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Results: 1 - 15 of 18
View Louise Chabot Profile
BQ (QC)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Minister, we are glad to see you here. I thank you for your availability.
You spoke in your opening remarks about the importance you place on the security of the citizens of Canada. You are well aware that earlier this week, for the second time, the CRA had to block the accounts of 800,000 citizens because of serious security issues.
Can you assure us that all measures are in place at Service Canada to protect the records of citizens who have an account there? Have you increased security measures?
Lori MacDonald
View Lori MacDonald Profile
Lori MacDonald
2021-03-16 15:01
Thank you for your question.
Mr. Chair, in fact we've put a number of procedures in place over the course of this summer as a result of security concerns we had in terms of accessing personal information. We're pleased to say that we actually introduced a new multi-factor authentication system—a two-factor authentication system—to ensure that the personal information of Canadians accessing our services is even more secure than it had been in the past.
View Louise Chabot Profile
BQ (QC)
I'd like us to talk about the Service Canada performance report. You know that the Auditor General recommended that Service Canada publish call centre performance information service standards in a transparent and consistent manner and audit the results to confirm their accuracy. You were to govern yourself accordingly in the short term.
Was all of this put in place?
Also, in your earlier testimony, there was some discussion about flexibility and the impact of the closure of the Service Canada call centres and mobile service centres. I think it is only appropriate that that not happen again.
Where do you stand on the performance report?
Lori MacDonald
View Lori MacDonald Profile
Lori MacDonald
2021-03-16 15:03
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for your question.
I'm happy to say that over the course of the past year we've actually put two new services in place to augment...our vulnerable populations where we have not been able to re-establish the site visits. We hope to do that this year, once some of the guidelines have been increased in terms of access to travel and so on.
These two measures include two new alternative service delivery models to reach those more vulnerable populations. One is called “e-service”, where clients can actually go online, fill out a form and send it to us, and we respond within 24 to 48 hours. We've actually reached many thousands of Canadians with this new service.
The second measure is through eCOLS, which is where we've used third party intervenors to support us and rule in northern communities to support particularly indigenous communities for service. That's a toll-free number where a Canadian can call the toll-free number—and we actually return their call as well—and we do all of their services for them online. This is also a system in terms of their being able to remain safely in their homes. Those two services are actually augmenting the service that is not available through the travel program.
In terms of the call centres, I'll turn to my colleague Cliff Groen. As Minister Hussen indicated, we have invested significant amounts of money in augmenting our service call centres this past year, including hiring up to 1,500 additional staff.
[Technical difficulty—Editor] to address some of the issues that were in place.
Frank Vermaeten
View Frank Vermaeten Profile
Frank Vermaeten
2021-02-23 15:32
Thank you very much and good afternoon, everyone.
Thank you for the invitation to appear before the committee today as you continue your review of the employment insurance program.
With me is my colleague, Annette Butikofer, who's assistant commissioner and chief information officer of the information technology branch at the Canada Revenue Agency. In my brief remarks, I'd like to provide the committee with a short description of the CRA's responsibility with regard to delivering benefits to Canadians.
First and foremost, the CRA seeks to ensure that Canadians obtain benefit payments in a timely manner and have avenues of redress when they disagree with a decision on their benefit eligibility. The CRA administers the Canada child benefit, the goods and services tax, the harmonized sales tax credit, the children's special allowances program, the disability tax credit, the Canada workers benefit and provincial and territorial programs.
Indeed, the CRA uses its federal tax delivery infrastructure to administer 181 services, ongoing benefits and one-time payment programs on behalf of the provinces and territories. These income-tested benefits and other services contribute directly to the economic and social well-being of Canadians by supporting families and children.
I should note that while the CRA is the administrator of many other benefits, the CRA has no direct involvement in the administration of the EI program or the EI system.
As the committee may know, the CRA's role in delivering benefits evolved as the COVID-19 pandemic hit, at the peak of the 2019 tax season. The CRA shifted gears to focus on the administration and issuance of emergency benefits to Canadians impacted by the pandemic. The Canada emergency response benefit was launched in April 2020 and was jointly administered by the CRA and Service Canada. Given the speed required to deliver the CERB payments to Canadians—within some three weeks—and the initial 16-week duration, the CRA leveraged pre-existing information technology services to ensure that payments would be issued on a timely basis.
As of February 14, 2021, the CRA had processed 22,652,229 CERB applications, representing $45.3 billion paid to Canadians. The CERB was followed by the Canada emergency student benefit, or CESB, in 2020, which leveraged the program and system design of CERB. Through the course of administering the CESB, the CRA has processed 2,140,226 applications, representing $2.94 billion paid to Canadians.
As part of the transition from CERB, since the fall of 2020, the CRA now administers three new COVID benefits: the Canada recovery benefit, the Canada recovery caregiver benefit and the Canada recovery sickness benefit.
As of February 13, 2021, the CRA had processed and paid out to Canadians, for the CRB or recovery benefit, 9,864,423 applications, representing $9.86 billion. For the CRCB—the caregiver benefit—we paid out 2,840,045 applications, representing $1.42 billion, and for the CRSB there have been 675,473 applications, representing $337.74 million.
In addition, the CRA also administers the Canada emergency wage subsidy and the Canada emergency rent subsidy programs, which were launched to assist businesses during the pandemic. As of February 14, 2021, 2,619,890 wage subsidy applications had been approved, with a $65.56-billion value of subsidies approved. As of February 7, 2021, 347,480 rent subsidy applications had been approved, with $1.29 billion in payments of subsidies approved.
In conclusion, while the CRA has no direct involvement in the administration of the EI program or systems, as those are the responsibility of ESDC, the CRA plays an important role in delivering many other benefits on which Canadians rely.
Thank you again for the invitation to appear, Mr. Chair. Ms. Butikofer and I would be happy to answer any questions the committee may have.
View Raquel Dancho Profile
CPC (MB)
I'm pleased to hear it's not actually through CRA, because my next question was about the CRA call wait times, which I'm sure you heard about until you were blue in the face, but I did want to address them with you.
We're hearing from across the country that many people are having issues. In normal years in tax season, people wait a couple of hours sometimes on the phone and that's not necessarily abnormal, but it seems to be incredibly high even compared with a normal tax season. I'm hearing from folks and I know there are MPs across the country.... I'm sure everyone on this committee has probably had constituents complain about this issue, where someone is waiting three or four hours and then they get an operator saying, “Too busy, call back later,” and hang up. Then they have to start again.
My concern is that these are folks who were promised support from the federal government. The Liberal government has announced these things, but the problem is that thousands of people can't even get through to access them through CRA, and there's a whole host of technical things, as we know, that can go wrong and be why people need to call CRA to get those benefits. It's easy to announce these things, yet they're getting roadblocked, some for weeks, trying to get through.
I know you're aware of this issue, so can you explain to the committee the measures you're taking to reduce these call wait times to more of a humane level?
Frank Vermaeten
View Frank Vermaeten Profile
Frank Vermaeten
2021-02-23 16:14
Absolutely, and certainly it is of great concern to us. Just to give you context, the call demand is just unprecedented. In a typical week we might have received, at the same time last year, 350,000 calls and this year we're receiving over a million calls. The demand is just very large. We have ramped up our hiring. We're in the process of hiring over an additional 2,000 people. That gives us 1,500 more people than it did this time last year for the tax season. We have a couple of other processes in place that allow us to get those wait times down.
Let me also just say one tiny thing. It is absolutely true that there are some people who are waiting a very long time. The average wait time tends to be around 25 minutes, but of course it's the outliers. It's often when people need to speak to what we call a tier-two or tier-three agent, a specialist, that they have to wait this long. It's very unfortunate.
View Raquel Dancho Profile
CPC (MB)
I'm just going to ask a closing question. You mentioned that you're hiring 2,000 people. When did CRA start hiring these people?
View Raquel Dancho Profile
CPC (MB)
The only reason I ask and that I find it a bit concerning that it didn't start until November—and this isn't on you—is that we've been in this pandemic for almost a year now. I'm surprised it took until November to start hiring these 2,000. I would have thought that last March, when all of this was happening and you guys were administering CERB, you would have hired droves of people in anticipation of this.
We'll have to address this in Parliament, but I'm a bit disappointed to hear that hiring did not start until late fall—only a few months ago. That might explain why we're still experiencing considerable call volume and times.
Frank Vermaeten
View Frank Vermaeten Profile
Frank Vermaeten
2021-02-23 16:16
Here's the interesting thing: In fact, call wait times were very low in August, September and October, so things were manageable. There was always a plan to hire more people. We always hire more people in tax season, and there was a plan to hire more people than ever.
What we saw as the second wave came—I think it's the second wave, or perhaps the third wave, depending on how you count it—was that call volumes and call-handle time went up really unexpectedly.
I'll point you to the call-handle time. It went up by 40%. A lot had to do with identity theft, with the increase in sophistication of cyber-attacks. That's really what has led to an unexpected demand both in the number of calls and in the duration of those calls.
View Adam Vaughan Profile
Lib. (ON)
To pre-empt the chair's prerogative, if you could show that for P.E.I., where you have four zones and one very different zone, in order to understand how it can model into a smaller community in a very different way, that would be helpful as well.
In terms of the CRA, we heard previous testimony that the EI computer system runs on COBOL. Do you use COBOL at CRA as a computer language?
Annette Butikofer
View Annette Butikofer Profile
Annette Butikofer
2021-02-23 16:19
Thank you for the question.
Yes, we use COBOL in some of our systems. We also use Java. We use a blend of technologies, based on the platform and the type of system we're developing.
View Adam Vaughan Profile
Lib. (ON)
You use COBOL to interface with EI basically, though.
Annette Butikofer
View Annette Butikofer Profile
Annette Butikofer
2021-02-23 16:19
To interface with EI...?
View Adam Vaughan Profile
Lib. (ON)
It's a legacy program, and those programs that haven't kept pace with CRA's computer evolution are tied to the old one. Therefore, you have to use COBOL too.
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