Public Accounts Committee on Oct. 28th, 2025

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Pagé, I want to revisit something Mr. Deltell and Mr. Lemire asked the CRA officials.

[Hugo Pagé]

What I can say is that in any instance where fraud has been identified, we adjust our practices to reflect the reality in the new environment.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Was consideration given to having a certain amount of money that a human being would need to verify or refund, regardless of the level of risk assessed, if it was over a certain threshold? Was that part of the overall evaluation that you came to?

[Hugo Pagé]

When we have instances of fraud, we look at all the—

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

I understand, but you're before a parliamentary committee. You're not before the media now. When we ask a question, you're actually supposed to answer the question.

Did you look seriously at the question of whether—even if an assessment found a very low risk in a profile of a refund of $4.9 million, for example—there should be a level of a lesser amount that an agent, a human being, would look at before a refund was processed if it was over that amount, regardless of the threshold of risk?

[Hugo Pagé]

We would have to get back to you, because I would not be the one personally involved in making that assessment.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Okay. I would appreciate it if you could get back to us in writing.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

Before I excuse everyone and wrap up this meeting, I have a couple of questions for the deputy auditor. The first is broad. The second is specific.

You didn't use much of your time at the start. Do you have general comments about today's discussion on the contracts? Is there anything you want to highlight or put a spotlight on for committee members to consider?

Number two, I want you to give us your thoughts on the tendency we've noticed where the government has accepted the recommendations while downplaying or questioning the findings, or even indicating that all is now well. It's a bit like accepting the sentence and promising to go through the remediation, but then saying, “Well, we didn't really do it” or “Everything is okay.”

This is difficult, I think, for a lot of people to understand, particularly when we all have cases in our offices where we know the service has been very bad. We're hearing now that your office didn't get documents that might have changed your report, and we're hearing, at the House of Commons, that the 100-day plan is just swimming and now all the information is accurate, which is what I heard today as well, at 90%.

What's going on? What do you make of this? What light can you shed on this for the committee to consider, please?

[Andrew Hayes]

Thank you very much. Those are big questions.

With respect to your first question, I think it was about today's hearing and what we heard today. The focus, of course, with Shared Services here was on the contract. As the Auditor General signalled at the beginning of last week, we are going to look at the contract specifically. Of course, when we do any audit, we leave the discretion open for us to look at anything that comes to our attention during our audit. We can go down a road even if it's not specifically set out in the scope of our audit at the outset. However, with this contract, what's peculiar is the fact that Shared Services is the contracting authority, and it's also a user of these services, along with CRA and ESDC. Not everybody is included in the scope of the work we are doing here when looking at that entire contract. It wouldn't have been practical for us to expand this audit to do a complete audit of the contract—the money spent, how it was conceived, etc.

Just to comment on Mr. Jones' statements earlier, I don't believe Shared Services Canada was trying to hide any information or not provide us with information. The track record of Mr. Jones is nothing short of exemplary in terms of collaboration. I don't think there was anything nefarious there.

We will get to the bottom of everything in that next audit. That's one piece of today's testimony.

I made some comments earlier about controls and whether there are controls around the way in which CRA is processing the invoices or controls around the use of automated services or thresholds for automation, etc. I think those comments and those questions come from a place where almost every taxpayer comes from: They expect fairness and they expect timely and accurate service from CRA. Our tax system is one where people are required to self-declare. Speaking in general terms, Canadians want to do that, and they want to do it properly. Our audit was focused on accuracy and timely responses to Canadians.

That takes me to your second point. The idea that people might want to distance the current situation from the findings of the audit is completely understandable. There are things that have happened in that period of time since our audit. However, what I will say about our audit work is that, number one, we get our information for the most part from the departments. They certify that the information they have provided to us is complete and accurate. When they review our report, the deputy minister confirms that the statements in there are factually accurate, so it's difficult for us to hear that anybody would distance themselves from our findings after they've confirmed agreement with the facts.

Over the years, we've had situations where we've had responses to recommendations that say the department agrees and will continue to do X. We've taken the position that it doesn't really represent agreement if you're going to do the same thing and not really change. Our recommendations are geared toward changes that will improve outcomes for Canadians. In the case of what I think are maybe some comments that are trying to distance themselves from findings in our report, I would qualify them as, I suppose, disagreement—maybe that's too strong a word—with our findings on accuracy and on timeliness.

I want to bring things back to first principles. In 2017, we had to do calls, as we did this time, because the CRA did not have recorded calls that we could listen to. We did the same exercise this time. That's where you've seen our numbers—a poor rate of accuracy of 17%—for individual-specific questions. We also listened to recorded calls. We did a random sample of those. The results were not that much better. Frankly, the focus has been on the 17%, but the results were not that much better for general individual tax questions.

The CRA has reported high rates of satisfaction, at 77%, but the devil is in the details there: 2% of callers were surveyed for those numbers. As well, those numbers don't include people who did not get through to an agent. It's difficult to look at that number and say that it's an accurate reflection of satisfaction with the experience of a caller.

Couple that with the fact that complaints have increased 145% over the last four years. Anecdotally, I think most members of Parliament would agree that they get a number of complaints from constituents who are not necessarily happy with the service from CRA. I can tell you anecdotally that our office gets a lot of requests for audits from Canadians who are wondering about what's happening with their taxes and wondering what's happening with benefits, etc.

One other thing I will say is that, in the context of individual taxes, 45% of the calls relate to access to My Account. I would expect that accuracy would be high when you're dealing with something transactional like that.

All that is to say that I think what's important to take from our audit report is the message that CRA needs to improve its accuracy, and it needs to answer the questions from Canadians in a more timely way. We've made recommendations to help CRA conceptualize that. There's a 100-day plan that's been put in place, and it's encouraging to hear that the results right now are positive.

However, as the representatives from CRA said today, we're talking about the off-season. What is it going to be like between March and May, when the load is a lot higher? Are the results that are being achieved now sustainable? Maybe they are, with the support of other tools and improved processes, but those are all things that we as an office will keep our eye on and that Canadians will be interested in.

I apologize for the rant there.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you. You had the time.

I'll say for the record, Mr. Jones, that I would certainly not suggest anything nefarious. I picked up on Mr. Stevenson's accountant joke that since the documents weren't prepared, even if you had all good intentions, you're responsible. I can also mention the old Russian proverb “Trust, but verify.” With the audit coming along, we will see the results a year from now.

I want to thank all of the witnesses for coming in today. I apologize for the tardiness due to the vote today. We appreciate having you in. We'll see you again later.

The meeting is adjourned.