Every tax season, Canadians brace themselves for long wait times, dropped calls and the familiar frustration of trying to get a straight answer from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). This year, the federal government’s response is a familiar one: hire more people. About 1,700 call centre workers, to be precise.
On paper, the plan sounds reassuring. CRA officials say they want to boost call centre staffing to roughly 4,500 agents to handle what they describe as a “very high forecast” of demand during tax season, when daily call volumes can exceed 300,000. The agency insists this seasonal hiring is routine and necessary. But scratch beneath the surface, and the story becomes less comforting.
For one thing, most of these new hires will be temporary. CRA leadership has been clear that term contracts are extended or renewed each year to provide “flexibility.” In plain terms, that means short-term staffing to plug predictable, long-term problems. Canadians aren’t dealing with a sudden, unexpected spike in tax questions; tax season comes every year, right on schedule. Treating it like a temporary crisis suggests a lack of long-term planning rather than agility.
The timing is also awkward. While the CRA is ramping up hiring, other federal departments are warning workers about possible job cuts as Ottawa looks to trim roughly $60 billion in spending over the next five years. Hundreds of public servants across departments have already received notices that their jobs may be on the line. Against that backdrop, the CRA’s hiring drive feels less like an investment in public service and more like a stopgap measure designed to meet short-term political targets.
Those targets matter. Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne gave the CRA 100 days to address call centre delays, setting a Dec. 11 deadline. The agency says it has made progress, doubling the percentage of unique calls answered and hitting its 70 percent goal at times. That’s an improvement, no doubt but it’s also an admission that nearly one in three callers may still not get through, even during the most critical period of the tax year.
Then there’s the more troubling issue: accuracy. Answering more calls is only half the job. According to a report from the Auditor General’s office, CRA agents answered just 17 percent of individual tax questions correctly during testing earlier this year. Business tax and benefits questions fared better, but still barely crossed the halfway mark. The CRA disputes those findings, citing its own review of call recordings that claims a 92 percent accuracy rate. The gap between these two assessments is stark and deeply concerning.
Canadians don’t call the CRA for casual chats. They call because the tax system is complex, intimidating and often unforgiving. Wrong advice can mean penalties, reassessments and months of stress. If the public can’t trust the answers they receive, improved call-answer rates are little more than a cosmetic fix.
The agency points to digital self-service tools and a GenAI chatbot as part of the solution. These tools may help reduce call volumes, but they also risk shifting responsibility onto taxpayers to navigate complicated systems on their own. Technology can support service delivery, but it cannot replace well-trained, experienced human agents especially when financial livelihoods are at stake.
What’s missing from the CRA’s messaging is a clear, long-term strategy. Officials speak of ongoing analysis and three-to-five-year plans yet continue to rely on temporary hiring to solve structural problems. If tax season chaos is predictable and it is then the response should be permanent staffing, better training and a serious commitment to service quality, not just service speed.
Hiring 1,700 call centre workers may help the CRA survive the next few months. But unless the agency confronts deeper issues of planning, accuracy and workforce stability, Canadians will be having the same conversation next year likely while listening to hold music.
