Public Accounts Committee on Oct. 21st, 2025

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent—Akiawenhrahk, QC]

Thank you very much for your perspective on this issue.

The culture that has been established over the past 10 years means that the first victims are the most vulnerable people. After that, the agency itself will become a victim of that culture, as it will lose the trust of Canadians when they pay their taxes. Rebuilding that trust will be hard.

Mr. Chair, I'd like to move the following motion:

That, in light of serious concerns raised in the Auditor General’s report on the Canada Revenue Agency’s Contact Centres indicating significant failures to provide timely and accurate information to Canadians regarding taxes and benefits, the committee immediately undertake a study on this audit; The study examines the extent to which these failures have affected taxpayers and benefit recipients, particularly low-income Canadians, seniors, and families relying on timely benefit payments; The committee hold its first meeting on this study on Thursday, October 23, 2025; and Officials from the Canada Revenue Agency, including the Commissioner of Revenue, the assistant commissioners responsible for services, and relevant senior officials from the call centre and benefits branches, be called as witnesses for that meeting, alongside the Auditor General of Canada.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Has your motion been sent to our clerk?

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent—Akiawenhrahk, QC]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Okay.

The clerk has received it. It is being sent out.

What normally happens.... This is a matter-at-hand motion. It is in order. We're going to pick this up, but before I excuse the witnesses, I'm just going to take the temperature of the room.

I know this is something that has affected all our offices and, of course, Canadians at large and, as the auditor pointed out in a previous discussion, probably every person in this room. If there's broad acceptance to move this motion.... The government members, the Liberal members, have one more slot to ask questions, and I don't want to needlessly deprive them of that if we find agreement quickly.

If I find that we don't, and there's a debate, I will excuse the Auditor General and her team, because I know they have other items on their schedule today.

Are there any people who would like to speak to this motion?

I see Mr. Osborne.

Then it will be Mr. Lemire's turn.

Mr. Osborne, you have the floor, please.

[Tom Osborne, Liberal, Cape Spear, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Our vice-chair may want to speak to this as well, but I have not yet seen this motion. We haven't had time to look at, review or examine the motion. I'm always hesitant to speak...you can't speak in any sort of educated way to something you have not seen.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Okay, we can come back to you. A copy has been sent to your P9 account if you want to refer to it.

In the meantime, I'll go to Monsieur Lemire.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Chair, it goes without saying that the Bloc Québécois supports this motion. Under the circumstances, we see the urgency of responding to this issue, which is becoming very topical. So I think it is our committee's duty to act quickly.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Very good.

I will turn to Ms. Yip. I will go back to Mr. Deltell afterwards, just in case. I don't want to move things so quickly. I want to give all members a chance to review the motion before we vote on it.

Ms. Yip, you have the floor.

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

I agree with my colleague here and Mr. Osborne that we need time to review the motion.

We're here to ask questions of the Auditor General on the release of these new reports.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Mr. Deltell, I'll turn back to you.

If you want to say anything on the motion, you can. You don't have to. You can keep it short, or you can go on about what you think is the importance of the motion.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent—Akiawenhrahk, QC]

I think everyone can see, after Ms. Hogan's testimony and the documents that have been tabled, that there is an urgent need for action, as my colleague Mr. Lemire so aptly said. The trust of Canadians is at stake.

Beyond the mistakes that may have been made in the past, beyond the ambitions of the current management, the reality is that, four times out of five, the information provided is not the right information. That's troubling. Not everyone has access to accountants.

I believe that our first duty as parliamentarians is to ensure that all Canadians are treated properly. Those who can't afford to pay an accountant need to be treated properly. This is urgent. The document is scathing. That's not to mention that, at other times, the current minister pointed out that he was aware of the situation. So this is not new. Today's discussion is just confirming what every member of Parliament knows.

All MPs, regardless of their riding, region or political party, are constantly receiving calls from people who are troubled by what is happening at the Canada Revenue Agency. This is not new. This motion did not come out of the blue. That goes without saying.

What we want is to get to the bottom of things. I'm absolutely convinced that my colleagues on the government side agree with us that we need to get to the bottom of this issue, that the officials need to come and testify and explain their situation. That's what democracy is all about.

I urge my colleagues to support this motion.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Deltell.

I'm going back to Mr. Osborne for remarks.

[Tom Osborne, Liberal, Cape Spear, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I see two issues with this. One is that, in full transparency, I would like to have seen the text. It was obviously written. We did not see the text. We're asked to make a decision blindly, which I have a concern about.

The other concern is that this is eating into our time to ask questions. Is this something we can deal with at our next meeting? We have another meeting in two days. That would give us time to review this.

I'm not saying we're against it. We all want what's best here, but we have not yet seen this.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

We now call the question on the motion.

[Tom Osborne, Liberal, Cape Spear, NL]

I'm sorry. I'd like to have time to review the motion. Is it appropriate to ask that we do this on Thursday? We may all very well be in favour of this.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Unfortunately, when the question is called, the vote is called. The motion was put before the committee. I heard what you said about taking it to another day, but the motion is before the committee. In fact, the motion calls for this committee to address the CRA matter on Thursday. That's basically the gist of the motion.

(Motion agreed to: yeas 8; nays 0)

I will now go back to government members. There is one slot remaining for five minutes.

Mr. Osborne, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Tom Osborne, Liberal, Cape Spear, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to ask a couple of questions, and I'll allow my colleague to ask a couple of questions as well.

This is for Ms. Hogan, the Auditor General.

I'm concerned with the fact that fewer than 10% of people who apply through the recruitment process actually make it through the process. Is it as simple as having more recruitment officers to follow up with these individuals? Certainly, I would think that some individuals, over the course of time, if they have not been followed up with, may simply fall off the radar. If they were followed up with by recruitment officers, they might in fact continue to go through the process.

[Karen Hogan]

There are two parts to the answer to that question. One of them is that National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces do not know why more than 50% of the people abandon the recruitment process after they start. I think they first need to do a better job of collecting that information, because they can't improve or change something if they don't know why people are abandoning it.

One of the other things we could highlight, however, is that the recruitment process takes way too long. It should be about 100 to 150 days, and it's taking about twice as long. It's reasonable to assume that with that length of time, many people have perhaps moved on to find another job, and that happens no matter where you apply.

With National Defence, we saw them reaching out, but when an individual didn't communicate back after a couple of months, they did declare the application voluntarily withdrawn.

There are a lot of things that impact this, including the process to apply. It's very manual. It's not very automated, so there's an opportunity to improve the tools that support recruitment, in addition to looking at why recruitment is resulting in only one in 13 people making it to basic training.

[Tom Osborne, Liberal, Cape Spear, NL]

My second question has to do with the manual input, as opposed to automated input, and the fact that these systems are not connected. That's also a concern. Have you looked at the complexity of connecting these systems and having a more automated system? What is required of National Defence to do that?

[Karen Hogan]

I have to admit that I don't think we expected to see that many systems involved in tracking, training and recruitment. I would summarize it overall by saying that the process lacked automation and could really benefit from some electronic forms and better leveraging of technology. We saw that the army, the navy and the marines each tracked their own professional training, so you didn't have a global picture to understand why. In fact, on some bases they did it individually as well.

There's a real opportunity to get a global picture across National Defence, and I do know they are trying. They put in a new comprehensive system for training, but they didn't make it obligatory, so not many bases were using it. They have some of the tools, but they're just not using them, so they could leverage technology better.

[Kristina Tesser Derksen, Liberal, Milton East—Halton Hills South, ON]

I'm going to take the last few minutes of my colleague's time.

This is a broad question about your report and the follow-up programs on first nations. I noted a theme in your report. In a number of paragraphs, where you were talking about the nursing stations, for example, and the “lack of sustained management attention”, it appeared that previous recommendations were acknowledged by the department and that initial actions were put in place. There were assessments done and studies initiated, but then things just trailed off and fell off the radar, and next steps were not properly taken.

Can you comment on what you see as being the core problem that's leading to that type of lack of progress with respect to implementing the recommendations?

[Karen Hogan]

This was an opportunity for us to sit back and look at six reports, and ask, “What are the themes, and what do we think are some of the root causes?” My office has been looking at indigenous matters for a very long time. We identified four barriers. I don't think it's an exhaustive list of barriers, but there are four important ones.

The one you raise, the lack of sustained management attention, is a big one. There is this flurry of activity after we table reports, and there are action plans. You brought up a great example, where some surveys are done, some information is gathered, and then the attention to this just dissipates over time.

I wonder if it is a combination of the public service and the political arm agreeing on where to go but not redirecting resources or making sure there's funding to carry this through all the way to the end. That sustained focus is essential. There's a lot of turnover in the public service at times, and that could also see things just falling off the way.

I would highlight quickly the other three. There's lack of clarity around service levels. It's important that everyone knows what to expect, and then you can drive towards meeting that outcome. The passive and siloed approach the public service takes is a big contributor to the lack of progress. It really isn't going to get those small communities moving forward, especially those that need it the most and are further behind. That is directly linked to helping increase the capacity in first nations communities, not just technical skills but the capacity to access these programs.

I think that if those three are really tackled and looked at in a way different from the traditional way, we will hopefully see some improvements.

[Kristina Tesser Derksen, Liberal, Milton East—Halton Hills South, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

I want to thank the Auditor General and her team for coming in today.

Give me just one second, Monsieur Lemire. I'll just thank our witnesses. I'm going to excuse them, and then I'll hear you before ending the meeting. I know Ms. Hogan has a busy afternoon.

Thank you very much. It looks like we'll see you on Thursday on the CRA report. You are all excused.

In the meantime, I'll turn to Monsieur Lemire.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to give the Auditor General a chance to comment on the cost of auditing Crown corporations. To do so, I would ask her brief questions on behalf of the committee.

Do those costs seem reasonable? Are the amounts set out in the budgets sufficient to carry out audits?

No questions have been asked about that, and it hasn't been discussed.

Would the Auditor General like to add any comments?