Mr. Speaker, allow me to address the House and respond to my colleague's question about the Auditor General's recommendations on the Canada Revenue Agency's call centres.
I can confirm our government's commitment to improve CRA's services to all Canadians. The Minister of National Revenue accepted all of the recommendations in the Auditor General's fall 2017 report concerning the performance of the agency's call centres.
With our first budget, we are investing over $50 million in the agency's call centres. We have already started hiring more agents to answer more to Canadians. Budget 2018 offers much needed investments in the services that CRA offers to Canadians, including further funding for the call centres.
Let me be clear. With respect, we will not take any lessons from the Conservatives who chose to cut funding and training in the CRA's call centres year after year. As the volume of calls coming into the centres increased, Stephen Harper's Conservatives reduced the number of agents in the centres, reduced the hours of operation, and reduced the service standards in these centres.
As to what our government is doing, let me be clear. The CRA is taking action in three areas to improve services offered by all its call centres. Work is already under way to improve service delivery to call centres to improve accessibility to all Canadians, to strengthen the quality and accuracy of responses, and to enhance program measurements and reports.
The CRA is committed to being more transparent with Canadians to ensure that they know the level of service they can expect and how the agency is performing against those expectations.
The service standards my colleague has criticized on numerous occasions were used every year under the previous Conservative government, yet another one of the Conservatives' messes our government was left to clean up.
As Canadians know, improvements take time, especially the launch of a new technology platform. I can assure everyone that there are ongoing improvements. We have hired additional call centre agents and we have improved our existing systems and processes to enhance access to the call centres. We have put measures in place to reduce the chance of getting a busy signal. We have also expanded the options available to callers through the interactive voice response system.
I have appreciated this opportunity to report on the progress.