The Canada Revenue Agency fired more than 100 employees last year, including 25 for misconduct and 78 for fraudulently applying for and receiving the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) during the COVID-19 pandemic, a new CRA report says.
The agency recorded 370 cases of misconduct in the 2024-2025 fiscal year, 266 of which led to disciplinary measures including suspensions, oral or written reprimands, financial penalties, demotion, and terminations, according to the CRA’s second “Annual Report on Employee Misconduct and Wrongdoing,” released on Jan. 28.
Of the misconduct cases, 25 employees were terminated, while more than 150 employees faced suspensions ranging from one to 30 days.
An additional 78 employees were terminated after they “inappropriately” claimed the CERB benefit, which provided financial support to Canadians whose jobs were “directly” affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, the report said.
“Following internal investigations, certain CRA employees who were found to have fraudulently applied for and received CERB payments were subject to a range of disciplinary measures, up to and including termination of employment,” the report said.
The most prevalent types of misconduct involved unauthorized access to one’s own tax information (16 percent of cases), unauthorized access to taxpayer or similar information (11 percent), falsely registering work attendance (10 percent), and insubordination (10 percent).
While the report didn’t go into detail about specific cases of misconduct, it included examples such as the forwarding of CRA-protected information and passwords to personal email accounts without encryption, leaving workstations and devices unsecured, ignoring formal expectations, mishandling calls, sleeping on duty, and plagiarizing.
Other examples included personal transactions on CRA credit cards, sharing CRA credentials with third parties, submitting timesheets for hours not worked, logging in late or early, missing scheduled shifts, periods of inactivity throughout the workday, and “aggressive or disrespectful” language or inappropriate behaviour towards supervisors, colleagues, or the public.
The most common disciplinary measures were suspension, used in 59 percent of misconduct cases, written reprimand (24 percent), and termination (9 percent).
Of the 25 terminations related to misconduct, 64 percent, or 16 cases, were grieved, the CRA said.
The CRA said misconduct cases rose 15 percent from the previous year and the number of cases resulting in disciplinary measures was up 20 percent.
The report also noted that the CRA recorded 124 more misconduct cases that resulted in the use of disciplinary measures in fiscal 2024-2025 than it recorded in fiscal 2020-2021.
The CRA said the report reflects its “ongoing commitment to accountability, vigilance, and continuous improvement,” noting that it investigates “all allegations it receives related to questionable or unethical conduct of CRA employees.”
“While instances of misconduct may occur, they do not define the character of our organization,” the report said, adding that 99.5 percent of CRA employees were not subject to a finding of misconduct last year. The CRA has more than 55,000 employees across Canada.
