By Canadian Taxpayers Federation Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director——Bio and Archives--October 13, 2025
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OTTAWA, ON: The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is criticizing Prime Minister Mark Carney for announcing that the government is expanding automatic tax filing within hours of the government’s consultation ending.
“There’s no way government bureaucrats pulled an all-nighter reading through thousands of submissions and survey responses before sending Carney out to make an announcement on automatic tax filing the next morning,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “Asking Canadians for their opinion and then ignoring them isn’t a good look for Carney, it makes it look like the government is holding sham consultations.”
The government of Canada announced consultations on automatic tax filing so Canadians could give the government “broad input through an online questionnaire.”
The government’s consultation ended on Thursday, Oct. 9, 2025.
Hours after the consultation ended, Carney today announced the government would expand automatic tax filing.
The CRA is already one of the largest arms of the federal government with 52,499 bureaucrats. The CRA added 13,015 employees since 2016 – a 33 per cent increase. For comparison, America’s Internal Revenue Service has 90,516 bureaucrats. The CRA has one bureaucrat for every 800 Canadians. The IRS has one bureaucrat for every 3,800 Americans.
“The CRA can barely answer the phone, so Carney shouldn’t be giving those bureaucrats more busy work to do,” Terrazzano said. “The CRA is a bloated mess, and Carney should be cutting the cost of bureaucracy not scheming up ways to give the bureaucracy more power over taxpayers.”
The CRA only answered about 36 per cent of the 53.5 million calls it received between March 2016 and March 2017, according to a 2017 Auditor General report. When Canadians were able to get the CRA on the phone, call centre agents gave inaccurate information about 30 per cent of the time.
“The CRA acting as both tax collector and tax filer is a serious conflict of interest,” Terrazzano said. “Trusting the taxman to do your tax return is like trusting your dog to protect your burger.
“Carney should stop the CRA power grab and instead cut taxes and simplify the tax code.”
For more information or to schedule interviews, please contact:
Franco Terrazzano
CTF Federal Director
Phone: 403.918.3532
Email: fterrazzano@taxpayer.com
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