Ottawa, Ontario, Feb 13, 2026, 07:21 (EST)
- The CRA is aiming to pick up calls from 70% of unique callers, and it’s rolling out Saturday service for the busiest filing weeks.
- The agency is pushing taxpayers toward online self-service options—think GenAI chatbot beta, plus live chat.
- CRA has simplified the process for tax preparers to gain authorized access, and it’s pushing for backup MFA options to reduce lockouts.
The Canada Revenue Agency plans to hire or rehire around 1,700 contact-centre staffers, aiming to answer calls from an average 70% of unique callers for the 2026 tax-filing season. With the extra hands, CRA’s call centre headcount should hit 4,500 or so. Saturday phone lines will open March 21 through May 2, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern, the agency said. 1
The move comes right before the start of filing season on Feb. 23, a period when call numbers usually jump. The CRA’s service-improvement page shows that contact centres fielded upwards of 12 million calls during last year’s tax season—roughly 200,000 each weekday. 2
The agency’s pushing more taxpayers toward online options, rolling out self-serve features and testing a “GenAI” chatbot—generative artificial intelligence, in beta—plus live chat in My Account for file-specific questions. The CRA says it targets a two-week turnaround for online notices of assessment, stretching to 12 weeks for paper returns. April 30 remains the main filing deadline for most Canadians. 3
The CRA, in a Wednesday advisory, scrapped the five-day waiting period from its alternative authorization route, which lets tax preparers access client tax files via the “Represent a Client” portal for authorized reps. Now, taxpayers can give access either from their CRA account or using info from a notice of assessment that’s at least six months old. The agency also clarified: tax preparers won’t be able to use EFILE to request individual client authorizations any longer. 4
The agency’s pushing for stricter login measures, hoping to avoid a wave of locked-out users flooding phone lines. CRA account holders without a backup multi-factor authentication option—like a passcode grid or a third-party authenticator—will get a prompt to set one up, according to the CRA. The catch: users can choose to ignore the prompt for now, at least through tax season. 5
The CRA is still working to rebuild its call-centre capacity and upgrade its tools after years of complaints. In a backgrounder, the agency pegged yearly call volume between 25 million and 32 million, noting that repeated calls have put a strain on its resources. It said capacity got a lift in fall 2025, with around 1,250 new service reps brought on. A rapid shift to a cloud-based phone system is also underway, using a contract awarded to Bell Canada last July through a procurement managed by Shared Services Canada. 6
The agency’s new targets carry some old problems, and the next surge in calls will put recent changes to the test. Auditor General Karen Hogan, in her October 2025 report, found that CRA contact centre staff got individual tax questions right just 17% of the time from February to May 2025. Hogan flagged that “Canadians are still waiting too long to get answers to their tax questions.” The Canadian Taxpayers Federation, pointing to her findings, said, “Hiring more bureaucrats to give even more wrong answers won’t actually fix the problem” unless the rules themselves are made simpler. 7
The CRA is counting on extra staff, extended shifts, and a push toward digital services to keep things running when tax season filings kick off later this month—right as Canadians begin looking for refunds, answers on benefits, and those elusive missing slips.
