Backgrounder - Canada Revenue Agency is modernizing its services to meet the needs of Canadians

The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) is launching the Service Renewal Initiative to modernize our tax centres, our call centres and to establish National Verification and Collections Centres (NVCCs). This will enhance our client-focused services, improve our compliance, collections and verification capacity, and ultimately ensure the ongoing sustainability of our presence in all regions of the country.

Quick Facts

Since 2005, the number of Canadians filing online has increased from close to 12 million to over 23 million. That has resulted in a steady decline in the amount of paper-based transactions.
As part of today’s announcement, nine CRA processing centres across the country will transition into seven specialized sites:
- Four (Winnipeg, Sudbury, Jonquière, Summerside) will now specialize in processing and grow in size;
- Three (Surrey, Shawinigan, St. John’s) will be converted to NVCCs and will grow using Budget 2016 funding and funding reallocated from other sites; and
- Some work from the two specialized processing sites in Ottawa will also gradually be consolidated to other sites across the country.
Tax services offices (TSO) in the Greater Montreal area will see their collections operations become community-based, handling the more complex and higher risk files, which involve potential face-to-face interactions with taxpayers or their representatives.
Work in the Toronto Centre call centre will be transferred to other sites and that location will be closed.

Atlantic region:

Summerside

The Summerside office will remain a processing centre, and will offer more year-round permanent employment opportunities;
The Summerside office will transition to a specialized business processing centre with additional high speed scanning and charities processing workloads.

St. John’s

The St. John’s processing centre will transition into a NVCC, which will enhance the Agency’s delivery of the collection, compliance and verification programs that handle non-complex, non-face-to-face files;
The St. John’s T1 call centre will see an increase in staff;
CRA employment in St. John’s will experience growth, including more permanent positions and more positions at the higher classification levels.

Quebec region:

Shawinigan

The Shawinigan processing centre will transition into a NVCC, which will enhance the Agency’s delivery of the collection, compliance and verification programs that handle non-complex, non-face-to-face files;
There will be more stable, permanent jobs at the higher levels providing a more robust career path for employees, but also fewer term opportunities.

Jonquière

Jonquière will remain a processing centre and specialize in the processing of individual tax and benefit returns and national information returns;
Jonquière will stabilize its permanent workforce and see an increase in both permanent and term employment opportunities.

Montréal

Tax services offices (TSO) in the Greater Montréal area will see their collections operations become community-based, handling the more complex collection and related files, which generally will involve potential face-to-face interactions with taxpayers or their representatives;
The Montréal call centre will see an increase in staff;
The CRA will maintain a strong presence in the Greater Montréal area for the long term.

Ontario region:

Sudbury

Sudbury remains a processing centre and will experience a significant increase in processing workloads and as a result, there will be additional permanent and term employment opportunities;
The Sudbury processing centre will also maintain a portion of the collections and verifications workload currently housed in this location.

Ottawa

Some work from the two specialized processing and collections sites in the National Capital Region will gradually be consolidated to other sites across the country and will result in a reduction to Ottawa’s workforce;
CRA locations in the NCR will continue to deliver current community-based CRA programs as well as many specialized national programs, including a continuing role for the Ottawa debt management call centre;
The CRA will maintain a strong presence in the NCR with over 10,000 employees working in over 20 locations.

Toronto

The work in the Toronto Centre call centre will be consolidated to other sites and this location will be closed;
Impacted employees will be offered opportunities to continue their employment with the CRA through relocation to another call centre or another position within one of the four GTA offices;
Significant CRA activity will remain in the GTA.

Prairie region:

Winnipeg

Winnipeg will remain a processing centre and will offer more year-round permanent and term employment opportunities;
The Winnipeg processing centre will also maintain a portion of the collections and verifications workload currently housed in this location.

Pacific region:

Surrey

Surrey will transition from a processing centre to a NVCC, which will enhance the Agency’s delivery of the collection, compliance and verification programs that handle non-complex, non-face-to-face files;
The NVCC will offer more permanent positions, more positions at higher classification levels and fewer term positions;
This shift will also create opportunities to align similar work from nearby tax services offices, requiring a work location change for some employees within the Lower Mainland.

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