>This story embodies the bizarre paradox of our federal government. We are adding people to the ranks of the federal service at an unprecedented pace, moving to a high of 367,772 in 2024 from a low of 257,034 in 2015. At the same time, the capacity of our public service to get things done, and done well, seems to be rapidly deteriorating.
>According to the Auditor-General report that looked at the CRA’s call centres, the CRA has been blocking more than half the calls it received (over 29 million calls annually). Blocking means that the CRA did not even give the caller access to an automated answering system. Worse, the CRA did so in order to be able to claim that it has a brilliant record of addressing citizens’ requests, by counting only the calls actually answered.
>There is nothing that says “Trust in Your Government” like having your tax agency caught red-handed systematically lying and trying to cheat the system.
>**It has more than 55,000 employees and is still not capable of answering calls.**
To put into perspective how ridiculously bloated and ineffective Canadian public service is, the American IRS *would like* to have 102,000 employees as an aspirational goal to back to full capabilties. It has spent much of the past 15 years below 80,000 employees.
In 2023, they achieved the following improvements to service at the IRS while they had about 90,000 employees.
>IRS customer service representatives answered 7.7 million calls during the 2023 filing season—a 65 percent increase compared to 2022—and the average time to answer a call improved from 28 to 3 minutes
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>This story embodies the bizarre paradox of our federal government. We are adding people to the ranks of the federal service at an unprecedented pace, moving to a high of 367,772 in 2024 from a low of 257,034 in 2015. At the same time, the capacity of our public service to get things done, and done well, seems to be rapidly deteriorating.
>According to the Auditor-General report that looked at the CRA’s call centres, the CRA has been blocking more than half the calls it received (over 29 million calls annually). Blocking means that the CRA did not even give the caller access to an automated answering system. Worse, the CRA did so in order to be able to claim that it has a brilliant record of addressing citizens’ requests, by counting only the calls actually answered.
>There is nothing that says “Trust in Your Government” like having your tax agency caught red-handed systematically lying and trying to cheat the system.
>**It has more than 55,000 employees and is still not capable of answering calls.**
To put into perspective how ridiculously bloated and ineffective Canadian public service is, the American IRS *would like* to have 102,000 employees as an aspirational goal to back to full capabilties. It has spent much of the past 15 years below 80,000 employees.
https://federalnewsnetwork.com/hiring-retention/2024/05/irs-seeks-102000-employees-for-right-sized-workforce-and-more-money-to-avoid-cuts/?readmore=1
In 2023, they achieved the following improvements to service at the IRS while they had about 90,000 employees.
>IRS customer service representatives answered 7.7 million calls during the 2023 filing season—a 65 percent increase compared to 2022—and the average time to answer a call improved from 28 to 3 minutes
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-106581#:~:text=IRS%20customer%20service%20representatives%20answered,from%2028%20to%203%20minutes.