Question Period Note: Office of the Auditor General (OAG) Contact Centres Report

• In this report, the Auditor General found the Canada Revenue Agency’s (CRA) contact centres failed to consistently provide callers with accurate and timely information.

• The report highlighted deficiencies in the management of the Hosted Contact Centre Service platform (HCCS) provided through a contract with Shared Services Canada (SSC).

Key facts

• The HCCS contract has a $50 million minimum revenue guarantee over 10 years. SSC’s authorities permit spending up to $300 million for this contract and the current expenditure forecast is $190 million.

• The contract was awarded in 2015, implemented for CRA and other departments in November 2018 and runs until 2027.

• In 2025, following a competitive process, SSC awarded a 5 year contract (with one 5 year option) to Bell Canada for its Genesys Cloud CX platform. The initial contract is valued at $7 million, which will grow over time as the services are consumed. As the design and implementation of the new contract is in development, its expected total cost is not yet available.

Key messages

• The contract is within its budget. As of June 2025, total one-time costs and forecasted monthly costs for the first 10 years of the contract is $190 million. SSC’s procurement authorities for this are a maximum of $300 million.

• SSC welcomes the Auditor General’s findings. Modern contact centres are essential for partners to deliver services to Canadians.

• SSC generally agrees with the recommendations, has already implemented many and is working to address the remaining items.

• Using learnings from the previous contract, SSC awarded a new contract in July 2025 to replace the existing IT services for CRA’s contact centres. The new solution will allow CRA to leverage current and emerging technologies, which are scalable and flexible over the life of the contract, to support effective service delivery.

• SSC remains committed to sound stewardship and accountability. SSC, in collaboration with CRA, continues to strengthen contract management practices with clearly defined roles, responsibilities, and processes.

If pressed on new contract

Partner departments, including CRA, were fully engaged in defining requirements and evaluating the new contact centre solution. Under the new contract, CRA will benefit from:
• Greater autonomy to deploy and test features, allowing for more agile service improvements.
• Detailed billing information, which simplifies invoicing and increases clarity when certifying the receipt of goods and services and authorizing payment.

The new Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS) is an on-demand, flexible and scalable commercial solution to manage client interactions across various channels, such as phone, email, chat and social media.

If pressed on value

• The government only paid for the features and consumption that it used.

• Increases to the contract value reflect increases in usage over time, such as exercising option years, adding new contact centres, increasing use or capacity in the pandemic, and are not changes to pricing.

If pressed on cost conflation

• The $50 million minimum was never a total estimated contract value but rather the minimum commitment to assure the vendor they would recoup their initial infrastructure and set-up investment. Once consumption began, service orders were placed and the contract value was amended accordingly.

• Not all features available under contract were initially activated. Some were added later, resulting in contract amendments. This allowed the service to address the evolving need of the department.

• Rather than award the full estimated contract value at the outset, SSC used the best-practice approach of awarding smaller service orders in increments based on predictable consumption and feature implementation forecasts. This established controls and gating to ensure that the contract and spending was regularly reviewed internally and with our partners. Amendments increasing the overall value of the contract were simply a reflection of the service orders as consumption took place.

In 2013, the Government of Canada pursued a consolidated contact centre solution. In 2015, SSC awarded a contract to IBM for the HCSS system. It included new functions such as call-routing to agents with relevant knowledge, nation-wide call queuing, an integrated voice-response system, estimated wait times and workforce management functionalities. The contract was designed to include many features that CRA and other departments could choose to implement as their business requirements evolved over the life of the contract.

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