Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have this opportunity to correct the record in this House and to answer my hon. colleague's question.
I would like to note how ironic it is that the NDP is once again following the Conservative Party's lead. The NDP did the same thing during the 2015 election when it chose to follow Stephen Harper's Conservatives by choosing not to invest in Canadians and their communities in favour of balancing the budget. Perhaps my colleague does not realize that many of the issues he mentions stem from a decade of indifference and cuts under the previous Conservative government.
We know what choice Canadians made in 2015. Rather than choosing the NDP, they chose a party which has shown time and time again its commitment to invest in Canadians and the government services they receive. Our government continues to fulfill that mandate. Just last Thursday we voted for hours to ensure that we could maintain the funding for the important programs Canadians rely on every single day.
Let us talk about some specifics. For starters, in budget 2016, our government invested more than $50 million over a four-year period, and in budget 2018, we invested an additional $78 million over a five-year period to improve the CRA's call centre program. This is critically important. Thanks to these investments, we have already begun the work by hiring more agents and putting into place measures to allow more callers to access agent queues, resulting in fewer busy signals and reduced call attempts.
The agency has also launched a three-point action plan to modernize its call centres. The plan is focused on modernizing technology, training call centre agents, and updating its service standards to ensure that Canadians receive the quality service they deserve.
With the over $200 million investment in budget 2018, we are making concrete improvements to the agency's services. These important investments will allow us to enhance the community volunteer income tax program, which helps Canadians complete their tax returns and access benefits such as the Canada child benefit; modernize our digital services to make life easier for Canadians who complete their tax returns online; and increase CRA's ability to automatically qualify Canadians for the benefits they deserve, such as the new Canada workers benefit.
It is extremely important for the agency to treat Canadians as important clients, not simply as taxpayers. We are working every single day to improve the services the CRA offers to Canadians.