Public Accounts Committee on Oct. 23rd, 2025

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I now call the meeting to order.

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to meeting number 11 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Accounts.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application.

I'd like to remind participants of the following points. Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. All comments should be addressed through the chair. This, of course, doesn't apply in the rounds, when you're going back and forth. I allow a lot of latitude here for members to interact directly with the witnesses, through me, of course.

Raise your hand if you wish to speak, whether that is in the room or virtually.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(g) and the motion adopted by the committee on Tuesday, October 21, the committee will now proceed to consider the report on the Canada Revenue Agency’s communication centres, taken from the fall 2025 reports of the Auditor General of Canada.

I would like to welcome our witnesses.

From the Office of the Auditor General, we have Karen Hogan, the Auditor General of Canada. It's nice to have you back again today. We also have Andrew Hayes, deputy auditor general, and Mathieu Lequain, director. It's nice to see the three of you again.

From the Canada Revenue Agency, we have Bob Hamilton, commissioner of revenue and chief executive officer. It's nice to see you again as well. We have Maxime Guénette, assistant commissioner, service, innovation and integration branch, by video conference. It's nice to see you. We also have Hugo Pagé, assistant commissioner and chief financial officer, finance and administration branch, and Melanie Serjak, assistant commissioner, assessment, benefit and service branch.

I understand two of you have opening remarks today. Ms. Hogan will begin, followed by Mr. Hamilton.

Ms. Hogan, you have the floor for approximately five minutes, please.

[Karen Hogan, Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General]

Good morning, Mr. Chair, and thank you for the opportunity to appear before the committee to discuss our report on Canada Revenue Agency's contact centres, which was tabled earlier this week.

I would like to begin by acknowledging that we are gathered on the traditional, unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe people.

As part of our audit, we examined whether the Canada Revenue Agency’s communication centres provided Canadians with accurate and timely information about their personal taxes, benefits, and business taxes.

The Canada Revenue Agency has a duty to help individuals and businesses meet their tax obligations and claim benefits. I am concerned that, despite a new telephone system and other improvements, Canadians are still waiting too long for answers to their tax questions.

The agency’s service standard was to answer 65% of calls in 15 minutes or less. In 2024-25, callers who chose to speak to an agent waited an average of about 31 minutes, and only 18% of them were able to reach an agent within the standard time frame. In addition, callers did not receive real-time updates on their position in the queue, which limited their ability to properly assess whether it was better to wait, use self-service options, or end the call.

Auditors from our office placed calls to contact centres and asked general tax and benefit questions. We found that agent responses to individual tax questions were accurate only 17% of the time, and responses to business tax or benefit questions were accurate just over half of the time.

To test the accuracy of agents' responses to questions specific to an account, we reviewed a sample of recorded conversations. In contrast, we found that accuracy was much higher when questions pertained to specific accounts.

The audit also found that in assessing contact centre agents' performance, the CRA placed greater importance on how closely they adhered to their schedule for their shifts and breaks than on the accuracy and completeness of information they provided to callers. This does not encourage a strong commitment to quality service.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much, Ms. Hogan.

Mr. Hamilton, you have the floor for approximately five minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I appreciate the opportunity to present on behalf of the Canada Revenue Agency our actions in response to the Auditor General’s audit.

Let me say right at the outset that we accept the findings and recommendations in the audit. We acknowledge the importance of delivering quality and timely service to Canadians.

With nearly 200 million service transactions annually, obviously service delivery is central to our mandate. In this regard, I just want to say how much we appreciate the efforts of all our employees, including contact centre agents, in their commitment and dedication to delivering that service, in some cases in very challenging circumstances. We are committed to supporting them and to providing better tools for them to be able to carry out their mission as we see technology and other processes evolve.

To address the Auditor General’s recommendations, the agency is building on its 100-day service improvement plan. This plan is structured around four key pillars: increasing the ability to answer more calls; expanding online self-service options; addressing root causes of service issues; and accelerating service modernization.

Pillars one and two will provide short-term results. Pillars three and four focus more on longer-term impacts, because life will go on in terms of delivering service at the CRA beyond the 100 days.

We are committed to results in the short term. Let me mention a little bit about that. In the 100-day plan, we have increased the number of contact centre representatives to answer calls. As a result, we are now exceeding our target of 70% of the calls being answered, which is good. The agency is also enhancing its self-service digital options, including optimizing the website, adding features in My Account and expanding AI-based chat support. These are all contributing to our performing better than what we had hoped for in terms of the 100-day plan.

There are some other improvements to date. Live chat support through My Account is now available from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Users with locked accounts can now regain access by re-registering, eliminating the need to call. Taxpayers with debts of $1,000 or more can now set up payment arrangements directly through My Account, bypassing the need to talk to a collections officer. By early November, the GenAI chatbot on Canada.ca will be able to answer a broader range of questions, from 6,000 current agency pages to over 18,000 pages. You can see that a number of factors are contributing to improved performance in the short term. We hope to continue those and build on them in the longer term.

I want to address the issue of accuracy. In the short term, efforts are also under way to improve the accuracy of responses provided by our contact centres. While we agree with the Auditor General's findings, I think it's important to highlight certain factors that relate to the accuracy questions and that we hope will help reassure Canadians.

In 2018, the agency implemented a new telephone system with call recording, a quality assurance program, targeted training and technology-driven oversight. During the last fiscal year, the agency evaluated over 100,000 calls as part of this quality assurance program. Of these, 80% were related to specific taxpayer files. The Auditor General mentioned that group. According to our results, these calls achieved an accuracy rate of 94%. The Auditor General confirmed this higher rate of quality and accuracy in the report.

However, for the other 20% of our calls, which are general and not account-specific, the Auditor General carried out a survey of about 167 questions. The findings there—17% for individuals is referenced—are concerning to us. I don't want to minimize that at all, but I do want to just put it into context. In the vast majority of our calls, which are account-specific, we have good processes in place to check accuracy. The Auditor General has surfaced an issue on the general accounts, and we are working with the study the Auditor General did to identify some places for improvement there. We are taking that very, very seriously.

To respond to the Auditor General's findings, our quality assurance program is refocusing its evaluation criteria to emphasize the accuracy and completeness of information shared with callers. Evaluations will more effectively inform improvements, including updated training materials, revised procedures and individualized coaching.

In pillar three, it was also crucial for the agency to identify and resolve the root causes of service-related problems. In this regard, we get calls oftentimes for reasons that happen upstream. There's a problem in processing, people are looking for information and they call. We want to try to eliminate those problems upstream so people don't need to call.

Among these causes, we observed that the agency’s high call volume is driven by population growth, evolving tax complexity and a lack of widespread self-serve tools. As more Canadians seek personalized support, especially for nuanced topics, agents respond to longer, more detailed calls. Many issues require expert guidance beyond digital platforms, reinforcing the need for accessible, responsive service channels.

To address these challenges, the agency is reducing tax adjustment backlogs by encouraging Canadians to use digital tools for faster processing; reallocating resources to high-demand areas such as Canada child benefit claims and disability tax credit applications; and analyzing and leveraging expertise as we aim to identify how technology and simpler processes—such as online and self-serve options—can resolve issues before individuals feel the need to call.

Finally, under pillar four, we are looking again at the longer-term modernization strategy. The agency assisted Shared Services Canada with the award of a new competitive contract for the contact centre as a service platform—a cutting-edge, secure and reliable cloud-based technology used by leading organizations globally. The agency will support Shared Services Canada in improving processes and clarifying roles and responsibilities to strengthen oversight and cost management of contracts, with a revised agreement to be finalized in January. This will help provide a solid foundation for the contact centre representatives, who will be equipped with state-of-the-art tools to carry out their mandate, and it will allow Canadians to seamlessly move across service channels, improving their experience.

The 100-day service improvement plan is already giving results in the short term, as I mentioned, through a blend of retaining some additional employees and really driving hard on technology and investments in digitalized processes to try to prevent calls or make them happen more quickly. There is a lot of progress there, but we are also looking beyond the 100 days to do things that help us in the longer term, as a new filing season approaches, to make sure we're ready for that, and some of these things can help us in that vein.

I'll stop there. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

Everyone, my plan today is to get through four rounds. That will take us to about one o'clock. As usual, finish your question in your time, and I will allow for an answer. I will, of course, look for a focused answer. I do allow witnesses time to finish, but if it goes on, of course, we'll have to end it. Then we will have a quick in camera meeting at one o'clock to discuss priorities.

Without further ado, the first round is three members with six minutes each.

Mr. Deltell, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent—Akiawenhrahk, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I would like to greet my colleagues and the witnesses.

First, I would like to thank and salute the honest Canadians who pay their taxes on time. I would also like to sincerely salute all the workers at the Canada Revenue Agency who show up every day to serve the common interest of Canadians.

However, I have a lot to say against the organization of the Canada Revenue Agency. I have been in politics for 17 years and have seen dozens of auditors general’s reports, but I have never seen a report as devastating as this one. The problems it highlights directly affect the most vulnerable among us. They affect citizens who do not have access to the services of a professional accountant because they cannot afford them. They directly affect seniors, who are always a little apprehensive when it comes to filing their tax returns. They directly affect families who live from paycheque to paycheque and need government assistance.

This report tells us that last June, 95% of calls to the Canada Revenue Agency were not answered within the service standard. Worse still, when people did manage to speak to someone, they were given incorrect information four times out of five. That is terrible. We’re not talking about a hamburger that’s missing ketchup. We’re talking about accurate information about people’s tax returns. Everyone is already nervous when they call the Canada Revenue Agency, but now they’re not getting the right answer four times out of five.

Aren’t you ashamed, Mr. Hamilton?

[Bob Hamilton]

We are disappointed with the agency’s performance over the past few months and during the period reviewed by the Auditor General. We have made considerable efforts to improve the situation. It is important that people have the opportunity to communicate with the agency.

During this period, we have certainly looked for ways to make our information system more efficient. For example, before a call is made to the agency, it should be possible to obtain more accurate information on the web and from the self-service options of the voice recognition system. Ultimately, however, it is necessary to have staff available to answer calls.

I want to point out that in more than 80% of calls concerning a taxpayer’s account, the agency performed well, which is not insignificant. That said, this is not to downplay the study conducted by the Auditor General. We tested a small sample of 167 people, and the results of 20% of those calls were not very good, as you mentioned. However, we are committed to finding the source of these problems and correcting them, because this is an important issue.

It is important for Canadians to know that most of our call centre agents provide good answers. We are not perfect. The system is very complex, and people’s circumstances and situations are complex. However, I believe that we are performing well in terms of these calls. We are committed to continuing to improve the situation.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent—Akiawenhrahk, QC]

Mr. Hamilton, first of all, I would like to thank you and congratulate you for responding in French, in very respectable French. Thank you very much for your efforts.

However, I am not satisfied with what you are saying. Above all, it does not satisfy Canadians, four out of five of whom have been given incorrect information. Citizens receive incorrect information and enter it on their tax returns, only to realize later that it was not correct.

When the Canada Revenue Agency reviews a return and finds an error, an error made in good faith by the citizen, it then sends the citizen a bill that they must pay, even though it is not their fault, but the agency’s. Who is going to pay for the mistake you made? Is it the honest citizen or the agency, whose employees are unable to do the job they are paid to do?

[Bob Hamilton]

I would ask my colleague Ms. Serjak to answer your question in more detail.

Obviously, it is a problem for the agency when someone receives the wrong information. We have processes in place to resolve issues when someone receives incorrect information from the agency, but they are not ideal.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent—Akiawenhrahk, QC]

One moment, Mr. Hamilton.

The person is acting in good faith. They receive false information and include it in their tax return. Later, they are told that the information is incorrect.

Do you ask the people who have been misled by the agency where the error came from? Do you ask them if it was a civil servant who gave them the false information?

You cannot imagine what this situation means to someone who receives a letter from the Canada Revenue Agency, opens it and realizes that there is a penalty, even though they did everything in good faith.

Have you assessed the total millions of dollars you have taken from Canadians based on false information?

[Bob Hamilton]

I am sensitive to the frustration of people who find themselves in such circumstances, and it is important to reduce the number of cases.

I just want to say that if such a situation arises again, we have processes in place for taxpayers—

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent—Akiawenhrahk, QC]

How can the taxpayer know whether it is their mistake or yours?

When someone has not filled out their tax return correctly, you send them a bill while acknowledging that it is your fault, but they are the ones who have to pay the bill. That doesn’t make sense, Mr. Hamilton.

[Bob Hamilton]

We acknowledge it when we’ve made a specific mistake.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent—Akiawenhrahk, QC]

If you acknowledge that you—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I apologize for interrupting you, Mr. Deltell, but your speaking time has expired.

I'm sure we'll come back to you later on in the rotation.

I'll turn now to Ms. Yip.

You have the floor for six minutes, please.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for coming.

Thank you, Ms. Hogan, for this very important report, and I also want to thank Mr. Hamilton for acknowledging the real issues and challenges that Canadians are facing with the CRA contact centres and not waiting to present a plan.

Ms. Hogan, for the benefit of Canadians watching at home, why do you think there were so many problems with the CRA contact centres?

[Karen Hogan]

I don't think we were able to uncover all the root causes that could be addressed to help improve service. Obviously, the number of agents available to answer calls has an impact on timeliness and ability, but there are also the tools that agents are provided with.

One of our findings did relate to the fact that once you reached an agent, a call lasted about 17 minutes, but about 30% of that time was spent on hold as the agent was looking for answers. If the tools could be improved, I think some of the service quality and speed could be improved. The sooner you end that call, the sooner you move to the next caller.

I think that at times the authentication process slowed down the ability and probably increased frustration for some individuals. If an agent can't authenticate, they have to ask general questions, and that could be even more frustrating when someone is calling for a very specific purpose.

Finally, while there was a lot of work done in reviewing the quality of calls by looking at recorded calls, we found that there was very little actionable feedback or coaching provided in those quality review reports. As a result, there was little mentoring or training done for staff.

I think that if you were able to improve all of that, it would contribute to a better experience for callers.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Hamilton, given what Ms. Hogan just mentioned, does the 100-day plan encompass that, and when did this plan start?

[Bob Hamilton]

The 100-day plan does cover this. As I indicated in my remarks, we're also interested in what happens after 100 days and in trying to make changes that will help us in the 100 days and beyond.

You asked when it started. It started on September 2, and it ends on December 11, I believe, so we're about halfway through the 100 days.

I would echo a lot of what the Auditor General said in terms of what we need to do to fix this. One is that having more agents is good. You can see a correlation between how many people we have on the phones and the number of calls that are answered, and we've seen some short-term impacts from extending the terms of some employees.

There are also other parts of that, as the Auditor General mentioned. There are the tools that we give people. It is true that when we have a new contact centre platform, it will be more sophisticated. It will allow agents to do more things and do them more quickly, so that's good. There are also some technology tools, such as robotic processing and artificial intelligence, that we can provide to our agents to help them better sort through the information they need in order to respond quickly, efficiently and accurately to the taxpayer.

It's a combination of things. I think it would be wrong to think that all we need to do is just hire more agents. I think we also need to look at our processes and our technologies to make sure that they are as efficient as possible. However, certainly agents are at the centre of this, and if we have more, we can answer more calls.

Regarding training, we do take the feedback seriously. There are things we can do to improve in terms of call recording and training our people better. We think we're doing a pretty good job, but we can always do better, and we're using this opportunity from the AG's report to examine what we do on that front and how we can help our employees more.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

You mentioned that we're at the midway point of this plan. Have there been improvements at this time? Is there any data or information you could share?

[Bob Hamilton]

Yes. Maybe I would ask my colleague Melanie to elaborate, but we're pleased with the results of the 100-day plan so far. I think I mentioned that we're now answering over 70% of our calls, which was the goal. The goal was to be at 70%, and we're actually over that. That can go up and down, so we're watching it carefully.

That's a result of having new agents, and also of some things that we've put in place—new tools that taxpayers can use and new tools that our agents can use. The Auditor General mentioned the validation process; if you get locked out of your account, there is now a new tool that can be used to reinstate your account without having to call us. Another part of our plan is to see if we can get information or tools to people so that they don't have to call us and we can solve some problems upstream, such as with processing T1 adjustments, or what have you, and avoid the calls. It has to be part of that strategy.

We're seeing some of these things work. Some of them are already in place, and some are in pilot stages, but we're very pleased with the results. We post those results publicly on the website every week where people can see them, because we are also trying to be very transparent. We're not trying to fool people into thinking we're perfect; we're trying to be transparent about where we're having successes and where we're having challenges, and we just keep working on it.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

That is the time. It went by quickly.

Mr. Lemire, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Hogan, and thank you to your team.

Mr. Hamilton, I would like to talk to you about the accuracy of information and services.

Let’s recap for those following our work. The Auditor General’s report highlights a huge systemic problem concerning, in particular, the performance evaluations of agents who respond to calls.

Thus, a Canada Revenue Agency employee can obtain a passing grade on their evaluation if they work the expected number of hours, take their breaks at the right time, and end the call at the right time, i.e., as quickly as possible. When responding quickly, they must behave appropriately, but if they fail to provide the correct answer, it does not matter, as is the case in more than 80% of general questions about personal income tax. If customers are dissatisfied with the information they receive, but the employee communicates well and follows procedures and policies, they receive a score of over 60%, which is above the passing grade, and can thus advance in their career.

Therefore, data accuracy and performance are not valued. Do you see a problem with this?

[Bob Hamilton]

Yes.

I think I made it clear that there are certainly issues that need to be addressed. We believe we have the procedures and innovations in place to resolve them.

I will ask Ms. Serjak to supplement my answer with more details.

[Melanie Serjak, Assistant Commissioner, Assessment, Benefit, and Service Branch, Canada Revenue Agency]

I would like to remind you that we have a program in place to evaluate calls and the information provided by our agents to Canadians. To do this, we listen to more than 130,000 calls per year, which provide us with information on agent performance and help us determine the training and support they need. The percentage of the rating allocated to the quality of information provided to Canadians is 45%. Quality encompasses several elements, such as the accuracy of the information provided and whether complete answers are given to clients’ questions.

That said, we take the Auditor General’s findings into account, but there is always room for improvement. We evaluate quality on a monthly basis.

I would like to tell the committee that we take the training of our employees very seriously. When they start their jobs, they undergo two to 13 weeks of classroom training, followed by several weeks of professional coaching. In this way, we want to ensure that they provide adequate and exceptional service to Canadians and that they have the tools and information they need to do their jobs.