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Results: 1 - 15 of 73
View Kevin Sorenson Profile
CPC (AB)
Mr. Speaker, these will be the last reports I ever table in Parliament, so I want to thank the public accounts committee for its good work in this Parliament. As well, I would like to thank our clerk, Angela, and our analysts, Dillan and Sara, for the work they have done.
I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the following two reports of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts: the 69th report, entitled “Processing of Asylum Claims, Report 2 of the 2019 Spring Reports of the Auditor General of Canada; and the 70th report, entitled “Call Centres, Report 1 of the 2019 Spring Reports of the Auditor General of Canada”.
Pursuant to Standing Order 109, the committee requests that the government table a comprehensive response to these two reports.
View Bill Casey Profile
Lib. (NS)
View Bill Casey Profile
2019-06-18 15:05 [p.29311]
Mr. Speaker, a 2004 RCMP report concluded that the RCMP 911 call centre should be “outside of HRM given the risks of placing the two largest police communications centres in close proximity to each other”. The risks given were a risk of environmental disasters and threats to our communications system. Strangely, a new RCMP report says that the 2004 concerns were reassessed and they were no longer a risk.
Would the minister ask the RCMP to make available the study that explains why environmental disasters and communications threats were a risk in 2004—
View Ralph Goodale Profile
Lib. (SK)
View Ralph Goodale Profile
2019-06-18 15:06 [p.29311]
Mr. Speaker, the hon. member has been in touch with me many times about this matter. The safety of Nova Scotians is the top priority for the RCMP's H Division, which functions as Nova Scotia's provincial police force. In that capacity, it makes the necessary decisions about the most effective deployment of provincial assets and facilities, including the provincial operations and communications centre.
It is obtaining the counsel of an independent assessor to ensure that its provincial responsibilities are safely and properly discharged in the best interest of Nova Scotians.
View Jenny Kwan Profile
NDP (BC)
View Jenny Kwan Profile
2019-05-07 14:35 [p.27478]
Mr. Speaker, can members believe that over eight million Canadians cannot talk to a real person when they call government call centres? Whether it is about their EI, their pensions or immigration matters, call centres are a dead end. It is so bad at IRCC that over 70% of the callers could not even get through. That is 1.2 million people. No wonder. There are no service standards: no standards on access, no standards on timeliness, no standards on accuracy. Do the Liberals not believe that Canadians deserve the most basic level of service from their government?
View Ahmed Hussen Profile
Lib. (ON)
View Ahmed Hussen Profile
2019-05-07 14:36 [p.27478]
Mr. Speaker, we welcome the recommendations from the Auditor General's report. Budget 2019 provides over $42.9 million in investments that will allow IRCC to more than fund 170 full-time agents over two years to respond to people's questions. We have already extended hours in our call centres. We have introduced access to people in our call centres on Saturdays. We are introducing more help through email, social media and a chatbot that learns as it proceeds to answer all the routine questions. We are committed to doing better.
View Pierre-Luc Dusseault Profile
NDP (QC)
View Pierre-Luc Dusseault Profile
2019-05-07 14:36 [p.27478]
Mr. Speaker, in 2017 the Auditor General called out the Canada Revenue Agency for its poor management of its call centres. Today we learned that the CRA is not the only organization hanging up on people, but apparently all government service offices are doing so. Come on.
Why is it that when SNC-Lavalin, Loblaws or Mr. Bronfman calls the Prime Minister, he picks up immediately and will move heaven and earth for them, but when average Canadians need assistance from their government, half of their calls are dropped?
This government does not serve the people. This government serves the friends of the Liberal Party of Canada.
It is really not all that complicated. When will the government answer the phone?
View Diane Lebouthillier Profile
Lib. (QC)
Mr. Speaker, our government remains committed to improving the CRA's services to ensure that they meet the needs of Canadians.
Unlike the Harper Conservatives, who decided to reduce the number of agents and the operating hours for call centres, our government chose to invest in infrastructure.
I am very pleased to say that we have migrated to a new, modern telephone platform in recent months. The results are encouraging. I will have more to say on this in a few weeks.
View Mark Eyking Profile
Lib. (NS)
View Mark Eyking Profile
2019-02-01 11:04 [p.25146]
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize a resilient community in Cape Breton. Through recent tough times they persisted and kept their spirits high. That community is made up of the employees of the Sydney Call Centre. On December 6, just before Christmas, nearly 600 employees were blindsided when they found out they would lose their jobs. Countless volunteers and organizations in Cape Breton quickly came together to fundraise and support these workers at such a tough time, including the Salvation Army, which handed out care baskets, fully equipped with Christmas turkeys, and also helped with bill payments and groceries.
Shortly after Christmas, the new Sydney Call Centre opened and has been hiring the employees back. My thanks to those workers for keeping their heads high and showing how resilient Cape Breton is. Even in the toughest of times, we can come together as a community to have each other's backs.
I would like to commend the work that all levels of government did, together with the manager of the centre, Todd Riley.
Along with the member for Cape Breton—Canso, we would like to thank the new owner, Anthony Marlowe, for seeing the strong work ethic and the great potential that Cape Breton has to offer.
View Michelle Rempel Profile
CPC (AB)
View Michelle Rempel Profile
2018-05-28 15:11 [p.19745]
moved:
That, the ninth report of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration presented on Thursday, March 23, 2017 be concurred in.
She said: Mr. Speaker, I would like to talk about some important work the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration did earlier in this Parliament in relation to the modernization of client service delivery within Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship. This was a very extensive report, which the committee put a lot of time into, with the goal of trying to improve the experience for people who are applying, through various processes, through this department to legally come into Canada.
There were many witnesses who appeared before our committee, and there were many recommendations put forward by the committee, unanimously, as a matter of fact, to improve that experience. I will note, however, that it has been many months, over a year, since this report was tabled, and the government has not responded to many of the recommendations herein, nor has the government accepted the reality that we have seen a major change in the operating environment in Canada, with the influx of tens of thousands of people at the Lacolle border crossing trying to illegally enter the country and subsequently claim asylum, and the impact that has had on the overall client service delivery experience for people who are trying to access the immigration system.
The genesis of this report was earlier in this Parliament, as I mentioned. The purpose was to look at ways IRCC could improve the user experience for people entering the system. There were many reasons the study was undertaken. I can think of a few.
I would like to talk about the public servants who work within IRCC. For the past two years, they have had to deal with a lot of immigration policy decisions being made on the fly by the current government. They have done their best to respond, but because of the rigid system of processing within the department, it has become a very inflexible system. We are seeing delays and backlogs happen more and more, especially now, since the government did not budget or take into account in its levels plan that by the end of this year, the minister will have overseen what could be close to 100,000 people illegally crossing the border into Canada and claiming asylum. That has had an enormous impact on the processing system as well as on client service delivery for IRCC.
I listened to the minister's responses to four hours of questioning last week with regard to the illegal border crossing crisis. He made many assertions about the government's record on client service delivery. I want to set the context of the system he came into.
Previous Liberal governments created a backlog of 108,000 for the parents and grandparents application stream alone. The previous Liberal government also increased wait times for parents and grandparents to 64 months and created a total immigration backlog of 830,000. Previous Liberal governments also imposed a right-of-landing fee of $975 on new immigrants.
When we came into government, obviously it was a very daunting task to address the backlog, and we had a lot of success. Our former Conservative government had an action plan for faster family reunification. It included increased numbers of parents and grandparents as permanent residents and managing the number of new applications to reduce the backlog, including introducing the super visa and cutting the backlog and processing times in half. Part of the reason we introduced the super visa, in terms of service delivery, was to ensure that families were reunited faster. It was a 10-year multiple-entry visa, introduced by our Conservative government. Some 50,000 super visas were launched, with an average processing time of only three months. It also protected taxpayers by requiring private health insurance. Again, we were being cognizant not only of client service delivery but of the sustainability of Canada's social programs.
We saw more parents and grandparents welcomed as permanent residents under our government as compared to the previous Liberal government. Over 171,000 parents and grandparents were admitted, versus 154,000 grandparents admitted from 1997 to 2005. I should go through the numbers, because government members keep standing up to talk about the illegal border crossing crisis, which, of course, was launched by the Prime Minister's #WelcomeToCanada tweet. Some keep trying to say that somehow it was Stephen Harper's fault that the Prime Minister tweeted #WelcomeToCanada.
We need to focus on client service delivery right now, because all members in the House are getting calls in our riding offices from people who are trying to legally enter the country and are now encountering seven-year-plus wait times to come in under certain streams. What I think is most disgusting is the fact that the government is prioritizing the allocation of resources to process people who are illegally entering the country and is taking resources away from streams such as the privately sponsored refugee program, in which we now see wait times of up to seven years.
Do they think about that? Someone languishing in a UNHCR camp, who does not have access to a lot of resources, is now facing that long of a backlog. Meanwhile, the work the committee did over a year ago needs to be updated, given that the immigration levels report has been blown out of the water. In fact, the immigration levels report is probably birdcage liner at this point. This report not only needs to be concurred in, it needs to be updated because of the backlogs that are being created because of the reallocation of resources.
The minister will stand up here and tell us that this is not happening, that there are different processing lines, and that this is bananas. However, that is just cover, because we know that as of six months ago, over 80 processing staff from other lines of processing were reallocated to processing illegal border crossers, and I think that number has increased over time. When one thinks about removing 80 staff members, although I am sure it is at over 100 now, to process the crisis that is happening at Roxham Road, and we have seen these numbers exponentially increase since that figure was put forward, certainly we will continue to see backlogs. That is going to reduce the client service delivery experience for people who are trying to legally enter the country.
We should be prioritizing some of the recommendations included in this report, because we should be trying to prioritize the client service delivery experience for people who are legally entering the country as opposed to people who are illegally entering the country. If we continue to build tent cities and send people to process their applications and turn the CBSA and the RCMP into a glorified concierge service, we are, in fact, incenting people to continue with this activity rather than trying to enter the country legally.
I would argue that client service delivery for people who are trying to legally enter the country would be improved if the minister would seek to close the loophole in the safe third country agreement. If the minister closed the loophole in the safe third country agreement, or sought legislation that would allow him to designate the entire Canadian border an official point of entry for the purposes of being applied to the safe third country agreement only, we would reduce demand on the system for processing the applications of illegal border crossers, thus allowing resources to be freed up for legal border crosses, which is what this report talks about.
To me, it is very important that the House move this report forward, but the committee should probably update this report as well. I think it is another piece of work we could do to investigate the burden of this border crossing crisis, which is squarely the Prime Minister's fault. It is squarely the Prime Minister's fault that he has refused to walk back his tweet, and these services are being impacted.
I would be very curious to see how the government votes on concurrence on this report, because many of the recommendations outlined here the government has not responded to. They have been exacerbated under the government's tenure.
I would like to point out some other things. There is a call centre. If a person is trying to access information when applying for permanent residency, citizenship, or any of the myriad of other services IRCC provides, there is a call centre that a client, ostensibly, should be able to call to get information.
Here is an interesting piece of information from the study:
The IRCC Call Centre has been the subject of numerous complaints about poor client service. Departmental officials provided detailed information regarding complaints received. Specifically, they noted that, with regard to the 4,453 feedback web forms received in 2015, there were 35 complaints specific to the Call Centre;
For those of us who do a lot of casework related to immigration, which would be almost every single person in the House, we understand the problem with the call centre intimately, because our staff actually have a hard time calling into it. Under the tenure of the former immigration minister, John McCallum, the government tried to remove the dedicated line for members' staff who were enquiring on behalf of their constituents. This report recommends that the government, under all circumstances, keep that line ongoing. It is very important for the House to accept that recommendation, because sometimes it is the last line of defence under the incompetence of the government in terms of being able to get information on an application that is pending.
My colleague, who has Vegreville in her riding, seconded this motion. She has been making an impassioned plea to the government. We have this whole report on client service delivery, and the government has decided to shut that processing centre down, even though, first, it is one of the most efficient processing centres in Canada, and second, the union of labourers there has been saying that there have not been job guarantees for all workers. Third, why is it kicking Alberta when it is down? It is taking away the equivalent of taking 100,000 jobs out of Toronto in terms of the impact it will have on the community of Vegreville. It is completely decimating that community. I do not think the minister even bothered to visit Vegreville.
When we are looking at client service delivery, we have all these recommendations in the report that have not been responded to, which the government is making worse by closing one of the most effective processing centres in the country. There were also documents that came out that showed that there would be an additional expense to the government to shut down this processing centre. The Liberals' whole argument for closing it down was that it was supposed to be more efficient and save the taxpayers money, when, in fact, it is going to make the taxpayers spend more money. We get less efficiency and an increased cost for taxpayers. That is the hallmark of Liberal management.
There is one other thing I want to point out. The last time I tried to get concurrence on a report from the Citizenship and Immigration committee, it was on the issue of immigration consultants who were essentially fraudulent. We know that there are instances of people we would call ghost consultants. These are people who contract themselves out to newcomers to Canada under the guise of providing services promising to get them to Canada faster. It is very difficult for people who are working like this to face any sort of punishment under our current system.
Liberal and Conservative governments have made changes in how the immigration consulting profession is regulated. We know that there are still a lot of problems with that. I believe the committee put forward a unanimous report on recommendations on how to fix some of these things. However, the government, including the members on the committee that voted for the recommendations, when we tried to have it concurred in in the House, voted against the concurrence motion, therefore showing the true colours of the government on immigration, which is that it does not really care about improving client service delivery for people.
Why am I talking about immigration consultants in the context of this report? If we are talking about client service delivery, in a lot of ways, people should not have to contract an immigration consultant to do some of the most basic work it takes to apply to come to this country. We should be looking at ways to streamline and simplify processing for people who are seeking to enter the country.
This is what I have been saying all the time. When the immigration system of a country like Canada is functioning well, it should be a debate about process and how we improve processes. We can have partisan differences on that, but we should not be having a discussion about the fact that the entire system is melting down because the government has no control over a planned, orderly migration system.
What is striking to me is that since this report was written in March 2017, we have seen close to 40,000 people illegally entering the country from the United States of America, which we know is safe third country, to claim asylum. A lot of the processing issues that are noted within this report have been exacerbated because the government has refused to respond to this report in any sort of meaningful way after the recommendations were put forward by the committee, and then, of course, the additional burden on the system has made things worse.
The current government is very good at standing up in the House of Commons and using one thing to describe its action on a file: the amount of money spent. I am assuming that the remarks the parliamentary secretary is about to give on this matter will be that the government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars. I am sure the government is quite proud that it has made a more expensive plan to deal with the Prime Minister's tweet. However, the reality is that it is throwing money into things and it is getting worse. The metric here should not be how much money the government has spent. In fact, I would argue the opposite. I think the government should be saying it has created efficiencies while saving the taxpayers' money. It should be about how we are moving back to a planned, orderly migration system wherein we are talking about things like how we modernize client service delivery for people who are seeking to legally enter the country. However, we are not there.
Where we are today is that we have the minister on national TV spreading falsehoods that Parliament can put forward legislation that could technically deem the entire Canadian border as a legal point of entry. There are ways we can legislate it such that it would only apply to the safe third country agreement. I think it is probably Parliament's job to look at legislation that could do that. However, the government refuses to walk back the ill-advised tweet that the Prime Minister put out, essentially for his own ego. I wonder also why the Prime Minister has not staged a photo-op at the refugee camp at Roxham Road. Perhaps the photo opportunities are not as good there as they are in other places.
I should not be glib. We should be providing incentives for as many people as possible to come to Canada through legal, planned, orderly migration that meets the needs of Canada's growing economy, that meets the needs of our obligations to humanitarian immigration. However, it needs to be done in a way that we are focusing on integration, not on entitlement, and on an easy-to-use, good system that would provide incentives for people to legally enter into the country. We should not be talking about spending hundreds of millions of dollars, which could be upward of a billion dollars, to the court's failed asylum claimants who have come in under the current government's watch. In fact, that is going to be one of the legacies of the current Prime Minister. In years to come, we will be looking at the tab he created for deportations of people he is essentially pedalling false hope to, who had no hope of ever claiming asylum in Canada. The cost to the Canadian taxpayer, and that diversion of resources that could have been used for the modernization of services for people who are legally entering the country, is something I do not think he or anyone else should be proud of.
I think this report is good. I might have a few quibbles here and there, but there are some good ways that I think are non-partisan. We could improve client service delivery. There are practical things. I love that the department officials at IRCC could be focusing on implementing these recommendations rather than having to focus their time on the tire fire that is happening at Roxham Road. It is very simple to me.
Therefore, I would like the government to acknowledge my points today by voting to concur in this report on modernizing client service delivery. We could reset the tone in this House. We could say that we want to focus on legal, planned immigration, on resources for the live-in caregivers, the reunification of parents and grandparents, and all of these people for whom we know we did a good job under our Conservative government. This report should be concurred in to do that.
View Serge Cormier Profile
Lib. (NB)
View Serge Cormier Profile
2018-05-28 15:42 [p.19749]
Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Winnipeg North.
As part of the review of the votes under Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada in the 2018-19 main estimates, I want to talk about the government's priority to improve client services. High quality, effective, and timely client-service delivery is a priority for the government and for IRCC. The department interacts with millions of clients in Canada and around the world, including applicants for electronic travel authorizations, visas, permanent residency, asylum, citizenship, and passports.
Canada is becoming more attractive to talented, skilled people, businesses, tourists, students, and families who want to contribute to our economic and social prosperity. For example, last year alone, the department processed more than 2.3 million temporary resident applications and more than five million passport applications, and it responded to nearly six million requests for information.
The government recognizes that a strong, effective, and efficient immigration system is not only desirable, but indispensable in every way for our country's future. With that in mind, IRCC has made it a priority to improve services for all of its clients. We know that by enhancing the quality of its services, Canada will be better placed to attract talent from around the world, boost trade and tourism, and help families reunite with loved ones or claim asylum in Canada.
We also know that while the number of applications in all of our business lines is rising, so are clients' expectations for faster, simpler services that are available electronically. Clients also have higher expectations of receiving updates on the status of their applications.
Because improving the client experience is a key priority for our government, IRCC recently launched a suite of initiatives aimed at improving service delivery and client experiences. The department also engages in an active dialogue with clients to better understand the issues they encounter.
To begin with, IRCC now has its very first client experience branch, whose mission is to improve services to clients. It is responsible for improving existing services, testing new and innovative approaches, and improving dialogue with clients. I would like to talk about these areas in greater detail.
The government knows that processing times have a major impact on client experience in all business lines. I can assure my colleagues that the department is working hard and will continue to work hard to reduce processing times for economic immigrants, citizenship applicants, family class immigrants, and refugees.
The department's commitment to reducing processing times and improving service delivery is already making a difference. For example, processing times for spousal reunification in Canada used to be 26 months or more. Now, most new spousal sponsorship applications are processed within 12 months. Processing times for citizenship applications have also dropped from 24 to 12 months. Family caregiver applications used to take as long as five to seven years. That was unacceptable. Now that we have made changes, those applications are also processed in under 12 months.
The new express entry system for economic immigrants has also improved client experience. Last year alone, more than 86,000 of these express entry candidates received invitations to apply for permanent residence. The system is easy to use for these potential applicants, who can easily create an online profile and, once they receive an invitation, can fill out an online application that will, in most cases, be processed in less than six months.
We acknowledge that improvements can still be made in some areas, and we know that ongoing discussions with stakeholders are important to simplify, clarify, and improve services in the various sectors. IRCC also regularly updates its website with information on processing times for the majority of its services to clients.
The department is establishing more and more service standards that it reviews regularly. Once a service standard is established, the observation rates are published annually on the IRCC website. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada has opened visa application centres around the world, which is another excellent example of its commitment to providing more efficient services to clients.
Today we have a standard network of 137 centres in 95 countries. It provides claimants with several important support services, especially in areas where there are few or no visa offices.
These services include the reception and transmission of visa applications and documents, the return of processed documents to applicants, the scheduling of interviews, and the collection of biometric data. The centres also verify whether visa applications are complete, which expedites processing and helps decrease the number of applications rejected because they are incomplete.
At the same time that the government is undertaking initiatives to improve existing services, it is also testing new and innovative approaches in order to grow the Canadian economy through immigration. For example, last year we launched our global skills strategy to attract the best talent from other countries. It should be noted that a good number of the ideas that led to this strategy originated from stakeholders, particularly private sector employers, and we extend a very big thank you to them.
The strategy is designed to help Canadian employers recruit the highly skilled foreign talent they need when they need it. Whether employers need to bring in a professional to train Canadian workers, an experienced executive to lead a major expansion, or an expert with highly specialized, in-demand skills, our global skills strategy will make it faster for businesses in Canada to bring in the talent they need to succeed. To achieve this, the global skills strategy has set an ambitious two-week standard for processing visas and work permits for certain highly skilled workers for businesses operating in Canada.
Our government has also introduced a new work permit exemption for very short-duration work terms, for example 30 days or less for work in highly specialized fields and up to 120 days for researchers, which means less red tape for employers.
IRCC continues to innovate and invest in new ways to design its services. IRCC has also launched some design challenges that consist of choosing a service to improve and review from A to Z with the help of its clients.
Since 2016, IRCC has been tackling these design challenges with clients, consultants, lawyers, professors, immigration officers, call centre agents, and master's students in the design program at the Ontario College of Art and Design University. Together, they have come up with new ideas that have been tested by our clients, then fine-tuned and turned into pilot projects. Using this approach, IRCC is creating solutions that directly address the issues raised by clients, so we can provide better services.
By understanding clients' frustrations and innovating to create a culture of service, IRCC is implementing lasting and major transformations.
We also need to recognize that the services provided by the government relate to some of the most important decisions and stages in the lives of our clients. It is vital that the delivery of those services reflects well on the Department of Citizenship and Immigration and showcases the best that Canada has to offer.
That is why our government has recently undertaken a series of initiatives to ensure that all of our actions reflect a positive attitude toward clients and our relationship with them.
For example, we want clients who contact the client support centre to be given information about their files more quickly, we want to provide sponsors with tools that will help them better track the status of their spousal sponsorship application, and we want to improve the online experience, since that is how a growing number of our clients are contacting the department.
The website is also constantly being improved to meet clients' needs. The department has already updated over 500 pages on the site. As members know, electronic applications also allow the IRCC to optimize the use of technologies and implement an effective application processing system so that it can offer clients simplified, more user-friendly services.
Our priorities include innovation and improving client service delivery. We know that, in addition to making service to IRCC's millions of clients better, our improvements will make our immigration system faster and more efficient, which is also good for our economy. Our government made a firm commitment to reunite families as quickly as possible, and these improvements will make that happen.
Ultimately, our immigration system will be set up to serve Canadians better. We are committed to continue improving the immigration system so it is as efficient as possible.
View Glen Motz Profile
CPC (AB)
Mr. Speaker, I have been married for 40 years. In those 40 years, I have not been able to speak for 20 minutes straight without being interrupted, so this will be a maiden voyage for me.
I am pleased to rise and speak about this issue today. This is a growing crisis, one that could soon rival the mess created by the Liberals on the returning ISIS terrorists or the small business tax grab that hurts farmers, ranchers, family doctors, and local shop owners, calling them tax cheats because the Liberal government cannot stop spending other people's money. It is far more serious than the Prime Minister's multitude of vacations with terrorists and lobbyists.
My riding has definitely seen an impact on the major concerns of delivering the resources necessary to support individuals who are in this country legally, in my riding as well as in ridings across the country, and providing stability for those who come to this country through legal immigration.
Here is what my staff have to say, and I am sure that MPs throughout the House will have similar stories from their staff. Immigrants seeking to renew their legal status who are here legally, who have a job and are contributing to our country and our economy, can expect delays of up to one year to get their permits. This means that they and their families could lose their access to medical care. There are employers who need to go through the labour market impact assessment process and end up getting rejected for their candidates because it takes too long.
Caregiver and family reunification is being delayed by months, if not years, while immigration officials deal with the mess at the border. Let us be clear. The burden and the backlogs are entirely because of the Prime Minister's irresponsible tweet. The minister should have gone to his boss back then and told him to fix the problem he created, but he did not. Now, thousands of Canadians and their families, legal immigrants, temporary foreign workers, and businesses are paying the price.
In my riding, agriculture co-operatives need very specific people for a specific growing season. Quite often, they are returning staff who have been through the process before. Here is what is happening. Delays to the labour market impact assessment approvals are causing temporary foreign workers to be rejected outright. Foreign workers are being rejected for very small application problems. Companies are having to restart the hiring process to try to find new people for their work because administrative resources are being starved.
Privately sponsored refugees are refugees in real need, from war zones and foreign aid areas, who have Canadians sponsoring them to come to Canada. There is a backlog of 45,000 applications. These are the refugees with the highest rate of success and the lowest cost to Canadian taxpayers, because they are privately sponsored. They are following the rules and agree to join Canada. They are seeing a decade of delays because there are no immigration officials to deal with the paperwork, while we rush through the process of illegal border crossers.
Illegal border crossers enter the country without permission, without following and respecting our laws, and are receiving full social assistance and work permits within days. Legal immigrants are waiting months and months, if not longer, for their permits. This is completely unacceptable to Canadians. We are giving priority to those who refuse to respect the law and hurting people who are following the law, including innocent families and children. Employers are hurting because they cannot hire workers due to these government backlogs. This is unacceptable and un-Canadian.
What have the ministers been telling us? They have said that everything is fine, that all is well, and that there is nothing to see here. We should not worry about that tweet, or about the record numbers across the border. We should not concern ourselves with reports coming from border officers, the RCMP, and Immigration that illegal border crossers are a crisis.
We know this to be completely false.
Let me go back to the genesis of this report. On October 7, 2017, the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration adopted its report entitled “Modernization of Client Service Delivery”. The purpose of this study was to study various issues with client service that were brought to the committee by a range of witnesses, including lawyers, immigration consultants, groups that work with refugees, and representatives from the private sector.
This issue is even more relevant today, a year after the report was introduced, because the government has failed to manage the borders, and this has exacerbated the existing issues within the Department of Immigration.
During the committee's study, witnesses identified a broad range of issues and shared with the committee a number of ideas for improving client service at IRCC. In particular, witnesses highlighted frustrations with the call centre, as well as the departmental website and online applications, including the status updates provided online.
More complex issues were also raised with the committee, including the possible use of artificial intelligence in business applications; how to address minor errors that can result in applications being returned, potentially jeopardizing rights; how to facilitate access to IRCC services for individuals with little English or French language skills; and the provision of in-person services. Finally, processing times, fees, and customer service from other government departments may not be new issues, but with the modernization certainly added some new perspectives.
All of these issues illustrate how inaccessible the Department of Immigration is, and this is unfair. We know that many newcomers ultimately turn to immigration consultants and lawyers to help them with their paperwork, which costs them thousands of dollars. This is another example of big government failing the people it has been set up to serve.
Let us talk a bit about a few of the issues that witnesses brought to the attention of the committee. The Canadian Bar Association submitted a brief to the committee, which highlighted that the Department of Immigration does not currently contact clients when it exceeds processing times. There is a simple fix to this. The department could send an automated email, which would be helpful, to advise clients that the application is being processed and further time is required, as well as requesting an additional inquiry if a decision is not made within a specific number of days. This would decrease inquiries and complaints.
We also know that if someone fails to check one little box, the department may outright reject the complete application. A simple fix would be implementing a system for routine requests for additional information on intake and triage, with reasonable deadlines to facilitate processing, rather than unnecessary refusal of applications. This would assist in reducing inefficiencies.
Another group we heard from was a private sponsorship group called Syrian Refugees Gravenhurst, which was generous and compassionate enough to put its own resources on the line to privately sponsor refugees from Syria. What it told the committee, as several groups did, was that the department met that generosity with stymying and bureaucracy, failing to communicate even the most basic information to the sponsorship groups.
Here is a list of issues that the group told our committee about.
The first issue is that there is great frustration among sponsorship groups that formed in response to the current refugee crisis, which are being told that the wait times for the family they are matched up with may be as much as 55 months, due to the location of the family. Groups do not understand how they were offered matches that could not come to fruition in a reasonable length of time, given that there were so many in need. It seems that this issue has been addressed for groups going through the blended visa office-referred stream, but not for groups of five who have raised the full funding themselves and now have it tied up for years.
If the private refugee sponsorship program is to flourish, IRCC policy and procedures must take into account the distinct nature of the undertaking of community volunteers. At the time this group contacted the committee, the IRCC website estimated that the processing time for privately sponsored refugees in Egypt was a staggering 55 months.
There is one group right now that is facing a zero-day wait time. Members can guess which one it is. It is the illegal border crossers.
Here is the second issue that Syrian Refugees Gravenhurst raised. The IRCC website is not well organized to support private sponsorship groups seeking to organize for the purpose of sponsoring refugees. Overall, it is not up to 21st-century standards for user-friendliness. There is no clear path for interested groups to follow to learn about the program and compare options, such as whether to constitute the group as a group of five or as a constituent group of sponsorship agreement holders, or whether to channel the sponsorship through community organizations, such as a local church or Rotary club.
More information is on the website than most groups were able to find at the stage when they needed it. Information for sponsorship groups is often mixed in with information that is not current and/or is about completely different classes of applicants.
A third issue they raised was that once the group's application is in process, lack of communication from IRCC affects almost every sponsorship group. The only projection for processing time is a generic number based on the past cases for immigrants, apparently of different classes, located in the same country. Statements from the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship about clearing the backlog by a given date are of little use when groups cannot even confirm if the refugee family is defined as being in the backlog. Individualized communication is required and needed.
A fourth issue they raised was that similar to other classes of applicants, sponsorship groups are often referred to MPs' offices, which are said to have access to more information on applications in progress. In general, groups report that the MP's staff are very attentive to their requests, but often cannot get more useful information specific to the family in question.
A recent example comes from a group that had established contact with their matched family at a time when the information available to the MP's office still said the family was likely to arrive in 2020. The family suddenly reported that they had been interviewed and were told they would be able to depart in three or four months.
Many groups express concern that they place an inappropriate burden on MPs' staff when going to them to access information that should be available directly from IRCC. It seems that the department of immigration is off-loading their work onto MP offices, which often only have one or two staff who are caseworkers.
A fifth issue they raised was that flexibility in the system is needed to respond to unexpected situations. There is a backlog of applications from private sponsorship groups right now, at the same time that agencies that assist government-sponsored refugees report a lack of resources. Given the border-crossing crisis, they are stretched to the very limit.
Caught in the backlog of sponsorship groups waiting for families, there are groups outside of areas designated to receive government-sponsored refugees that would provide the needed support without putting demands on the agencies that are having trouble meeting the demand. It seems there is no flexibility to take advantage of the excess capacity for private sponsorship that would put minimal demands on government agencies in the designated centres. We know that privately sponsored refugees fare far better than government-sponsored refugees and are far less reliant on government resources.
Here is the sixth issue that Syrian Refugees Gravenhurst brought up: not all groups receive contact information for the refugees after approval. Communication between the private sponsorship groups and the refugees they will be sponsoring prior to arrival in Canada can ease the transition for the new arrivals and their sponsors. Depending on the situation, sponsors may be able to suggest things the refugees can do to prepare for establishing qualifications, obtaining employment, or qualifying for a Canadian driver's licence. Refugees can ask questions about their destination and can learn more about what to expect. If contact is possible, sponsors can be better prepared for the individual needs of the family when they do arrive.
Another issue that I want to raise, which will affect the provision of good client services, is the unfair closure of the Vegreville case processing centre. The immigration case processing centre in Vegreville is the most efficient processing centre in the country, and while the government tried to convince rural Albertans that it would save money to move the centre to Edmonton, we know that it will cost more.
We also know that it will cause a loss of up to 420 people from the community of Vegreville.
It will cost Canadians more to close this office, and it will remove 9% of the town's labour force.
It will cost Canadians more to close this office, and it will cost the town $15.9 million of GDP.
It will cost Canadians more, and it will also cost the town $14.5 million in labour income.
It will cost Canadians more, and it will result in a loss of $1.2 million in municipal revenue annually to the town of Vegreville.
It will cost Canadians more, and it will cost employees, specifically the 76% of employees who are women, forcing them to choose between their families, their community, their volunteer commitments, and a career.
It will cost Canadians more to close to this office, and it will impact over 250 spouses' jobs in Vegreville.
It will cost Canadians more to close to this office, and it will impact three local small businesses owned by employee families.
It will cost more and cause businesses to close their doors.
It will cost more to close to this office, and it will impact 350 school-aged children in Vegreville.
It will cost Canadians more, and it will cost employees thousands in moving costs and relocation expenses, and it will force double the number of houses to go on the market in Vegreville.
This is just another example of the government's failure to prioritize Canadians and newcomers and of its depriving them of services. Wait times would go up as a result of this closure.
This is in addition to the evidence the immigration committee heard and a number of recommendations that were developed. I will not get into those recommendations today because they are available in the report.
We know that a large percentage of constituency work related to immigration and citizenship is done by members of Parliament in their offices, and we know that many Canadians and newcomers rely on the services provided by IRCC, which is why we are calling for this report to be concurred in today.
As I conclude my speech today, I would like to take some time to highlight the record of the previous Conservative government. There was higher immigration under Conservative governments, after Liberal governments' cuts in levels. In 1993, immigration levels reached a peak and then were severely cut for many years thereafter. Under Conservative governments, we saw a higher level of immigration. For example, the average level under Conservative governments from 1993 to 2015 was 257,830. By contrast, Liberal governments averaged only 220,000 in the same time frame when in government. There were 20% more immigrants admitted under Conservatives than past Liberal governments. Over 10 years of Conservative government, we admitted 2,579,494 people. By contrast, the Liberals over a 10-year period only saw 2,171,987 immigrants come to Canada. We saw 10% higher levels of family class immigration under the Conservatives. The average annual number of family class immigrants under Liberal governments, from 1997 to 2005, was 60,000. By contrast, there were 66,000 family class immigrants under Conservative governments. The Conservatives maintained family class immigration at 26% of the total share of immigrants versus the Liberals' 24%. Moreover, visitor visas nearly doubled under Conservative governments compared to Liberal ones.
The previous Liberal government's record on immigration was that it froze funding for immigrant settlement services for 13 years, slashed the budget of the CIC, did nothing on foreign credential recognition, did nothing on marriages of convenience, did nothing to crack down on crooked immigration consultants, and did nothing to fix a broken refugee and asylum system. In 2015, before being elected, Justin Trudeau's Liberals voted against foreign credential recognition loans, efforts to speed up foreign credential recognition for immigrants, and the creation of the new expression-of-interest stream that connected immigrants with employers. Previous Liberal governments created a backlog of 108,000 parents and grandparents. They also increased wait times for parents and grandparents to 64 months, creating a total immigrant backlog of 830,000, and imposed a right-of-landing fee of $975 on new immigrants.
Our Conservative record included welcoming 20% more immigrants per year on average than previous Liberal governments. We cut the right-of-landing fee in half, saving newcomers more than $300 million by 2011 alone, and we tripled settlement funding. In 2005, settlement services funding was $368 million; by 2014, we tripled it to $925 million. Our Conservative record also included taking action on foreign credential recognition.
In conclusion, it was an honour to speak to this issue and to report on the Conservative record that certainly is stellar, unlike the rhetoric we hear from the other side.
View Pat Kelly Profile
CPC (AB)
View Pat Kelly Profile
2018-04-16 15:59 [p.18329]
Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour to rise in this place, even during difficult times such as today when it is with somewhat of a heavy heart one rises after the tributes we heard on the terrible tragedy in Saskatchewan.
It is also sometimes difficult to rise in trying times such as these when so much is at stake for the future of our country, even as we grapple with the ongoing crisis over the Trans Mountain expansion and the implications that a failure of that project would have for all future projects in Canada.
This budget implementation act necessarily brings us back to the budget that it implements. The bottom line of any budget, and really the first thing that anyone wants to know about a budget, is whether it is going to be a surplus budget or a deficit budget. Any analysis, criticism, or commentary has to take place in the context of the size and scope of any surplus or deficit. All the choices of inclusion or omission from a budget have to be viewed through that lens.
In the case of a deficit, it is customary to address the question of when the budget will return to surplus. I say this is customary because indeed it is. In fact, all 13 provincial and territorial governments either have a balanced budget or have a specific timeline or projection for when their budget will be balanced, and it is contained in their budget.
The finance minister is currently running a significant deficit, and neither the budget nor this implementation act make any mention of the means or timing of a return to balance. I raised this with the minister when he appeared before the finance committee last month. I asked him why he is the only finance minister in Canada who has no plan for a balanced budget, and why he did not even address the issue in a 400-page budget document. He said, “No matter how many times the Conservative members ask us to follow the playbook of the previous Conservative government, we won't do it.” I may disagree with the minister on the point of whether or not he should follow the Conservative playbook, but at this point I think most Canadians would settle for this government merely following its own playbook.
On page 12 of the 2015 Liberal platform, its playbook, it reads:
We will run modest short-term deficits of less than $10 billion in each of the next two fiscal years to fund historic investments in infrastructure....
After the next two fiscal years, the deficit will decline and our investment plan will return Canada to a balanced budget in 2019.
On page 72 under the fiscal plan and costing chapter it reiterates, “We will run modest deficits for three years so that we can invest in growth for the middle class and credibly offer a plan to balance the budget in 2019.” Later on in the same chapter it says, “After the next two fiscal years, the deficit will decline and our investment plan will return Canada to a balanced budget....” The Liberal playbook refers to balanced budgets, and in fact, the Liberals promised balanced budgets. They promised small deficits and a return to a balanced budget.
Given that the Liberals promised a balanced budget by 2019 in the 2015 election, given that they promised only short-term deficits of less than $10 billion, and given that they promised these short-term deficits only to fund historic investments in infrastructure, the question is why they are now implementing a structural deficit in a budget with over a $20-billion deficit. Why does the finance minister repeatedly refuse to give any timeline for a balanced budget at all? Why does he bizarrely criticize the Conservatives for even asking about a balanced budget when he ran on an election platform that contained that very promise?
In fact, the finance minister got lucky this past year. The Canadian economy benefited from a whole host of factors, for none of which the finance minister can take any credit. Commodity prices were better than forecast. The world economy has had perhaps its best year since the great recession. The American economy was positively booming with a record-setting stock market run. Real estate price inflation has continued in Canada. Interest rates have remained low. Even with all of these factors in his favour, the finance minister still ran a promise-breaking deficit in this budget following what will surely be one of the strongest economic years in this Parliament.
If the minister promised to return to balanced budgets, he has completely failed to deliver, and it is more than reasonable for opposition members to ask if not now, then when. Given that a return to balance was a huge part of the Liberals' election promise, we would not be doing our jobs as an opposition holding the government to account without asking that question and no answer has been given so far. Still, there really is nothing in the bill to address that question either.
There is, however, in the original budget a troubling item contained on page 290, and that is a recognition of the fact that Canadian oil sells at a significant discount to world prices due to a lack of pipeline capacity in general and the routing of existing pipeline capacity mostly to the oversupplied Cushing, Oklahoma hub rather than to tidewater or to other refinery areas with spare capacity. This discount from world prices, which the government commented on in the budget itself, has grown significantly worse in the past few months.
This difference between the price that our producers get and world prices has a significant impact on business profits and jobs in the industry. The discount has an enormous impact on tax revenues to both the oil-producing provinces and to the federal government itself and it dictates the viability or non-viability of future projects. Simply put, this discount means that we are actually exporting tax revenue and public services to the United States.
Using round numbers, Canadian exports are about three million barrels a day. If Canadian producers take a $20 discount, that means the industry loses $60 million a day, or roughly $22 billion per year. A significant portion of that $22 billion will be taxable income at both the federal and provincial levels. The federal government loses billions in tax revenue because of this price differential, so it cannot be ignored as a factor in the budget.
What is truly alarming today, given the debacle over the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain expansion, is that the finance minister, in his budget, assumes that both Trans Mountain and Keystone XL will be built at a reduced price discount. We obviously know that these assumptions are being challenged right now. Both projects at best will delay projected revenue from profitable oil production, but in typical fashion, the finance minister has just assumed that the pipelines will be built even though a host of opponents are doing everything they can, including breaking the law, to prevent these pipelines from getting built.
The finance minister surely knows that he has cabinet colleagues who oppose the energy industry, that he has caucus colleagues who campaigned in the last election against the Trans Mountain expansion, and that the most senior unelected adviser to the Prime Minister is notoriously anti-pipeline. Therefore, it was a fairly bold assertion for him to simply assume the Trans Mountain and Keystone XL pipelines would be built. Both projects are behind schedule. Both continue to be opposed by extremists committed to everything from vexatious litigation to violent clashes with police while defying court orders, trespassing, and destroying private property.
Given the government's track record, what credibility does it really think it deserves on pipelines? The finance minister's budget assumes the pipelines are going to be built, and yet one of the first things the government did after it was elected was to kill the northern gateway project, which was a pipeline to tidewater approved previously. The proponent was working through the conditions and the concerns that had been raised about the project when the Liberal government used an arbitrary tanker ban to ensure that it could never be built.
Then the Prime Minister completely failed to get Barack Obama to approve Keystone XL, which added another couple of years to the delay of that project. The finance minister is counting on this project to reduce the differential that has to be taken into account in his tax revenue projections.
We know energy east was killed by the government's decision to move the goalposts on its proponent by absurdly deciding to make both upstream and downstream emissions part of the criteria. I say absurd because the emissions from fossil fuels moved through a pipe are mostly determined by the type of vehicle the fossil fuel is put into by the end consumer.
Now the government is even pushing through Bill C-69. At the environment committee, the president of the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association said, “It is hard to imagine that any pipeline project proponent would be prepared to test this new process or have a reasonable expectation of a positive outcome at the end of it.” He went on to say, “If the goal is to curtail oil and gas production and to have no more pipelines built, this legislation may have hit the mark.”
What is the finance minister going to do if the capital flight that has been under way for months cannot be reversed? What is he going to do if nobody will invest and create jobs in the resource sector? What is he going to do if interest rates exceed his expectations? What is he going to do if there is a real estate price correction? What is he going to do if the NAFTA renegotiations end in trade restrictions that damage Canadian access to the American market? Even with everything going his way he cannot balance the budget. Was he going to do it if any of these eventualities happen or any of the hundred other unforeseen events should happen? Now is the time to establish a fiscal cushion to prepare for the inevitability of difficult times ahead.
The budget is not balanced. There is no plan to balance it. There is no date for the budget to be balanced. There is no plan that will get pipelines built, which has a significant impact on the finance minister's ability to balance future budgets. There is no apology by the Liberals to Canadian voters for breaking their promise on the deficit in the first place. There is nothing in the budget implementation act to address any of these issues.
What does this bill do? It makes certain changes to the Income Tax Act to implement changes announced by the Minister of Finance last summer on the taxation of Canadian-controlled private corporations, and other tax changes that we are now getting to the point where the CRA has to actually implement them.
We know that on July 17, the Minister of Finance dropped his bombshell announcing that too many wealthy Canadians were using complex corporate structures to avoid taxes. He went on to announce, following a brief summertime sham consultation, that the Liberals would ram through private corporate tax changes to severely restrict dividend payments between related shareholders, the so-called sprinkling, eliminate the dividend tax credit, which would create the double taxation of passive income with rates at about 73%, and make it virtually impossible to sell a business to a relative, among other things.
I am sure that every member of this House heard from small business owners who do not have a pension, do not have a minimum wage, do not have the protections of employment law, and cannot collect employment insurance. They have to be 100% liable for the conduct of their own employees, who they also cannot sue for gross negligence. What all of these people, these hard-working business owners, heard in the summer was the wealthy finance minister called them tax cheaters.
What happened after that announcement was remarkable. Business owners and tax experts all across Canada spontaneously rose up and with diverse voices unanimously spoke in opposition to every aspect of the minister's proposals. This grassroots opposition did cause the government to partially backpedal on some of its plans contained in this bill. The part of last summer's announcement that many found the most egregious was the double taxation of passive income. Therefore, in December, the finance minister backpedalled and said there would be a limit under which the double tax would not apply. What he did instead in the budget, was he said there would now be a tie-in between passive income and access to the small business rate, which will now be reduced or eliminated for small business owners who have passive incomes of greater than $50,000.
My suggestion to addressing the problem that he created back in the summer was simply a complete retraction of what the Liberals had announced then, and an apology to all of the hard-working small business owners across Canada who were deeply wounded by the bold assertions the finance minister made. Let us face it. The reason the finance minister and the Prime Minister believe that small businesses are really just tax dodges for the wealthy is that they themselves use private corporations to dodge taxes. All the while he was pointing his finger at shopkeepers, farmers, plumbers, realtors, accountants, doctors, lawyers, engineers, taxi drivers, and restaurant owners, the finance minister, that wealthy-born one percenter, was found to have failed to disclose the private corporation he used for tax planning purposes to shelter income and future gains on his French villa. Contrary to his past statements and all expectations of a minister of the crown, much less a finance minister, the finance minister still owned millions of dollars of Morneau Shepell shares.
How was that fact concealed from the public for almost two years? The shares were held in a private numbered company the finance minister registered in Alberta, presumably for tax-planning purposes. It was owned by him, his wife, and another Ontario numbered company. For the first time in the span of a few months, the finance minister was found not only to be personally using complex corporate structures to avoid paying tax but was using them to avoid requirements of the Conflict of Interest Act.
It is high time for this finance minister to end his war on small-business owners and to apologize for his own hypocrisy instead of proceeding with changes to the Income Tax Act contained in this bill.
If passed, this bill would also hand over to the CRA responsibility for dealing with the changes to the tax on split income and the reduction of the limit on the small-business tax rate for small businesses with over $50,000 in passive income.
As shadow minister for national revenue, I could not help but notice that 2017 was a particularly tough year for the Minister of National Revenue and her agency. Every time we turned around, it seemed the agency had a half-baked plan to raise additional tax revenue at the expense of some vulnerable group or another, such as when the minister spent the entire months of October and November insisting that the CRA had done nothing to deny the disability tax credit to type 1 diabetics, despite the fact that it was obvious to everyone except her, and perhaps her parliamentary secretary, that of course the CRA had changed its forms in May 2017 to make it harder to qualify.
The agency also changed its folio to state that after 2017, it would tax employee discounts and meals, but the minister again seemed to be the last person at the agency to be aware that this was being done, before she ordered a reversal. The agency also appeared to be targeting single parents, restaurant-server tips, and disabled Canadians, who suddenly had problems qualifying for the disability tax credit.
On top of that, tax preparers complained about an ever-increasing backlog of corrections and appeals caused by sloppy or incompetent assessments, and a scathing Auditor General's report confirmed that the agency's call centre hangs up on people 64% of the time and gives incorrect information to 30% of the rest who get through.
To an agency already struggling, and a minister who is clearly not in control of her department, this bill would now add a complex reasonableness test for dividends paid to related shareholders of private corporations. Let us think about that. An agency that hangs up on people and is wrong almost a third of the time when it speaks to taxpayers would now have to answer questions about things like the reasonableness of the payment of dividends, questions about share classes, questions about labour contributions, questions about property contributions, questions about the financial risks assumed, and a great catch-all, questions about such other factors as may be relevant.
How on earth can Canadians expect that they will get reliable answers to these questions, given the track record of both the current government and the CRA's call centre? These questions have been asked here in this House and at committee meetings and even at public meetings attended by the minister, and nobody from the government has been able to give anything but the most vague and hypothetical answers to these questions. Canadians might be forgiven if they are a bit worried that nobody knows the answers to these questions and that the legality of thousands of Canadians' tax planning is going to be at the mercy of future court decisions.
It would be very easy to go on for a lot longer about different aspects of this act, such as the implementation of the higher taxes on beer, wine, and spirits and the escalator clause; and certainly about the carbon tax, which is also part of the government's horrific mismanagement of its natural resources policy and an outrageously regressive tax on the poorest and most vulnerable members of society. However, time marches on, so I will wrap up.
I would like to conclude by urging members to vote against this bill, given that it would increase taxes; would fail to even address the very concept of a balanced budget; would do absolutely nothing to get pipelines built, the very same pipelines the budget needs for its own tax revenue; would help facilitate this minister's war on small business through the changes to the taxation of private corporations, and of course, would enable the job-destroying, poverty-inducing carbon tax. Therefore, I will be voting against this act, and I urge all other members to do so as well.
View Pat Kelly Profile
CPC (AB)
View Pat Kelly Profile
2018-03-28 19:16 [p.18240]
Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise this evening to continue where I left off in November 2017, on my question about the call centre. I asked the minister about the CRA and its notoriously difficult call centre.
A scathing report by the Auditor General pointed out that 64% of all calls into the call centre ended with the agency merely hanging up on the taxpayer. Of the over one-third of the people who were able to get through to a person, 30% of them were then in turn given the wrong information. This was pointed out by the Auditor General, so it is well known. The minister did not dispute the findings of the Auditor General, although the agency was much less candid about the problems that were known to exist then.
The minister's answer to my question that afternoon was wholly unsatisfactory. It was just routine, blame the previous government for everything kind of stuff. Canadians are getting tired of that. The Liberals are in the third year of their mandate so they need to start taking ownership of their track record rather than simply blaming things on the previous government.
The government did make a promise. It promised to make the CRA more client-friendly. A system where people are unable to get through to somebody is not client-friendly. It is a serious problem. Part of the reason it is serious is that when a person calls into the agency, he or she is looking for help. The individual is looking for assistance with compliance.
A problem that may exist, or a question that is unanswered, has a snowball effect. If a taxpayer is given wrong information and then prepares a return or a response to communication with the agency with information that is not correct, then that taxpayer has a problem. That may lead to an appeal or a notice of objection and that bogs the system down even further.
What we are hearing from professional tax preparers across Canada is that the objection process is increasingly bogged down through sloppy audits, through assessments and reassessments that are not done correctly, so the problems continue.
If a person at the front end answering the telephone at a call centre can give a taxpayer accurate information on a timely basis that can lead to the taxpayer complying with the law in the first place, then there would be fewer files in the objection system. Therefore, folks who have to address objections can focus on a smaller number of files. There is a cumulative effect to these problems.
I have spoken to professionals who prepare returns, tax filers, and some people who work in the call centre and in other parts of the CRA. My concern is that things are not getting better. The pressure on call centre employees appears to be merely around reducing time on the phone in order to get the queue down to a shorter number so they do not have to hang up on as many people. That is great. We do not want them hanging up on taxpayers. Answering the phone and giving quick, sloppy, incorrect or wrong information to end a call as quickly as possible is one way to reduce the queue, but it is not the way to help Canadians. That is not being client friendly.
This is an ongoing concern and I found the minister's response on November 22, 2017, to be wholly unsatisfactory.
View Kamal Khera Profile
Lib. (ON)
View Kamal Khera Profile
2018-03-28 19:20 [p.18241]
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.
View Pat Kelly Profile
CPC (AB)
View Pat Kelly Profile
2018-03-28 19:23 [p.18241]
Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary's response tonight was full of promise and an acknowledgement of the shortcomings identified by the Auditor General. Unfortunately, it contained no evidence that there has been any improvement in service or any fulfillment of the Liberals' campaign promise to treat Canadian taxpayers as valued clients as opposed to merely taxpayers.
The Liberals are going to have to start demonstrating some evidence that anything they have done since they were elected in 2015 has actually contributed to keeping any of their election promises. They are well into their mandate. It is well past time to blame the previous government.
We could get into a race to the bottom about who has been the worst at serving Canadians in a department, but that is not going to help people figure out how to file their tax returns properly.
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