In broad terms, we will have met our two expected outcomes if:

• our communications and benefit delivery services and compliance activities combine to efficiently promote an environment where qualifying individuals and families receive the right amount of benefits at the right time—no more and no less; and

• our strengthened partnerships with provinces, territories and other government departments result in the CCRA's administration of additional programs and services using our delivery infrastructure.

• $7.5 billion to approximately 2.9 million CCTB recipients

• $3 billion to almost 9 million GST/HST credit recipients

• $125 million in Children's Special Allowances

• $386 million in ongoing payments and $389 million in one-time payments under provincial and territorial programs

• 10.3 million telephone enquiries handled

• approximately $365 million with respect to over 430,000 severely disabled individuals under the Disability Tax Credit program

• over 73,000 CPP/EI rulings issued

• $160 million in Nova Scotia Worker's Compensation Board payments collected

• 839 full-time equivalent employees

• functional budget of $53.4 million for program administration (excludes statutory funding for Children's Special Allowances and the Relief for Heating Expenses programs)

Current-Year Performance: We use a variety of communications tools to reach potential benefit recipients, as well as to inform new and existing clients about their entitlements and how to access benefits (Fig. 1-3). Our Annual Survey indicates that an estimated three-quarters of CCTB and GST/HST credit recipients believe the CCRA is doing a good or very good job administering these programs (Fig. 1-1). Our service strategy is to reduce our clients' need to call. To this end, we offer alternative channels of service delivery. This year, we launched two significant on-line services, which allow clients to estimate their monthly benefits and change their address. While the number of visits to our Child and Family Benefits Web page increased by over 25% to 314,000, the number of telephone calls handled through our enquiries lines declined by over 18%, from 12.7 million to 10.3 million. Our target range for caller accessibility for CCTB and GST/HST credit enquiries is 80-85%. We exceeded this target for CCTB enquiries (91% accessibility), but fell short for GST/HST credit enquiries (71% accessibility – Fig. 1-2).

Although these statistics mean that the majority of callers were able to reach the queue for service, it does not imply that they were successful on their first attempt or that, once in the queue, their calls were answered in a timely manner. We no longer monitor the number of attempts made by callers as a performance measure. We believe that this statistic has become less meaningful with the advent of new technologies, such as automatic redial services. Our timeliness in answering calls declined from 2000-2001 and was below our internal standard of answering 80% within two minutes of reaching the queue.

Year-to-Year Change: The public is more aware of the CCRA's role in delivering benefits now, as we have targeted our outreach activities better and provided more information about our programs. According to our Annual Survey, client satisfaction with our performance in delivering benefits remains high (Fig. 1-1). By expanding our 1-800 CCTB National Telephone Service, we increased CCTB caller accessibility rates from 68% to 91%. Caller accessibility improved modestly for GST/HST credit enquiries, from 68% to 71% (Fig. 1-2). We are continuing to explore how to reach the 80-85% target range for these calls. Work on telephone service standards is continuing, with the goal to have standards in place for 2003-2004.

Current-Year Performance: We issued over 99% of all CCTB, GST/HST credit, and provincial and territorial payments under the programs we administer on time. In total, these payments amounted to over $11 billion to some 10 million recipients. Studies estimate that 97% of CCTB applications were processed on time, just below the 98% service standard.

To support payment accuracy, we devoted significant resources to program validation and controls. A study for the most recent available year suggests that approximately 95% of CCTB clients for 2000-2001 received the proper entitlement based on complete and accurate account information, consistent with our compliance benchmark for the previous year. As part of our multi-year agenda for improving the robustness of our validation programs, we refined our criteria for selecting accounts for review in 2001-2002 and increased the number of reviews conducted (Fig. 2-1). We will be working over the next several years to further refine our data marts, performance measures, and account selection criteria.

As for processing adjustments, we improved our timeliness in performing account adjustments from an estimated 76% in 2000-2001 to 80% in 2001-2002, but this is still well below our target of 98%. We also processed 73,000 requests for CPP/EI rulings, 81% within agreed-upon timeframes, somewhat below our target of 85% (Fig. 2-2). We are working with Human Resources Development Canada to better link our operations to close this performance gap.

Continued on

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Year-to-Year Change: Based on an estimate of our performance last year, we sustained a high standard of issuing benefit payments accurately and on time in 2001-2002. Refinements to our criteria for selecting accounts for validation activities contributed to a substantial increase in account adjustments (Fig. 2-1).

We are continuing active debt control measures to address the rising level of debt resulting from CCTB overpayments, which increased from $116 million to $147 million over the past year. New service standards for account maintenance and validation and controls will be published in 2002-03. The development of a complete slate of service standards by 2004-2005 is proceeding as scheduled.

Current-Year Performance (Year 2 of 5): We continue to leverage our federal benefit delivery infrastructure to support important social objectives for Canadians and reduce duplication of effort across government and reduce overall costs for Canadians. In 2001-2002, we launched the Mother Baby Nutrition Supplement for Newfoundland and Labrador, the seventeenth ongoing benefit program we administer on behalf of the provinces and territories. We also delivered our third one-of-a-kind payment—the BC Energy Rebate—on behalf of a provincial client.

To support the inter-governmental National Child Benefit initiative, we enhanced our data exchanges by completing the implementation of the Benefit Data Synchronization Link. This link facilitates the accurate payment of provincial and territorial social assistance in light of federal National Child Benefit Supplement (NCBS) payments. We supported data transfers for provincial, territorial, and federal partners for programs not administered by the CCRA, and processed $105 million of refund set-offs for other government organizations. We continued to develop our Workers' Compensation Board (WCB) partnership with Nova Scotia and implemented their First-Time Home Buyers HST Rebate program. Partnerships with Ontario and Nova Scotia to allow our Business Number to be assigned for provincial business programs are being expanded to other provinces, with work well advanced in New Brunswick, Manitoba and British Columbia. We also implemented three new First Nations sales taxes.

We accounted to our partners for our activities through meetings between the Commissioner and provincial and territorial Ministers of Finance or their designates, which followed the annual reports we issued to each jurisdiction in January 2001. In addition, we now have Service Management Frameworks in place with nine jurisdictions. A strong relationship with the provinces, territories, and other government departments leads to streamlined processes with less duplication and improved service for Canadians at reduced cost.

At this stage, we are still unable to precisely measure the incremental costs associated with new services. This will be addressed as part of our agency-wide Activity-Based Costing (ABC) initiative.

Year-To-Year Change: The confidence level among jurisdictions in our ability to deliver cost-effective programs as well as data transfers and exchanges—on schedule and within our overall funding levels—continues to be confirmed as two additional programs were implemented, along with multiple program calculation changes and new and enhanced data supports. By making incremental progress in advancing partnerships with the provinces and territories (Fig. 3-1), we are generally on-track in the second year of our innovation agenda. We are positioning ourselves to administer more programs for our partners in the coming years.

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The Road Ahead – 2002 and Beyond

1. Continue to explore how to increase telephone accessibility for GST/HST credit calls up to the target level (Anticipated Result 1).

2. Publish service standards for correspondence, account maintenance, and validation and controls (Anticipated Result 2).

3. Implement a new case management system for validation and controls activities for better project analysis, statistical reporting, and measurements of effectiveness that include additional targets, increased monitoring, and more research (Anticipated Result 2).

4. Continue to examine ways to collect information on estimates of cost-savings to taxpayers that CCRA program administration entails (Anticipated Result 3).

5. Continue implementation of the Balanced Scorecard to provide more effective and unbiased reporting of our successes and performance gaps for decision-making purposes (for the entire business line).