Making It Easier to Receive The Right Social Benefits

Introduction

The CRA delivers income-based and other benefits, credits, and services to eligible recipients for federal, provincial, and territorial governments. This includes payments under core federal programs such as the Canada Child Tax Benefit, the goods and services/harmonized sales tax (GST/HST) credit and the Universal Child Care Benefit.

Millions of Canadians rely on the social benefits delivered through our benefit programs infrastructure. We strive to provide benefit recipients with timely and accurate information, services, and easy access to the benefit programs we administer. In addition, we work closely with our government clients to reduce the overall cost of administering benefit programs.

By ensuring that eligible individuals receive only the benefits and credits to which they are entitled under the law, we respect Canadians’ expectations of fairness and protect benefit recipients from any undue hardship due to under- or overpayments.

While we recognize that we have been successful in delivering our many programs and services to date, we can only remain successful by looking to the future and anticipating changes in the needs of our clients. We have experienced a decade of very rapid growth in the benefit programs we administer, from three federal programs in 1996 to the current total of 93 programs and services. To ensure the sustainability of our systems and programs and position us to address the evolving needs of our clients, we are moving forward with a multi-year strategy that provides an integrated approach to delivering benefits programs.

Over the planning period, we put forth the following initiatives to address our challenges and opportunities for making it easier for Canadians to receive the right social benefits.

Strengthen service to benefit recipients

Citizen expectations for public service delivery continue to rise; government program delivery is subject to increasing levels of scrutiny and accountability; and the pace of innovation and the complexity of our delivery infrastructures are increasing. Working within this dynamic framework, we welcome new opportunities for partnerships with other government departments or levels of government to reduce duplication and to provide fast, reliable delivery of benefit services.

We will improve the functionalities of My Account for Benefits and develop new communication products with special emphasis on newcomers to Canada. At the same time we will explore new ways to provide services to persons with disabilities. One example of a CRA transformational service included in our benefits strategy is the Automated Benefits Application (ABA). The ABA service eliminates the need for a separate application and the related processing time, speeding delivery of payments to new parents. The advantages are tremendous and include reduced errors, faster service, and lower costs. We will continue our work with provinces and territories that have not yet implemented ABA to promote the integration of the Canada Child Benefits Application with the provincial and territorial birth registration process.

Support business growth and partnerships

Our flexibility as an agency and the adaptability that we have built into our systems enable us to lever our federal delivery infrastructure to administer a range of programs and other services on behalf of client governments. We will maintain current programs and services administered for federal, provincial, and territorial departments and expand where we are asked to do so.

We will deliver three new benefit programs introduced as a result of Ontario and British Columbia’s decision to harmonize their sales tax.

• Ontario Sales Tax Transition Benefit (OSTTB)—implementation June 2010;
• Ontario Sales Tax Credit (OSTC)—implementation July 2010; and
• BC Harmonized Sales Tax Credit (BCHSTC)—implementation July 2010.

In addition we will expand our service and data exchange opportunities where possible.

Strengthen benefits delivery infrastructure

To ensure payment delivery we must be prepared to handle changes and additions to our programs and services, and to act effectively during emergency situations. We must plan and work strategically to ensure that we are prepared for any eventuality.

Our Individual Identification system is the repository for taxpayer information that is key to establishing eligibility and calculating payments for the benefits and credits that we administer. Access to this data is strictly controlled. Where permitted by law, we share data with other federal, provincial, and territorial agencies and departments to assist in the administration of programs, while ensuring that confidentiality measures are respected. Additionally, taxpayers and trusts have the ability to authorize a third-party representative that we can deal with on their behalf. We are improving our systems to facilitate this authorization process.

Ensure accurate payments

We are responsible for ensuring sound financial stewardship of the benefit and credit programs that we deliver. This means that the right recipients must get the right payments at the right time.

To identify and address non-compliance, we carry out validation and control activities specifically targeting accounts identified as high-risk for potential overpayments or underpayments. The information provided to recipients during validation reviews helps to inform and educate them about their eligibility and entitlement requirements. Our enforcement presence is enhanced by our successful efforts in moving cases of misrepresentation towards prosecution. We have developed a validation strategy that has been refined over a number of years. It is based on research and risk assessment as well as investigation of trends within the benefits community. We will improve our targeting to achieve greater program effectiveness and efficiencies and quantify the results achieved by our validation program to ensure that we are applying our resources in the most efficient and effective manner.

Date modified:

2010-05-06