Ottawa, ON – Jasraj Hallan, Conservative Shadow Minister for National Revenue, released the following statement after a Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) audit exposed serious failures in its management of unpaid taxes:

“After 11 years of Liberal management, the CRA is failing the Canadians they are supposed to serve.

“In the 2024/25 fiscal year, the CRA collected more than $8 billion in unpaid taxes. Yet its own auditors found that the Agency does not properly track collection files, monitor broken payment plans or ensure accounts are assigned to the right officers. In just one year, nearly 129,000 accounts were dumped back into a pool of unassigned cases.

“While the CRA cannot properly track its own collection files, it aggressively pursues both small businesses and individual citizens. Honest taxpayers face threatening letters, mounting interest, frozen bank accounts and liens, even while waiting for the CRA to review their documents or correct their own mistakes.

“Meanwhile, Canadians are kept in the dark when enormous corporate debts are written off. In 2023–24, the CRA wrote off a combined $1.2 billion owed by just 11 companies, but the Liberal government refuses to tell Canadians which corporations received these massive write-offs.

“This is staggering incompetence. The CRA has grown larger while service standards have plummeted. Despite receiving  more funding, hiring more employees and getting more powers, the agency cannot get the basics right.

“Minister Champagne must explain how the Liberals allowed this mess to happen and what his plan is to fix it. Canadians deserve a CRA that is fair with honest taxpayers, tough on deliberate tax cheats and transparent about massive corporate write-offs.

“Conservative Shadow Minister for Innovation, Science and Industry Adam Chambers’ Bill C-230 would end this secrecy by creating a searchable public registry of companies and partnerships that have at least $2 million in federal debt written off or forgiven. The legislation has passed the House of Commons, and the Senate should pass it without delay.

“People who pay what they owe should not be forced to also pay the price for Liberal incompetence, CRA mismanagement and government secrecy.”