Public Accounts

This House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Accounts meeting resumed its study of the Auditor General’s fall 2025 report on the Canada Revenue Agency’s (CRA) contact centres. Witnesses included Scott Jones, Scott Davis, and Kristin Brunner from Shared Services Canada (SSC); Hugo Pagé, Melanie Serjak, and Denis Skinner from the CRA; and Andrew Hayes from the Office of the Auditor General (OAG).

Scott Jones, President of SSC, stated that the $50 million figure in the contract was a minimum commitment to the vendor for their initial investment, not an estimated total value, and that the contract’s actual cost of $190 million over ten years was within the $300 million in procurement authorities and equated to about 33 cents per call. He acknowledged that the contract’s custom requirements made it difficult to hold the vendor accountable for performance, but noted that a new contract awarded in July 2025 uses standard commercial terms, gives the CRA a separate contract with detailed billing, and provides more autonomy to deploy features. Jones disagreed with the characterization that the contract value was underestimated and said SSC welcomes the OAG’s planned audit of the contract.

Hugo Pagé, Assistant Commissioner and CFO at the CRA, said the agency agrees with the Auditor General’s recommendations and is working with SSC to strengthen governance and clarify roles and responsibilities through a new contract operations and partnership structure. He noted that under the new contract, the CRA will assume the role of technical authority and receive detailed invoices directly from the vendor, which will improve financial controls and accountability. Pagé declined to disclose specific fraud detection thresholds, citing the risk of aiding fraudsters, but said controls are adjusted when weaknesses are identified.

Andrew Hayes, Deputy Auditor General, said the OAG’s audit found that the CRA could not provide evidence of validating vendor invoices for usage, and that the agency’s focus on schedule adherence over accuracy in agent evaluations contributed to poor service quality. He defended the audit’s findings, noting that the CRA had confirmed the facts in the report, and expressed concern that the agency’s reported 77% satisfaction rate excludes callers who did not reach an agent. Hayes confirmed that the OAG will audit the telephony contract and said the agency needs to improve accuracy and timeliness, especially during peak tax season.

Scott Davis, Assistant Deputy Minister and CFO at SSC, explained that SSC receives a consolidated invoice from the vendor and performs post-payment verification using forecasts from partner departments, but acknowledged that the audit focused on the CRA’s service to Canadians rather than SSC’s internal validation processes. He said he looks forward to the OAG’s next audit to demonstrate that taxpayer dollars are safeguarded.

Kristin Brunner, Assistant Deputy Minister of Digital Services at SSC, stated that the telephony platform has been stable with no critical outages since 2021, and that service level targets are monitored and reported on. She noted that under the old contract, service credits could not be applied because the vendor was not solely accountable for outages, but that the new contract addresses this by using commercial terms.

Denis Skinner, Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the IT Branch at the CRA, said the agency’s generative AI chatbot is a beta version tested with users, and that the screen clearly indicates it is not a human agent. He defended the agency’s IT systems as advanced, with hundreds of thousands of business rules to manage fraud risk, but did not provide specific thresholds for manual review.

Melanie Serjak, Assistant Commissioner of the Assessment, Benefit, and Service Branch at the CRA, outlined improvements under a 100-day service plan, including a call-scheduling pilot for the disability tax credit and a new “Manage balance” feature in My Account that has received over 10,000 callback requests. She said the agency reviews over 130,000 calls per year for quality, with accuracy rates just over 90% for account-specific inquiries, and that training is continuous, with new AI tools being piloted to assist agents. Serjak disagreed with the OAG’s characterization of service quality, noting that the OAG validated the agency’s methodology and that the audit sampled only 167 calls.

The committee also heard debate on a $4.997 million refund issued to a small company, with Conservative members pressing the CRA on why it was not flagged by automated controls. Pagé and Skinner declined to disclose specific thresholds, citing security concerns, but said controls are reviewed and adjusted after any fraud incident. No motions or procedural votes were recorded during the meeting.