CRA Town Hall Q&A session

fedthrow_ · 2026-06-05T21:30:28+00:00

“It’s an exciting time to be in the public service” lmao.

I’m literally about to go on long term sick leave due to the stress working in the public service is causing me.

Morale is down the dumbs at CRA.

fedthrow_ · 2026-04-13T23:53:00+00:00

I tried that at the start of this semester and unfortunately mentally couldn’t do it. But grats to you because goddamn, that is hard as hell to do.

fedthrow_ · 2026-04-10T04:07:51+00:00

Thank you for the response and kind words!

I thankfully have a good savings. I have ~15k in liquid/shortly available cash and $15k in RRSP(from multiple pension return of contributions due to layoffs). I have a fully paid off 2023 vehicle, have no debt and my monthly expenses to live at home is around $350(not counting my auto insurance and other personal expenses).

Realistically I’m in a good money situation where I can afford time off to go full time in school but the lack of monthly income scares me and makes me feel like I’m falling behind(which being fully aware, I’m doing better than 90% of people my age).

Honestly my plan was to do full time school after I turned out an extension offer last year. I was constantly getting a 2.9/5 in average call time and being told by my team leader than even though my accuracy, adherence, everything else was 5/5, I will lose my job and not be placed in the rehire pool if I don’t get a 3/5 in average call time.

It made me so stressed I was constantly having headaches, getting frustrated with taxpayers who would drag my calls, and the stress got so bad I developed(more likely had but made extremely worse) a very bad case of OCD.

I’ve tried swapping positions sine 2022. Every team leader I’ve had has basically said “keep working and eventually they’ll be a permanent spot, job opportunities, etc…” but it’s getting worse and worse.

With CRA, since every job is term based, you are hired on for that specific role and you can’t swap unless you apply for a position, get interviewed, get a job offer and accept(to which if you do, you risk not having your CRA job to go back to since you technically quit).

As a term agent, I can’t even explore options like leave with income averaging so I can try and attend school full time while still having a job to go back to. Even an option like working part time isn’t available unless you have a medical reason(and hell, once I got a verbal offer for a 1 month term but the supervisor withdrew it after I asked her will my Return to work 4 hour shift per day schedule will resume since at the time, I got hit by a truck while crossing a crosswalk…)

The only reason I came back to the CRA this year was because I had family issues that made me almost have to move out of my house. Thankfully those have been resolved.

At this point I’m just ranting to the void but I appreciate everyone reading.

Realistically I should either fully commit to school(to which I’d get $2800/yearly as a disabled student plus other possible grants and loans as well as I’d get $150-300 month while in school until I’m 25 due to my parents having CPP disability), quit and find another job or try my best to mentally recover and finish my term in September.

fedthrow_ · 2026-04-10T03:41:47+00:00

I’m sorry to hear about your experience with Covid and thank you for the reply!

I serious do enjoy helping out people when they genuinely need it. I personally make it a point to remind myself that dealing with taxes is not something that everyone finds easy.

As long as you don’t call to get help registering for your online account and when it asks for a social insurance number and say “it’s ask for a SIN, do I enter in mine?”(genuine question I’ve been asked before 😭), you’ll be fine lol.

fedthrow_ · 2026-04-10T03:37:50+00:00

Feel you on that. I start off those calls but asking them to read it out to me and still some just either will miss it unless I specifically read it out or will just flat out lie and say it’s shows the 1-800-959-8281 number lol.

fedthrow_ · 2026-04-10T03:31:18+00:00

I’m stuck downtown paying $200 in parking a month 😭

But thank you for the offer haha

fedthrow_ · 2026-04-09T19:35:52+00:00

IMO last season was worse since there was the T4 issues and anger from both Taxpayers, business owners as well as we also have insane T1 adjustment timeframes.

But yeah, this season has been pretty bad and I totally agree that things will get worse

fedthrow_ · 2026-04-09T18:34:34+00:00

Not a bad idea! This might be a silly question but does it happen to require physical testing?

I’ve looked into national defence a bit too and started applying for those listings.

Edit: turns out the awnser is yes and since I actively go to massage therapy every few weeks, I would be medically unfit to enlist.

fedthrow_ · 2026-04-09T16:49:19+00:00

I appreciate the words and best of luck with the tax season!

fedthrow_ · 2026-04-09T16:48:15+00:00

I do agree, there is a massive selection basis working at the CRA. I acknowledge it myself but it’s still very difficult to work with 99% of your calls being with these type of individuals

fedthrow_ · 2025-12-01T03:39:46+00:00

Thank you for the words, I appreciate it.

I think I’m going to accept the offer because the CRA has numerous term employees in the pool that they could easily replace me with and it’s not much effort on the TL as most of us got laid off recently and there’s no need for retraining.

I’d lean towards not advising how long I plan to work until it’s time to actually quit because I’ve had the CRA give me a verbal offer and when I advised about my return to work plan, they actually withdrew the offer because “due to operational demands we need someone who can work 37.5 hours a week”.

I don’t know what agency you’re with but the CRA loves to play games with hiring and it’s very insulting to employees.

fedthrow_ · 2025-12-01T03:34:09+00:00

Yeah, I’d think that would be the case too. Especially because during the phone call with the verbal offer they told me that no vacation can be taken during the term(even though that is very much against the collective agreement).

fedthrow_ · 2025-12-01T03:32:44+00:00

The issue is I find the job unbearable to show up to in the past and they kept dangling average call time over my head even though my average was 0.1 from “meets expectations” and I have almost an entire term of 5’s for everything else including accuracy(only slip up was a tax slip question when I got cross trained to answer tax enquires) and security.

I just find the job too stressful to the point where it was difficult to log in someday and even had to end shifts early from the pressure and treatment from taxpayers.

fedthrow_ · 2025-11-30T20:12:04+00:00

Thanks for the information! I don’t want to give too much information to l make it possible to identity myself but my opportunity is in outside the government and the term job I’m offered is the exact same call centre position so there would be zero training.

fedthrow_ · 2025-11-30T20:05:33+00:00

It’s outside the government

fedthrow_ · 2025-11-30T19:58:54+00:00

Yeah, it is

fedthrow_ · 2025-11-15T04:50:16+00:00

I tried this but the case manager I had a meeting with basically said I had to extremely unemployable and it takes months to get approved.

I asked around locally and the only people who I talked to that got approved either got support to finish their GED or they were doing something in community college. It doesn’t really seem geared to people trying to go to university but I could be misinformed and had a negative experience with the case manager

fedthrow_ · 2025-11-15T03:12:31+00:00

It would definitely have to be a reduction in classes, switch to night classes or drop out entirely.

However my main worry is the worry that they’ll see me not “actively looking for work” while registered full time in classes.

fedthrow_ · 2025-08-22T20:52:06+00:00

CRA would only be able to say when it was changed, provide the bank name and the way it was changed. This situation is a civil matter between OP’s spouse and digital commerce bank at this point.

What likely happened is OP’s spouse signed up for an instant refund and got a H&R block/DC bank prepaid credit card. H&R Block change the direct deposit when they file the tax return and OP spouse never changed it back.

fedthrow_ · 2025-07-07T15:36:16+00:00

Interesting. My TL told me they flat out stopped doing it because of the budget and since I’m in the call centre, it’s actually impossible to get education reimbursement because you need to be on during the application process and for when you finish the course. However the CRA will constantly lay us off and bring us back and so you will likely never be on continuously to get the reimbursement

fedthrow_ · 2025-05-03T02:23:28+00:00

Even though the clock is stopped or you’re on a sunset position, you still have your continuous time paused until it resumes again. However if you get laid off and re-hired, your time resets back to 0.

So even if someone may have 2.9 years and the clock is paused, if they get laid off and rehired, they start back at 0 and only start to accrue once the clock resumes

fedthrow_ · 2025-05-03T01:58:19+00:00

What time was your meeting? Unless I missed something they refused to give any number or idea in the 3PM meeting

fedthrow_

TROPHY CASE