Union leader warns of CRA job cuts after wait times ‘exploded’ to 3.5 hours

National President for the Union of Taxation Employees Marc Briere says members are ‘swamped’ as a result of staffing concerns at the CRA.

As the federal government eyes potential staffing cuts in the coming years, one union leader says the loss of Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) call centre workers would mean worse service for Canadian taxpayers.

“Our members are swamped,” said Marc Brière, national president of the Union of Taxation Employees, in an interview with CTV Your Morning Wednesday. “If you have more cuts, our boat is going to sink.”

In May, the agency announced 280 employees would be leaving, citing “financial challenges,” which included government cutbacks. According to the union, more than 3,000 CRA jobs have been “gutted” since last fall.

The union wrote in a release earlier this month that with the agency’s current staffing levels, wait times for CRA call centres have “exploded” to as long as 3.5 hours, with fewer than one in 20 callers actually reaching a human agent.

As for the rest of the callers, Brière says they end up engaging with an automated system that can only answer basic tax questions, if they don’t give up or if the call doesn’t drop first.

The CRA’s answering system doesn’t allow callers to leave a call-back number, he notes, so a failed attempt to seek help can only mean starting all over again.

“They are being left behind,” Brière told Your Morning.

‘Canada on hold’

On balance, CRA staffing has grown since the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic to nearly 60,000 employees from 44,000 in 2019. However, Brière says that growth was needed to address previous understaffing, and that the trend is reversing.

“The call volume has not gone down (to) the pre-pandemic levels, and that’s a big problem,” he said. “They cut too much, too fast, and now we’re paying the price.”

Brière says the union’s lobbying efforts, dubbed "Canada On Hold," have had some success in protecting jobs, but with a new federal budget coming this fall, there could be more fight ahead.

Since taking office earlier this year, Prime Minister Mark Carney has made reduced government spending one of his top policy priorities.

“Canada’s new government will spend less on government operations so we can invest more in Canada — to create high-paying careers, build up our country, and grow our economy,” he wrote in a July post to X. “That’s the change Canadians deserve.”

The federal government has set a savings target of $25 billion over three years, and according to recent economic analysis by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne’s plan to identify 15 per cent savings in multiple departments by 2028-29 could mean nearly 60,000 federal jobs are at risk.

Brière notes that, when it comes to the CRA in particular, job cuts might do more harm to the federal purse than they’re worth.

“The CRA let go 1,000 collection officers since December last year, and that’s a big loss of revenue for the government; it’s about $3 billion a year,” he said.

“I think that Mr. Carney, with all the investment and the spending he’s doing, badly needs those billions that the CRA can bring him.”

With files from CTV News’ Josh Pringle and The Canadian Press