Article content continued

If Canadians are not mad about the border, chances are they are upset if they have ever tried to contact their government.

The interim AG looked at call centres operated by Employment and Social Development Canada (which handles Employment Insurance, the Canada Pension Plan and Old Age Security), Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada and Veterans Affairs Canada.

The statistics are damning. Of the 8.9 million callers who asked to speak with an agent over an Employment Insurance query, 40 per cent were prevented from reaching an agent by being redirected to an automated system or a website. A further 8 per cent just hung up after waiting on the line.

The numbers for those trying to access CPP or OAS were worse: 42 per cent and 9 per cent respectively.

And if you were hoping to reach an immigration agent on the phone, your chances were about one in five — in all probability after having waited on the line for half an hour.

In total more than half of 16 million callers could not speak to an agent and more than a million hung up

In total more than half of 16 million callers could not speak to an agent and more than a million hung up.

The AG found call centres were not focused on the needs of their clients when making decisions about services. And things are not about to get better quickly: a five year modernization project has resulted in upgrades in only eight of 221 call centres.

A third chapter looked at the collection of sales tax in the evolving digital marketplace, where the Ottawa is missing out on hundreds of millions of dollars because we don’t impose sales tax on foreign vendors.