference tools that are easier for them to access—

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

Mr. Hamilton, I have only so much time, and—

[Bob Hamilton]

Those are changes we're making right now, in advance of the technology.

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

Thank you.

“When will my interest start being charged?” is a very simple question that every single CRA agent needs to be able to answer. The fact that about one in 10, or two in 10 basically just gave the wrong answer.... Within the 80% who didn't give the wrong answer, 20% may have said, “I don't know.”

These are very simple questions. I don't understand how we get here. I also don't understand how it is that we wait for these types of situations to occur, these audits to come in, before the technology transition comes into place. Why does it take the most negative results from your department in order for us to start looking at these types of changes? Whether it's on the training side, the measurement side, or the actual process side, I don't understand why it takes so long and why it takes such drastic circumstances to get here. You said you have been in for only a year, so maybe this isn't just your position, but you represent the department on everything to do with this audit at this point.

There has to be a change going forward to ensure that the department is going to be proactive in ensuring that the measurement of these results is accurate, and that it is completing and working on the same work that the Auditor General has done, so that when we come back in a year, we can take a snapshot and say, “That 84% is now 24%,” which is still high, but it's going in the right direction. Will you be able to do that for us in a year from now?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Be very quick, please.

[Bob Hamilton]

I should just say, first off, that we don't sit around and wait for an Auditor General's report to try to monitor what's happening, how it's going, or what's going on out there with access or quality. We have tests to see how the agents are doing. As I have said, they may not be as effective as they need to be and will be under the new technology. We noticed in 2015 that we had quite a restricted access to the phone lines. We put more money in—$50 million over four years—to hire more agents to improve accessibility.

With the technology we have, we are constantly trying to improve. I can assure you that going forward we will be transparent about what's happening, certainly on the accessibility side. On the accuracy side, we will be doing our work for sure, to ensure our agents are giving as accurate responses as possible.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Hamilton.

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

Mr. Christopherson, you have seven minutes.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you all for attending today.

Mr. Hamilton, are you familiar with the Taxpayer Bill of Rights?

[Bob Hamilton]

I am.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Is it important?

[Bob Hamilton]

It's very important.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

It's very important.

Number 6 states, “You have the right to complete, accurate, clear, and timely information.” Did you meet that right?

[Bob Hamilton]

We certainly strive to meet that.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

You failed. I'd like to hear you say that, rather than having you tell me you tried. Let's just be clear here, sir. With regard to the focus of the audit, paragraph 2.4 of the Auditor General's report states, “This audit focused on whether the Canada Revenue Agency’s call centres provided Canadian taxpayers with timely access to accurate information.” I remind you that this is number 6 in the bill of rights.

The conclusion, at page 17, states, “We concluded that the Canada Revenue Agency’s call centres did not provide taxpayers with timely access to call centre agents.”

Why do you tell me you're striving? You failed. I'd like to hear you say that.

[Bob Hamilton]

Well, we agree with the Auditor General's recommendations that we need to improve, and we will. My focus right now is on putting together a good action plan that will dictate how we can improve access to the phones, the quality of information we provide, and our reporting to the public. That's my commitment today. There will probably constantly be room for improvement, but we are undertaking a very serious exercise to make sure we can improve, part of which is investing in new technology.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I have to tell you, that sounds more like a sales job than an answer. This is not going well. I don't know who told you this was the approach to take, but with an audit like this, the first thing you ought to be doing, sir, is acknowledging the abysmal results of the department you're responsible for.

I want to go back to the Auditor General's opening comments when he presented the overall report. This is one of the chapters. The Auditor General said just last week that he was hoping to talk about something other than results for citizens. He said he keeps delivering the same message that the government does not understand its results from the citizens' perspective.

Then we go to page 16 of the Auditor General's report, the middle of paragraph 2.78, which states, “If the Agency had reported on access to its call centre...from a taxpayer’s perspective....” I want to hear what part of “taxpayer's perspective” you're not getting. All you're doing is telling me all the measurements you're doing within and how everything is going to be fine, and the starting point is the Auditor General saying that this government overall is not getting the message that services start with the citizen. This report clearly says that your department, your agency, didn't do that.

Talk to me about the Auditor General's comments that the government is failing in this regard and the fact that he used those actual words, “from a taxpayer's perspective”, in this terrible audit of your agency.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Hamilton.

[Bob Hamilton]

Mr. Chair, certainly we believe that we have to look at things from the citizen's perspective. Let me use two examples.

Last year, I talked about our appeals function, and one of the criticisms was that we weren't reporting on the time it took, from the citizen's perspective. We were counting it from the appeals branch's perspective. We took that criticism, we changed, and we now report on the time from when something comes in until it goes out. We will be changing in this regard, and we will be looking to be very transparent in reporting on all aspects.

Not only will we try to get the people who come through the queue answered in a reasonable time, whether it's two minutes or five minutes, but we will also be transparent about the number of busy signals and unanswered calls. Indeed, in the departmental results report this year, we did report on that more transparently, so we are improving and we will continue to improve and we will be taking the approach that our actions and our reporting are being viewed by the client and the customer, from the taxpayer's perspective.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

That's a good start.

On that departmental report, the fact that you had what amounts to misleading information to citizens is a huge problem. I'm going to come back to that in a second.

I want to focus for a moment on this national quality and accuracy learning program. The Auditor General said on page 8, paragraph 2.39:

Our test results found that agents gave wrong information to callers almost 30 percent of the time. We also found that other assessors had encountered similar error rates over the past five years.

When we go over to the chart that's provided, exhibit 2.4 on page 9, it shows that your agency, and this national quality and accuracy learning program were admitting to a 6% error rate and the Auditor General is saying it's closer to 30%.

In your action plan, I didn't see a major overhaul of this testing agency. There is lots of analysis here, but what gives? What's with this agency that's supposed to provide accurate information and nobody can rely on the work they're doing? What are you going to do about that? I didn't see anything about an overhaul of that agency. This really troubled me when I saw that you had these quality assurance folks go in there and they came back and gave Canadians this assurance, and it was wrong. It took the Auditor General to come back and say the information's not correct. That is not the service they're providing. It's actually this. So what's up with that?

[Bob Hamilton]

Let me respond to part of that, and I'll ask my colleague to respond in more detail about the training.

On the quality assurance, I think you will see in our action plan, or what we intended to have in the action plan, were two main thrusts of what we're going to change. First, we're going to overhaul our training, and we're going to provide better training and better tools for our agents. We are starting some of that now, but we will be able to do a better job of that with the new technology. We're going to improve training, give the agents better tools, and with the new technology we will be able to direct questions more appropriately to people with the right skill sets. So that's one area we are going to do.

Second is that with the new technology—and we will have to wait for that—we will be able to do a better job of monitoring the calls and be able to respond with what might be problem areas, to correct them through training and through education of the agents. Those would be the two main thrusts, but I'll ask Frank if he wants to comment on the past experiences.