The Canadian Federation of Independent Business says the quality of service and information that small business owners receive from the Canada Revenue Agency call centre has dropped. The organization is giving the CRA an overall grade of D, down from a C-. It’s based on 200 secret shopper calls to the business enquiries line. CFIB senior vice-president of national affairs, Corinne Pohlmann says, “It’s very concerning to find that business owners calling the CRA are often getting inaccurate information or may be left on hold for over an hour.”

The federation says the CRA’s new phone system has greatly improved the ability to connect to an agent and has largely eliminated busy signals. But frontline agents appear to have significantly more limits on which questions they are allowed to answer. That means the calls are transferred to a second agent where wait times are increased substantially. On top of that, the accuracy of the responses has deceased.