Federal union launches campaign denouncing cuts at CRA call centres

OTTAWA — The federal union representing workers at the Canada Revenue Agency has launched an online campaign denouncing staffing cuts.

Marc Brière, national president of the Union of Taxation Employees, said the loss of about 3,300 call centre employees in the last year has resulted in delays, long wait times and dropped calls.

He claimed a large portion of calls are not being answered at the CRA because of low staffing levels, leading to the campaign name “Canada On Hold.”

“The last round of cuts was this past May; they let go of 1,300 members and the impact has been absolutely terrible on the lines, on the service to the population,” Brière said. “At the same time, it’s taken a toll on the employees as well.”

Brière said the main goal of the campaign is to get the government to stop the cuts, save call centre jobs and rehire employees because levels are “too low” and services have been “deeply affected.”

The size of the CRA grew during the pandemic and over the last few years, from just under 44,000 in 2019 to around 59,000 in 2024.

As of 2025, employee numbers are down to around 52,500.

Brière said the government is trying to bring staffing down to pre-pandemic levels, but that the CRA was short-staffed at that time. He added that the population has also grown since the pandemic.

“I already advised the employer that it was not sustainable,” Brière said. “There’s more people to serve and there won’t be enough employees to serve them.”

Through the campaign, jointly launched with the Public Service Alliance of Canada, the union is calling on the public to contact their MPs, share service complaints with the taxpayers’ ombudsperson and record a video about the difficulties they’re facing in reaching the agency.

Brière said the union hopes to launch a second part of the campaign later this fall focused on employees in other areas of the CRA, noting that it’s expecting to see more cuts, potentially including permanent employees, later this year.

The Canadian Press has reached out to the CRA for comment but has yet to receive a response.

Taxpayers’ Ombudsperson François Boileau, whose office is responsible for reviewing service-related complaints about the CRA, said his office is “swamped.” He said that his office’s last annual report, released in June, found that around 24 per cent of complaints are related to issues with call centres.

The report says there were 2,796 total complaints received by the office in 2024-25, compared to 2,833 in 2023-24, 2,191 in 2022-23 and 3,874 in 2021-22.

Boileau said that in the end of the last fiscal year and in this fiscal year, his office has seen an uptick in complaints from the public.

He said it’s a “likely scenario” that the recent increase is related to job cuts but that that’s not something he can confirm. Boileau said his office aims to look into whether the two issues are correlated.

“We’re an office of 32 people,” he said. “We can’t do it all, but it’s something that this office should look into in the next few months or the next year.”

The federal government has tasked most departments and agencies with finding cuts to program spending of 15 per cent by 2028-29.

The Canada Revenue Agency’s 2025-26 departmental plan said it expects to see its number of full-time employees drop from 50,804 in 2025-26 to 47,732 in 2027-28.

The plan said the reduction is primarily a result of a “decrease or sunsetting” of funding. It also reflects the “ramping up” of impacts of the CRA’s contribution to government spending reduction measures announced in Budget 2023.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 21, 2025.