2018 Serving You Better consultations with small and medium businesses
The Government of Canada is committed to improving the programs and services we offer to small and medium businesses to make sure they have the tools and support to run their business successfully. That is why, on September 26, 2018, the Honourable Diane Lebouthillier, Minister of National Revenue, launched another round of the CRA’s Serving You Better (SYB) consultations. These consultations are a key part of the CRA’s commitment to improve services offered to Canadians and to recognize small and medium businesses as valued clients.
In recent years, the CRA has consulted regularly with small and medium businesses and their representatives to make our programs and services more streamlined and client-focused. In the fall of 2016, the CRA held SYB consultations with small and medium businesses and accountants and the Report on the Canada Revenue Agency’s consultations with small and medium businesses was published in June 2017.
Building on the success of the 2016 SYB consultations, the 2018 SYB consultations were designed to gather feedback on the service improvements that we’ve made to date, and to get some early insight on some of the initiatives being developed.
How we consulted
For the 2018 SYB consultations, the CRA followed the same model as 2016 and consulted four ways:
In-person
CRA senior officials met with small and medium businesses and accountants. We partnered with CPA Canada and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce to host 21 sessions in 17 cities across Canada.
- Sessions with small and medium businesses took place through the local chambers of commerce in Surrey, Whitehorse, Fredericton, Saint-Georges, Red Deer, Yellowknife, Sydney, Saskatoon, Iqaluit, and Tillsonburg.
- Sessions with accountants took place through CPA Canada provincial bodies in Victoria, Whitehorse, St. John’s, Charlottetown, Thunder Bay, Winnipeg, Yellowknife, Red Deer, Sydney, Regina, and Montréal.
Online
Businesses and accountants that were not able to attend an in-person session, or preferred to share their feedback in writing, were invited to share their comments using our online tool, CRA Engage.
CRA employees
All CRA employees were invited to provide their ideas for service and program improvements online. Front-line CRA employees, who interact with small and medium businesses and accountants daily, were asked to identify targeted areas for improvement.
Industry associations
We reached out to key industry stakeholders for suggestions and feedback from their membership.
In the next few pages, you will find highlights of what we heard from the small and medium business community across Canada, as well as our SYB action plan for 2019 to 2021.
You can stay up to date and track our progress as we implement our new action items at Track how the CRA is helping small and medium businesses.
Following the action plan, you will find information on the Northern Service Improvement Strategy and an overview of the CRA’s longer-term initiatives to help the business community.
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