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They are also expected not to say anything about CRA and its operations that isn’t truthful and must ensure anything they do say “does not impair your employment relationship.”

Debi Daviau, president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC), said the union co-operated with the project, helped to find auditors for interviews, and will represent the workers if the department seeks to discipline them.

PIPSC represents federal auditors and Daviau said the union got involved because its concerns about CRA aligned with the project. The largest union, the Union of Taxation Employees, didn’t get involved, though its president, Bob Campbell, was interviewed.

“This is an area where we share common ground and we will work with (the advocacy group) and anyone else to get there. This was about effective tax collection, not about jobs,” said Daviau.

This was about effective tax collection, not about jobs

PIPSC campaigned to defeat the Conservatives during the election, and fixing the problems it perceived at CRA was one of its priorities.

Daviau said the union was particularly concerned that Conservatives closed units responsible for international tax havens and fraud investigations, and rolled the specialists from those units into multi-disciplinary teams that she said have proven ineffective, collecting a fraction of the revenues that the special units did.

Dennis Howlett, executive director of Canadians for Tax Fairness, said he was approached or contacted by CRA employees so often that the organization decided to dig deeper for an insider’s view of what was wrong with the agency and how to fix it.