Public Accounts Committee on Oct. 21st, 2025

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

In my home province of Alberta, how many first nations are not covered under that agreement?

[Karen Hogan]

I don't have that specific level of information.

I'm going to see if perhaps Glenn can add something there.

[Glenn Wheeler, Principal, Office of the Auditor General]

In the province of Alberta, 25 of the 48 first nations are not covered by the agreement.

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

That's half.

[Glenn Wheeler]

It's about half, yes.

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Half aren't covered under the agreement, and the Government of Canada, the Liberals, only have agreements with half of the provinces.

How many territories are covered?

[Karen Hogan]

There are no territories that have agreements.

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

This is an abject failure.

[Karen Hogan]

This is why we concluded that the progress on our recommendations from a 2022 report was unsatisfactory. There is a lot of work. I think that Indigenous Services Canada really needs to rethink how they approach engaging and working with first nations.

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

They're trying to get to these tripartite agreements between the province, the nations and the federal government. How many of those exist? It was announced in the 2019 budget.

[Karen Hogan]

In 2022, we actually looked at agreements, and there were six emergency service agreements that had been put in place. None of them were tripartite. They were just moving to tripartite. They were dual-party agreements.

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

It's six years post-announcement in the budget, and there are still zero.

[Karen Hogan]

Even more concerning is that there are fewer service agreements between 2022 and now. I think a service agreement provides clarity to first nations communities on what to expect in an emergency. Even if you're working toward something new, you could renew contracts that expire. You could put something in place to provide some clarity and certainty to first nations.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you.

That is the time, I'm afraid, Ms. Goodridge.

Up next is Ms. Yip for five minutes.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Congratulations to you and your whole team on this five-year milestone.

What do you feel is your most significant impact?

[Karen Hogan]

I have to admit that I don't think I was expecting that question today.

Over the last five years, we've really changed within the organization and have tried to deliver reports that are easier for people to digest. Hopefully, you actually want to read them. They're not 8,000 or 10,000 words. We are covering topics that I think are so important to Canadians all across the country.

We try to look at programs that cover masses, but then we also think about the population that needs it the most, those who are the furthest behind, and hopefully it would encourage the government to bring them forward first.

I feel that I have a lot left to accomplish in the next five years. I hope that Parliament will support me, and studying our reports is one of the best ways you can do that.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

That's great.

Now I'm going to just dive right in.

We've heard from our constituents across the country that Canadians don't just want faster phone service; they want easier ways to resolve issues without needing to call the CRA. How does the agency's shift towards digital services, like extended chat hours and new account recovery tools, align with your recommendations for long-term service improvements?

[Karen Hogan]

I think they are aligned. There are many individuals who want to speak with an agent, and then there are many individuals who are quite happy doing the self-service option. There's an opportunity to improve Charlie, the chatbot, as we saw that only two in six questions we asked—which were general in nature—were accurately answered, when other publicly available artificial intelligence tools were giving better answers.

I think that our recommendation around improving tools.... It's not just automated tools but also the tools that agents have, so that once you reach an agent, the call can be more efficient and effective. We found that, on average, a call lasted about 17 minutes, but 30% of that time was spent on hold and waiting for someone to find an answer. Therefore, there are a lot of opportunities to improve some of the tools, and that's leveraging technology to make things better.

I think the final recommendation we made was to divert or dedicate the calls that are about trying to access My Account. My Account is a portal that was created so that everyone can self-serve when it comes to the Canada Revenue Agency. However, it's occupying the majority of the calls made to the call centre. If you could split those up and have some real technical support but then expertise on answering tax questions, I think it would improve the service.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

I'd like to turn to the cybersecurity report.

Why is it that 119 out of 204 federal organizations are not required to use the cybersecurity services offered by Shared Services Canada?

[Karen Hogan]

I think it's important to say that there are some effective cyber-defence tools out there, and the cyber-defence sensors are one of them. It is a policy choice over which federal organizations are required to use the services offered by Shared Services Canada. Out of the 119 that are not required, some have voluntarily adopted some of the tools. They are known to be very effective.

However, when we asked them why they don't use the tools, they cited a few reasons, one being a potential impact on their independence. For example, if they were a Crown corporation using a tool offered by the government, it could impede their independence. They felt that there was limited ability to customize these tools, and they were also concerned about the maintenance and support that might be offered from other organizations.

Now, I can tell you that I'm one of the most independent offices in the federal government, and while I am responsible for ensuring that I have good cyber-defences, I have adopted the cyber-defence sensors, because they are a layer over and above what I have already put into place. I think that Canadians would expect that the federal government would do everything it could to protect their information and the government's information.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Given that some of the Crown corporations may feel like they want to protect themselves, how does that impact the coordination, then?

[Karen Hogan]

I think that's one of the biggest gaps that we identified. While there are tools in place, there are some important gaps that exist in defences. Also, when not everyone in the federal family is using all the same cyber-defences, you have a potential vulnerability or weakness. In fact, the more people who contribute to feeding information about potential attacks, the more the cyber-defences of the Government of Canada are bolstered. I think something needs to be done to fix that fragmented approach.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Okay.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you.

Do you have a follow-up, Ms. Yip? If you don't, I can come back to any members later.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

You can come back.