Appendix C: Detailed Financial Information

The Canada Customs and Revenue Agency (CCRA) is a diverse and complex organization that employs almost a quarter of Canada’s public service. Our mission is to promote compliance with Canada’s tax, trade, and border legislation. We are this country’s largest public service provider and, in fulfilling our mission, we touch the lives of more Canadians on a daily basis than any other public organization.

Last year alone, we collected close to $300 billion in revenues. We assessed and processed 23 million individual and trust tax returns and 1.6 million corporate tax returns. We delivered some $10 billion in benefit and credit payments to over 10 million Canadian households. We cleared approximately 102 million travellers entering Canada and 10.8 million commercial transactions through our customs processes. Indeed, we play an important role in promoting the social and economic well-being of Canadians.

Innovating for the future enables the CCRA’s business operations to remain in step with the needs of our clients, which in turn promotes client satisfaction. Innovation also supports our capacity to establish more productive ways of doing business and to reduce our internal and administrative costs. It is key to fully leveraging the capacity of our systems and enabling the CCRA to deliver a greater range of services on behalf of the provinces and territories to help reduce overall government cost to taxpayers. The Future Directions initiative also represents a significant investment, one that will be closely managed to ensure its success at a pace that is consistent with government-wide priorities.

Indeed, managing a comprehensive set of programs while advancing our impressive change agenda is a huge undertaking that requires strategic investment planning and sound and prudent fiscal management. Over the planning period, the challenge will be even greater—in light of projected increases in workload volumes and new border security commitments such as the Smart Border Declaration. In addition, we plan to manage the impact of an expanding economy and consequent growth in workload volumes, particularly in Tax Services, within the CCRA’s existing budget framework. We also plan to deliver on our innovation commitments, both in terms of business transformation and management reforms, within that same framework. To do both, we will continue to exercise sound stewardship while exploring additional opportunities for resource reallocation.

The Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS) has embarked on an exercise, the main objective of which is to review government programs and identify areas for financial streamlining and efficiency gains. Although the precise impact of this exercise on the CCRA’s funding base is unknown at this time, any further reductions will result in additional pressure on our resource base.

In line with the above TB process, the agency has initiated a series of 17 horizontal reviews to identify streamlining and efficiency opportunities. Savings realized from these reviews will assist in dealing with government-wide priorities such as the TB reallocation exercise, and the management of internal pressures such as Future Directions.

The agency continues to make strides in advancing an enhanced resource management framework. We have embarked on enhancements to our budgeting processes, including initiatives such as Quarterly Budgeting and Activity-Based Costing.

Over the past year, we have introduced Quarterly Budgeting and Reporting to strengthen our financial monitoring and reporting processes. This provides our managers with better financial information to improve their management of programs, and it strengthens our ability to review and analyze relationships between performance and resources.

Our Activity-Based Costing initiative will improve the accuracy of costing information we generate relating to activities, processes, outputs, and client groups. It will also promote better understanding of what drives the agency’s costs, enabling better decision-making. The Activity-Based Costing initiative will also integrate financial and non-financial information to provide the cost dimension for initiatives such as the Balanced Scorecard and external service standards.

This appendix provides a picture of our $3.7 billion resource base, including the size and nature of our multi-year planned spending. It also presents a profile of our innovation investments that are funded from the CCRA’s Investment Plan and core operations and an overview of our Asset Management Plan.

Through strong and responsible fiscal management and stewardship, we are confident that we can deliver on our commitments. However, we also recognize the need for additional resources to support the expanding role of our Customs Services, and we have already initiated discussions with TBS to find a funding solution.

The following Agency spending profile details our planned spending for the 2003-2004 to 2005-2006 planning period. While our overall budget is relatively constant, the funds available for core operations are actually decreasing, if we consider unfunded pressures and our inovation initiatives.

To overcome the complex challenges we face in our operating environment, we must innovate for the future. Only through innovation can we achieve success as a leading-edge service provider. Our innovation agenda comprises the following four change objectives:

To transform our core business in a manner that keeps pace with changes in technology, business and management practices, and the expectations of Canadians – Our approach to increasing border security is based on implementing “smart border” management through various initiatives. A suite of border security initiatives will allow us to address Canadians’ concerns about safety and security while continuing to facilitate legitimate trade and travel. The Future Directions initiative will transform our core tax operations and provide client-centred service. As well, we will strive to further develop our relationships with the provinces, territories, and other government departments.

To foster human resources (HR) reform and renewal by making the agency’s new human resources regime fully operational – We will continue to transform staffing and recourse, learning, labour relations, and job classification mechanisms, and we will strengthen other elements such as official languages and employment equity.

To achieve administrative reform and renewal by having in place policies and practices tailored to meet the needs of the CCRA – We will continue to review existing operations across the agency and implement financial management and administration practices that will enhance our efficiency and effectiveness, and improve our service to clients.

To integrate transparent management for results into the agency’s planning, decision-making, and accountability processes – Our work will focus on building management capacities that are in tune with the principles and practices of Modern Comptrollership.

The following tables provide a description of our major initiatives and anticipated spending in support of our innovation agenda. These initiatives are funded from the CCRA’s Investment Plan and through core operations.

* Funding for remaining phases will be sought through Resource and Project Review Committee

The business processes associated with the CCRA depend in large part on a vast set of physical assets, such as laboratory and detection equipment, computer systems, real property holdings, and communication systems and equipment. The integrity and sustainability of these assets is very much linked to our success in delivering effective services, now and into the future. As a result, the CCRA has established an Asset Management Plan that outlines our asset renewal and replacement requirements for the planning period.

The Asset Management Plan has four objectives:

Date modified:

2002-03-21