Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) officials spoke before the Senate’s national finance committee yesterday about struggles with fraudsters.
And like burgers on a barbecue, they were grilled.
Driving the news: The hearing was preceded by a new CBC/Radio-Canada investigation which discovered senior CRA officials exchanged worried memos about gaps in the ability to detect and stop scammers, undermining public claims the minister made about a “robust system.”
- Inside sources also told CBC the CRA knowingly under-reported frauds and only found out about numerous instances of fraud because banks alerted them.
- At the Senate hearing, Revenue Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau faced multiple questions about the CRA’s security measures, which she continued to defend.
Why it matters: The disconnect between what’s being said in public and (allegedly) being said in private raises concerns about the CRA’s ability to protect money and personal data.
- Canadians were already growing skeptical of the CRA, with public trust falling by 16% between 2020-21 and 2022-23 per internal CRA metrics.
Big picture: The CRA admitted to authorizing over $190 million in bogus payments between 2020 and October 2024 as a result of privacy breaches. Plans to cut spending by $14.1 billion over the next five years could challenge plans to bolster security.—QH