Amid a spike in complaints, the Canada Revenue Agency has issued a reprieve to around 850 call centre workers whose contracts were set to expire in September.

Workers were informed last week that their contracts will be extended until the end of March 2025, the CRA confirmed. The news came as the union that represents CRA workers sounded the alarm over staffing levels at call centres.

“It’s a first victory,” said Marc Brière, the president of the Union of Taxation Employees (UTE).

Almost 3,300 call centre employees have lost their jobs since May 2024, according to the UTE, as the CRA has been under pressure to reduce its budget.

Eitienne Biram, a CRA spokesperson, said in an emailed statement that in recent years, “a number of factors have impacted the CRA’s budget, including the end of some temporary program fundings, government-wide savings initiatives, and a shift in operational pressures. This has required the CRA to reexamine the size of its workforce.”

Biram added that the agency has a “fluctuating workforce due to annual seasonal hiring for tax season” and that the CRA’s workforce swelled in the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic to work on benefit programs. Those programs, and the temporary funding that came with them, have now ended.

Biram did not answer a question about why the CRA decided to reverse course on the contracts of the 850 call centre workers.

Brière, however, claimed that the decision occurred after Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne toured a call centre on July 3.

Champagne’s office did not immediately respond to request for comment.

Last week, the union launched a campaign to decry the loss of jobs at CRA call centres, claiming wait times and delays have worsened recently.

“Customer are frustrated like crazy, and rightfully so, our members are suffering out there,” Brière said. “They’re really down to the bone.”

François Boileau, the taxpayers ombudsperson, recently told the Ottawa Citizen that complaints to his office have spiked in recent months. His office has been warning taxpayers with complaints to expect delays and that there is currently a 120-day delay in assigning cases that need to be examined.

Boileau said his office is looking into whether there is a correlation between cuts to the CRA and the influx of complaints.

“We do see a spike of complaints and we do see that there is a trend growing,” Boileau said.

The union fears that wait times at the call centres might get worse once the spending review of Prime Minister Mark Carney gets underway in earnest. The federal government is seeking proposals to cut the budgets of most departments and agencies by up to 15 per cent over three years.

Both Brière and Boileau said that they both expect more cuts to arrive this fall.

Over the past year, the size of the CRA workforce has shrunk from 62,111 to 55,880, according to the agency. Those numbers included a decrease in term employees from 15,165 to 11,014.

Student employees have all but disappeared at the agency, decreasing from 1,286 to 275.

“These decreases can be attributed to savings measures introduced over the past year to ensure that the CRA can continue to operate efficiently while adapting to financial realities,” Biram said.

Belt-tightening measures included implementing a moratorium on converting term employees to permanent, a pause on student hires, some early end of term contracts and workforce adjustments.

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