The Current - Why can’t you get a CRA agent on the line?

Episode Date: September 22, 2025

Krista Tucker Petrick just wants to close her step-mother's will. But until she can reach a human at the CRA, she can't. The North Bay, Ontario school principal is just one of many people frustrated with the CRA call centre. Regina bookkeeper Erin Rudd says she and her staff spend endless hours trying to get an agent on the line — and that's bad for her business. The federal government is in the midst of a 100 day plan to improve service. But will anything change?

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Maybe you've been on hold for a while. Maybe you started to hate that music and the recorded voice on loop while you waited to speak with a real person. But at least you're in line, right? So imagine not even getting put on hold, just hearing a computer tell you this over and over again. Thank you for calling the Canada Revenue Agency's individual tax inquiry service. All of our agents are busy helping other callers. Stay on the line to use our automated service. Yes, that computer works for the government,

for the agency that collects your taxes, and it's telling you that you can't even sit and wait for a human to talk to you. If you want to do that, you'll just have to redial, perhaps again and again and again. I'm going to speak with two people this morning who are pretty fed up with hearing that recording. They have listened to it dozens, if not hundreds of times trying to get tax issues sorted out, and they are not alone.

Ottawa's taxpayer's ombudsperson recently said that his office is swamped with complaints, and about a quarter of them are about the Canada Revenue Agency or CRA Call Center. In response, the government has launched a 100-day plan to improve services. We'll hear what the union representing the call center workers thinks, and we'll also hear from a longtime tax expert. But first, I'm joined by Krista Tucker Petrick from North Bay, Ontario. She has been trying to reach the CRA for weeks so that she can settle her late stepmother's estate. We're also joined by Erin Rudd from Regina.

We're talking to the CRA as a regular part of her accounting business. Good morning to you both. Good morning. Krista, you started calling the CRA near the beginning of August. How long did you think it would take to sort out the issues that the CRA had to deal with? I didn't think it would take very long at all. I thought it was a simple. question to have answered by somebody. I thought maybe, you know, I might have to wait 30 to 40 minutes

online. Anytime I had ever called in the past, and that was quite a while ago, I'd never experienced this. So I really didn't think it was going to take long at all. And so what happened? You pick up the phone, you dial the number, and then what? And then I got that recording. And so I settled in and started to redial and I actually had a day where I was able to spend seven hours and over 635 redials trying to get through to be able to even be in the queue. You redialed 600 plus times over seven hours. I did. I had a lot of desk work I was able to do while I was able to hit redial. My email inbox was very clean that day.

Have you managed to reach anybody? I have not managed to reach anybody. I've actually now enlisted the help of my local MP. And is there, I mean, without getting into too deep of the details, you're dealing with wrapping up your duties as the executor to your stepmother's estate. Is this something that you could do online or? No, the thing that I need to do requires me to speak to somebody. And so I've tried the live bot. I've tried the live agent chat. and I've tried calling. But unfortunately, none of those avenues get me to where I need to be. I want to come back to you and come back to what it's like to dial the phone 600 plus times over the course of several hours and how that makes one feel. But, Aaron, you aren't just dealing with one issue.

You're calling on behalf of your clients, right? How many hours do you think you and your staff have spent on the phone trying to get through to an agent at the CRA? Well, I honestly have a revolving staff member that starts in the morning and starts calling just about every day, just to try to get through. And so as you sit there and you push redial over and over and over and over again, what goes through your mind? Frustration. We're trying to help our clients get answers. We're trying to get answers so we can do our job. And we have to speak to somebody to get the answers that we need because it's not available online. line, this is our only option. I'd read that you, what, you wanted to have a screaming room at your office so that you could

go in and just yell? Yep, that's been a request of staff for about three years. Because people are fed up. Yeah. Krista, what about for you? I mean, I'd read that you're not just fed up, that you were left in tears because of this. I was, you know, got very frustrated. You know, every time you dial, it's that glimmer of hope that may be this time because

between when it gives you the option. to select French to when you get the message. It's about 15 seconds. So at 2nd 14, you're real hopeful that you're going to get through this time. And then it's the letdown every single time of all our agents are busy helping other customers. That sounds maddening. It is. Erin, do you have to call, I mean, you're a professional, you're an accountant.

Do you have to call the same number as all of us? We don't have a special number. We call the same number that every other person calls. And at some point at time, I mean, you do get to speak. speak with people? I mean, Krista, I think, would dream of this opportunity, but you have been able to get through. Yeah, we do get through. And from time to time, we get an answer, but as of late, the last year and a half, we get through and we get the first level call agents, and they can't answer a question. So then they have to escalate it to a second level or a senior agent, which they

can't transfer you to. They have to send a message, and then you wait 72 hours for them to call you back. Sadly, we often don't get that call back. I was wondering whether you get that call back in 72 hours if it's so difficult to get through to people in the first place. About three out of five times, we'll get that call. How long do you have files open for if that's what you're dealing with? I have three files now that I've been working on for over a year and a half to get an answer for taxpayers. And how do the taxpayers, your clients, how do they respond to those sorts of delays? They're frustrated. They're angry. We often get yelled at because they think we're not doing our end of the job. And we are. We just can't get an answer. The union that represents the people who are on the other end of that phone line at the CRA say that the answer to what you're both talking about is more staff. The union says the thousands of jobs have been cut at the tax agency this year. Have a listen to what Mark Breyer, the national president of the union of taxation employees, told us.

There's between 200,000 and 250,000 callers calling the CRI every day, and the staff can only answer 5% of the calls coming in right now. Our members are feeling pressured. They take abuse on the phone lines, unfortunately, by frustrated taxpayers, and they are exhausted, they are stressed out, and some of them are in such a bad shape that they go on sick leave, and it's really, really bad. Krista, do you think the CRA needs to add more staff, put more people on the line? so that more calls can be answered? I do. I absolutely do. Not only for us out here trying to call in,

but also for their own employees who are being run ragged. Aaron, what about for you? I mean, it's as simple from your perspective is just adding more people to answer the phones. If people can't get through, if you're not even allowed to wait on hold because there are so many calls coming in, do you need more people there to be able to answer those calls?

That's a given. If you've got that many calls and it's only 5%, you need more people. That might free up the senior agents to actually call us back so we can get the complicated answers that our taxpayers need. Have you ever, I mean, in your work, Aaron, have you ever had any explanation as to why the system seems to be so far off the rails? None. So the supervisors that you finally, if they ever call you back, if you were to say, listen, this is what's going on, this is what I'm dealing with. We have these files that are open for a year and a half. They don't have any explanation as to what's going on. No, and I've asked numerous times, and they say that the only response they get

is we're doing the best we can. The federal government acknowledges that there's a real problem that things have flown off the rails. A 100-day plan to improve things is now underway. We asked the Secretary of State in charge of the CRA, Wayne Long, to join us today. He wasn't available. He recently told CTV news that the delays were, in his words, completely unacceptable. He said, let's call a spade, a spade, we hit rock bottom, can't get much worse than it is now. Also said that if the CRA was a call center selling hotel rooms that heads would roll, how much confidence, Krista, do you have that things will change, that now there's this 100-day plan and the government official in charge of it says, yeah, this is unacceptable.

100-day plans sound wonderful on paper, but I don't see that actually coming to fruition, just because of how we are watching government agencies across the province across the nation right now, where things are falling apart and you can put all the plans you want in place, but the action behind them. And a lot of those folks who've been laid off are now going to have picked up jobs somewhere else because they need to have a job. So then you're having a large training need that comes with it, I would suspect. You sound deflated by all of this.

I am deflated by this. I just want to complete this estate so that I can meet my responsibility. Aaron, you run a small business. What do you think should happen? Again, we heard Wayne Long, and one of the things he said is if this was, you know, a business that was selling hotel rooms, that you'd be out of business and heads would roll. Is that what is going to be required here? That's exactly what is required.

There needs to be accountability. And like Krista said, you know, a lot of the people they've laid off have found other jobs. so they hire, there is going to be training or there needs to be training. The call center people are frustrated because they can't answer our questions and there's so many calls. We need more people that are trained so we can get this through. What would you say to, if you could speak with the folks in charge of the CRA, Erin, what would you say to them?

We're all supposed to be working together. Let's help each other. You know, I deal with the CRA six, seven, eight times a day. I hear their frustration. And unfortunately, I have no choice but to make it worse because I've got this client asking this question and they're reviewing this or they're auditing that. You ever regret your line of work? I think that maybe given what you're up against, that you want to get out of this business?

Oh, I've thought about retirement many, many times. Krista, when you hear that recording, we played it at the beginning of our conversation. I mean, I should have given you a warning before. Does it give you PTSD or something like that? Well, it certainly makes me cringe every time I hear it. When will you pick up the phone again to start dialing? I try three times a day, sometimes four. I work in schools, so I'm back at work now,

and I don't have the luxury of being able to sit there and redial all day long. Every day you call three or four times a day. Yeah. And there's no way that you can say, call me back at this appropriate time. You're just kind of at the mercy of you hope that somebody will pick up. Yeah. And knowing that only 5% of people get through, you know, I buy lottery tickets too because I probably have a better chance at that. Fair enough.

I wish you the best of luck, maybe with the lottery, but also the lottery of getting through to the CRA. Krista, thank you very much. Thank you. And Erin, good to talk to you. Thank you. Krista Tucker Petrick is a school principal in North Bay, Ontario. Erin Rudd is the owner of Black Star Accounting. She was in Regina.

Hey, I'm Gavin Crawford from the podcast, Because News. It's a show where I ask comedians questions about the news of the week, and they try their best not to answer correctly. This week, we play a game called Two Truths and AI. Delve into some forgotten baseball slang as we cheer for the Jays, and I'll ask the panel, which entertainer is refusing to perform in America this year. Join me, Martha Chavez, Alice Moran, and Miguel Rivas, three comedians who are not worried about getting yoinked off the air

because they made fun of the president. Get Because News, wherever you get your podcast, which I'm presuming is here. Joining us from Calgary is somebody who knows the tax system. Kim Moody has been in the business for 33 years, runs a tax law and accounting firm. He is the author of a book on Navigating the Tax World. It's called Making Life Less Taxing. Kim, good morning to you. Good morning.

Is the call system at the CRA broken? Oh, completely. You know, I listened to your last panel here, I agree with most of what they said. But, you know, I've been in this business, as you said, 33 years. It's always been a problem getting through. It's just recently, I'd say within about the last five years, it's pathetic. It's absolutely pathetic. Why do you think it's become noticeably, in your words, noticeably worse?

Well, this is where I disagree with the last panelist a little bit, you know, is the answer. And I certainly disagree with the union leader. Do I think the problem is simply adding more people? Absolutely not. Over the last 10 years, we've seen a 47% increase in the head. count of the CRA, almost 60,000 employees. And yes, there's been a slight reduction. You know, I hear lots of news about how there's been massive layoffs. That's just false. The reductions have been pretty minor compared to the additions over the last 10 years.

And so what we've seen, especially in the last five years, is massive increases in head counts with the corresponding reduction, like big time reduction in quality and ability to get through the call center. So my point being is that throwing more people, more money at it is simply not the answer. The answer is to dig into a much more, you know, what is the systemic issue? Well, and I want to come back to that. I mean, one of the things that is pressing right now is this 100-day plan that Wayne Long, the Secretary of State responsible for the CRA and the finance minister, Francois-Fran, have launched this 100-day plan to improve service in response to these service delays. 100 days is not that long. How confident are you that Ottawa is going to be

able to even get a nibble into this problem. Zero. Zero. Yeah, it's very political. Do you know what December 11th, 2025 is, Matt? I don't, no. It's the 100th day. And it's...

Not too far away. No. And so what I've been doing, ever since they've done the announcement, is I've been calling the CRA. And I'm tempted to record it, actually, just like you presented on the last panel, the recording. and see if there's any changes throughout the next days. So far, since the announcement, there has been zero.

This problem, as I mentioned, is systemic. It's longstanding, and it's something that will take much more. Now, do I like the fact that there's acknowledgement of the issues? Absolutely. Is there anything that could be done in 100 days? Again, Wayne Long says that, you know, if this was private sector, you'd be out of business and people would be fired. Is there anything that can be done in 100 days?

If they've set themselves that date. Yeah, and I wrote a piece in the financial post about this. But I think a lot of it is more about setting the plans as opposed to getting something done. Like a hundred days to solve this issue is just not realistic. One of the things that you talk about is callback cues in a scheduling system. There's currently nothing in place in the system to have somebody call you back rather than wait in line. Do you understand why that's the case? You know, actually I don't.

And I'm not an IT specialist, of course, or a call center specialist. but I do know that the CRA had this. You know, they had a callback feature years ago, and for some reason it was dumped. But even if you could have a scheduling system, like the minister said in his announcement, that would be a much better thing to do. So if you could, you know, if they get the plan in place and have a hard date that they're going to implement it, that would be progress in my view. One of the other things that you say in this piece for the post is,

and this is something that Aaron talked about, the idea of having a dedicated line for tax professionals. If you're an accountant and you're dealing with other people's concerns, that this will help address some of those bigger issues at volume at scale. Absolutely. I mean, there's literally millions of Caneans that hire advisors to deal with their tax matters. And the advisors in general know what they're doing. Right now, there's a dedicated line for technical matters that's very poorly staffed and it's hard to get through, et cetera. But expanding that would take a big burden off the average. Canadian, in my view. One of the other things just finally on that list of suggestions is set hard

service standards. Can you set a hard service standard for a workforce that is already under water? Yeah, you know, I think it's a two-way street. You know, Canadians are frustrated. Canaan's overwhelmed. It's not just the poor CRA employees that are overwhelmed as well. You know, one of the things that's not talked about is there's a lot of CRA employees that are working from home and dealing on their cell phones. In my view, that needs to stop. Do we know, Again, anecdotally, if you go, there are Reddit forms all about this, where people will be on the line and maybe they finally get through and then the call is dropped because it's on the cell phone. Do we know whether that's had any meaningful impact on the problem that we're talking about? Well, I can't find any statistics on it.

I certainly have looked, but I can tell you anecdotally, I have personal experience of this where I've waited, you know, for hours and hours and hours and all of a sudden in the middle of a phone call, boom, it's dropped. And then there's no call back, which always surprises me. Like if a call is dropped, why doesn't the employee call me back? Let's go back to the issue of staffing numbers. If the staff that exists now, the number of people who are there can only answer something like 5% of the calls coming in, it would seem logical to many people that if you add more staff, more calls will be answered. Why do you think that's not the answer? Well, because we've seen a huge increase, right?

And have we seen an increased service standard that corresponds to that huge increase? No, we haven't. And so, yes, it's absolutely logical. And the first answer is throw more people at it. But in my view, the issue is much more complex than that. I think you need to look at what is causing these systemic issues. Let's look at what's causing these people to call in the first place. Like, why are we having 200,000 phone calls per day?

That's a lot. And I think the short answer is the system is very, very complex, both from an administrative point of view and from a legislative point of view. Let me just put a pin just. on the number of just one more piece of this. And that is, I mean, you could look at changing the tax system. We'll talk about that. But the system as it exists right now means that people still need to call. And so if you have thousands and thousands of people who can't get through, they're losing their minds because they can't make that call that they have to make. And the head of the union says, well, that's because, yes, there's a lot of people. And to your point,

the head count has gone up. It's about 50,000 employees now, up from about 40,000 in 2015. But No, no, no, it's almost 60,000 now. Okay, but that's reduced a little bit. But that's still not enough to meet the demand. Have a listen again to Mark Breyer, who is the head of the union that represents those workers. Before the pandemic, up in 2015, the CRA had been severely cut before by the previous government, Mr. Harper. So there were not enough staff to handle the call volume and to process the files in the timely matter. So it was badly needed to reinvest the CRA.

So at 40,000 was way too low. During the pandemic, it exploded, that's correct, because of all the emergency benefit programs. But since then, for example, for the call centers, the call volume has not gone down to the pre-pendemic level. And the situation was really bad in the contact centers. There were not enough staff even before the pandemic in 2019, for example. It's interesting. This is a government division that actually brings in revenue for the government. It's a moneymaker.

So wouldn't it make sense to, I mean, you could see that hiring more staff to connect with people who are trying to call in, could be an investment, not just for service, but for the balance book of the government as well. Well, you would hope so, right? But we've seen a huge increase with very little return. You know, I've been writing about this for years and years. Just throwing more people at it or more money is not the solution. You need to get right down to the nitty-gritty.

With respect to Mr. Breyer's comments, you know, he opened up his comments with a very partisan statement, which, in my view, partisan politics needs to get out of this equation. There was necessary reductions 15 years ago, and I think there needs to be necessary reductions today. But with respect to the call centers, we need to take a hard look at what is causing these issues instead of just throwing more people and doing the easy thing. So get to the root of this. Why are so many people calling in the first place?

And how do you go about reducing the number of people that have to call CRA? Oh, there's a whole bunch of reasons. One is that the digital services that are offered are not able to handle the ultimate questions. that's number one. Number two, the average Canadian has many questions with respect to how to handle a certain issue and, you know, they can't afford to hire expensive help. So they call the CRA. That's number two. Number three is the legislation itself. The income tax act is horrifically complex. It's unapproachable to the average Canadian. So you combine all three of those points and that just drives issues and drives phone calls. You're not going to solve that

issue overnight. There needs to be a plan to make the system less complex. And if that can be achieved, the call volume will go down. But it's not an overnight fix, unfortunately. People have looked at the nation of Estonia for inspiration here. And you've talked about this as well. The Estonian government website says that you can file your taxes in about a minute because they have a flat rate personal income tax of 22 percent and that most of the documents are actually filed for you. What would that mean for people in Canada? Oh, that would be fantastic. And I've written about this as well, where if you could have an auto filing system, especially for lower income Canadians or average Canadians that just have a T4 slip, for example, and maybe an RSP deduction

or some sort of pension contribution, you know, they don't need to hire tax preparers to do that and then wait online on a call center. Countries like the UK and you mentioned Estonia already have systems in play. Now, to the CRA's credit, they have committed to, and the government is committed to put in place auto, you know, auto filing. But unfortunately, again, I don't know why it's taking so long, but there's, you know, they're doing the telephone thing, which is not, that's not the answer. Filling out your tax returns by telephone or, you know, the system that they piloted recently is, is not the answer. It needs to go much further than that. So the union wants people to call and right to the government to ask for more CRA call center staff. What do you want the Canadians who

are on hold or not even on hold, but they just can't get put on hold because there are too many calls coming in. What do you want those Canadians to ask the government to do to fix the CRA? I want them to, you know, when I wrote the article that we talked about already, I spent a lot of time thinking about, you know, what the average Canadians should want in the next 100 days. And the five things that I wrote out are, I think, the only feasible things that can happen. I think the most tangible thing would be the scheduling system and a callback feature. If you can get that, I think a lot of Canadians would be a lot more patient. Whereas right now, you know, I replicated the full waterglass example that they have on their website, which I think is

rather silly and bit condescending. And so long story short, is I think if they could do that in the short term, Canadians would at least be pacified in the short term. Does that recorded message drive you around the bend as well? Yes, it does, especially given the fact that it's a computer voice. And I don't know about you. I don't take well to, you know, non-human voices. So I don't like them at least. But Kim, good to speak with you. Thank you very much. Yeah, my pleasure. All the best. Kim Moody is a tax expert. He was in Calgary. We also asked for an interview with the finance minister, Francois Philippe Champagne. He was not available. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC

go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.