Achieving Our Benefit Programs Strategic Outcome

Overview

In the current economic climate, income security is increasingly essential to the economic and social well-being of Canadians. As administrators of benefit and credit programs for federal, provincial, and territorial clients, we are keenly aware of our obligation to ensure timely and correct determination of eligibility and payments related to these programs, so that no recipient is overpaid or underpaid.

Strategic Outcome

Eligible families and individuals receive timely and correct benefit payments.

Our Assessment:

Met

Spending Profile (in thousands of dollars)

Eligible families and individuals receive timely and correct benefit payments

In delivering benefit and credit programs, and other related services, we support the efforts of governments across Canada to assist families and individuals. Our flexibilities as an agency and the adaptability of our systems enable us to leverage our federal delivery infrastructure to administer a range of ongoing and one-time programs on behalf of provincial and territorial governments and federal government departments. These capabilities also enable us to provide information, as authorized by law, to support the programs that government clients themselves administer.

Canadians expect their tax system to be fair. This is equally true for the issuance of benefit payments as the assessment of tax. By ensuring that only eligible individuals receive benefits and that their entitlements are correct, we respond to Canadians’ expectations and protect benefit recipients from any undue hardship caused by under- or overpayments.

Our focus

Our focus is to ensure that eligible Canadians receive the benefits and credits to which they are entitled, through reliable and correct payments. 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. We do this while responding to our clients’ priorities and requirements through integrated application forms and processing, as well as data exchanges where authorized by law.

Strengthening service

A fundamental tenet of our approach to benefits administration is our belief that families and individuals will access programs and comply with their obligations when they are well informed. During 2008-2009, we provided easier access to benefits-related information, tools, and services to help Canadians better understand how to meet eligibility requirements and receive accurate payments. The increased number of contacts by recipients that occurred during the past year indicates to us that we successfully enhanced communications and information sharing with our existing and potential benefit recipients.

During 2008-2009, we laid the groundwork for Automated Benefits Applications (ABA), which will allow parents to apply for child and family benefits when their child is born by checking a box on their provincial or territorial birth registration forms. Our ABA initiative is an important step to improve service by simplifying the benefit application process. It is also a vital compliance tool that provides source data from provinces and territories to ensure timely, valid, and accurate application information. We believe that by simplifying the benefit application process through ABA we have reinforced our commitment to ensure that eligible Canadians are aware of and can readily access the benefits and credits to which they are entitled.

We recognize that enrolment levels for some segments of the population could be improved. Persons with disabilities, First Nations, and new residents may benefit from information services that are more specialized. In 2008-2009, we pursued outreach opportunities targeting such specific segments of the population. Our objective in providing these information sessions and packages was to raise awareness of our benefit programs and encourage qualified individuals to apply. Although it is not possible to attribute clear results to these efforts, we believe these outreach activities had at least some degree of positive impact on enrolment levels.

Since access by telephone is important to benefit recipients, we strengthened this service and met our commitment to putting in place improved caller accessibility during this past year. To achieve this, we reallocated additional resources to our benefit services telephone enquiries area and enhanced our caller accessibility levels. Due to these actions, the number of callers able to reach us by telephone increased.

Benefits validation

In carrying out our validation work, we seek to provide information to existing benefit recipients and to create a credible enforcement presence in order to act as a deterrent to non-compliance. In 2008-2009, we implemented elements of our long-term benefits-specific compliance strategy. In doing so, we identified not only recipients who were overpaid, but also those who were underpaid. These findings allowed us to make the adjustments needed to correct benefit and credit issuances, which is an important step in maintaining the integrity of our administration of benefit and credit programs.

In 2008-2009, we continued to establish benchmarks through specific validation projects. The consistent review and comparison with the base data allows the need for changes to be recognized in a timely manner and appropriate strategies introduced promptly, thereby reducing the overall cost associated with non-compliance.

Reinforcing trust

We believe that the ease with which benefit recipients can communicate their concerns to us and how we deal with these concerns has a significant influence on Canadians’ perception of the fairness of our administration of Canada’s benefit system. We further believe that a positive perception by Canadians of the CRA has a positive impact on levels of compliance.

In response to a 2006 internal audit that noted that our benefits quality review process varied across the country, in 2008-2009 we implemented our Quality Review Strategy. This provided a framework to standardize and improve our quality review process to ensure a consistent approach. By doing so, we improved our ability to measure processing accuracy and to more rapidly detect and address administrative issues.

Maintaining effective relationships

Our partnerships with provincial and territorial governments, as well as other federal departments, help lower the overall cost to Canadians of benefit and credit issuance by reducing duplication in administration costs. In 2008-2009, we began administering four new payment programs and twelve new data exchange services. We also began work with Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC) on an assessment of the effectiveness and efficiency of the administration of the Universal Child Care Benefit (UCCB). By undertaking such arrangements, we reinforce our contribution as a key service provider that helps reduce the cost of government in Canada.

Our strategic outcome measures

The indicators that we use to measure our results focus on the following:

• the extent to which potential recipients apply for benefit programs;
• the timeliness of the payments;
• the extent to which recipients meet their continuing obligation to provide us with up-to-date eligibility and account information; and
• the attractiveness of our program and service delivery infrastructure to federal, provincial, and territorial clients.

Eligibility, timeliness, and accuracy

We estimate the percentage of potential Canada Child Tax Benefit (CCTB) recipients by comparing our enrolment data with the information from Statistics Canada that is available after each census. We use this comparative data to ensure that we are providing full access to benefits and credits. Our most recent take-up study indicates that the majority of eligible Canadians access benefit programs even though there is no legal requirement to apply for them. This suggests to us that we are attaining our goal that all eligible recipients know about and apply for benefits.

For some recipients, benefit payments make up a substantial portion of their income, and receiving child benefits on time each month or the GST/HST credit on time each quarter can be an important factor in meeting household expenses. During 2008-2009, we exceeded our target that measures the percentage of benefit payments made on time, demonstrating that entitled recipients can rely on our timely delivery of their benefit and credit payments.

It is the responsibility of each recipient to provide us with complete and accurate information to maintain their eligibility and permit the accurate calculation of their benefits. In 2008-2009, a random sample study indicated that 92.9% of benefit recipients had provided us with complete and accurate information. As this is slightly below the target, we will continue to monitor the results and analyze the results of other validation projects to determine if a trend is indicated.

An important indicator that our calculation of benefit payments is correct is the low net value of CCTB overpayments issued. These amounts are typically a result of delayed account revisions. A net CCTB overpayment increase of $36 million was created during 2008-2009, representing only 0.38% of the $9.5 billion in CCTB payments issued during the year, meeting our established target.

Provider of choice for benefit programs and services

We have a reputation for providing accurate, efficient, and cost-effective delivery of many benefit and credit programs. The increase in data transfer and data exchange services we deliver has grown from 58 in 2004-2005 to 93 in 2008-2009. We added a total of 16 programs and services last year.

Conclusion

It is our assessment that we met our Benefit Programs strategic outcome. Through our efforts in administering benefit programs, eligible families and individuals received timely and correct benefit payments, and our government clients were afforded reliable services, enjoyed lower administration costs and more effective compliance. Benefit recipients can rely on the CRA to administer a better-integrated benefits system of high integrity and be assured that the CRA contributes to reducing the overall cost of government in Canada.

Our Benefit Programs Strategic Outcome Measures

Date modified:

2009-11-05