Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to follow up on my question from earlier this year about the Liberals' inability to follow through on Auditor General reports and actually improve service delivery to Canadians.
It was just back in June that I asked a question about the F-35, and we found out that the original cost of the F-35 jets was estimated to be $19 billion. However, the Auditor General, after their audit, found that the figure was based on outdated information and that by 2024 the estimated cost had increased to $28 billion, almost a 50% increase. That also did not take into account several other elements needed to achieve full operational capacity, such as essential infrastructure upgrades and advanced weapons, which would cost another $5.5 billion. It is past the budget time frame and past the budget costs, and we are still lingering months later with an inability to move forward on that file.
However, that is not the only report the Auditor General has that the Liberals keep messing up. I want to go back to reference another recent Auditor General's report, and that was on the performance standards of the Canada Revenue Agency call centres. This most recent report was not the first one that was done. The Liberals had their wrists slapped back in only 2017, a few years ago, about several aspects of their service delivery that were failing.
The Auditor General came out with a scathing report at that time, talking about service standards and accuracy of information in several ways and giving recommendations as to what the Liberals needed to do to get CRA to give better customer service. It was back in 2017 that the then minister for CRA put out a statement that said:
Our clients have a right to receive information that is clear and precise, when they need it. We have made strides to improve our service
The statement goes on to say:
However, there remains work to be done, and the Auditor General's recommendations will help us make the necessary adjustments.
They had a three-point action plan, and they said:
Beginning in 2018, our clients will see numerous improvements
Fast-forward to today. The budget of CRA under the Liberals, since their time in office, has increased by 70%. I wish I could come here tonight and instead congratulate the Liberals and say that service got 70% better. Literally, when we look at it, service actually got about 70% worse, I would say. That is closer to the actual reality.
In the second report under the Liberals with respect to the CRA, the call centres and customer service to Canadian taxpayers got astronomically worse. The Liberals had learned nothing except how to make the problem worse. Only 18% of calls met CRA's own service standard. The average wait time doubled. There were invoices paid with little or no validation, which is something we have heard before in the arrive scam investigation. Over 32 million calls were received, but only 10 million people reached an agent. This means that 22 million Canadians were redirected or hung up on.
My question for the Liberals is this. How many more Auditor General reports is it going to take for them to get what I call their “deliverology” in shape, get CRA in shape and take all these other Auditor General reports, like with respect to the F-35, and get something done properly, on time, on budget and with good customer service? Canadians are not expecting too much from the government but are getting the worst deliveries we have seen in recent years.