Federal Government: 1)It’s the first tax season since the CRA revamped its services. Here’s what to expect: 2)Carney rolls out plans to build up domestic defence sector, add 125,000 jobs; 3)Federal public servants seek legal advice as they face job cuts; 4)Fact File: Why it’s tough to verify some of Carney’s claims about ‘protected’ jobs

1)It’s the first tax season since the CRA revamped its services. Here’s what to expect

Source Canadian Press

By Ritika Dubey, February 20, 2026

The Canada Revenue Agency says taxpayers should have an easier time this tax season, a year after it faced criticism for long wait times and, in some cases, bad advice from representatives.

The agency has revamped its operations, undertaking a government-ordered service improvement plan focused on addressing call centre delays, which wrapped up in December. Since then, it’s streamlined its websites, hired more call centre workers and rejigged standards for accuracy.

“We recognize that our service has been challenging in the past,” said Melanie Serjak, assistant commissioner of the assessment benefits and service branch at the Canada Revenue Agency.

“We’ve made many efforts to improve that service and we’ve been completely focused on improving how Canadians interact with us.”

The 2025 tax-filing season officially kicks off on Monday and continues for a little over nine weeks, ending April 30 for most taxpayers.

Many of the agency’s updates for this year centre around the CRA My Account. Taxpayers will be able to manage their balance or amount owing and set up a payment plan without speaking with a collections agent.

Serjak said correct basic information on CRA accounts — name, contact details, banking information and address — is “critical for a smooth tax-filing season,” and helps reduce the need to call when filing a return online.

Starting this year, those locked out of their CRA accounts can get access again via security questions, instead of calling the helpline and staying on hold. Those creating a CRA account for the first time won’t have to wait for days for their log-in credentials via mail — and can verify their identity via government-issued identification.

Web content should now be easier to follow and understand, Serjak said. The agency will also stop mailing paper copies of notices of assessment starting this year, shifting to online-only access.

The CRA also expanded topics on its 24-hour generative AI chatbot, launched last March, while retiring its old chatbot, Charlie. Unlike generative AI, which creates new content based on questions asked, Charlie provided answers from pre-determined scripts to assist in frequently asked questions and straightforward inquiries.

People can also chat online with an agent on weekdays between 8 a.m. ET and 8 p.m. ET, increasing the service by an extra three hours.

“A lot of our efforts have been on improving those self-serve options so that reduces the pressure on our phone lines,” Serjak said.

And if none of that helps, Serjak said there will be more agents available this year to take calls.

The agency is still working to hire an additional 1,500 call centre workers for the upcoming tax season, adding to its existing crew of 3,500 agents. However, the agency said it can’t provide final staffing numbers because the hiring is still underway.

Gerry Vittoratos, national tax specialist at UFile, said the CRA’s top priority this year should be answering calls within a reasonable time.

“The majority of the interfacing people do with the CRA is the call centre,” he said. “The CRA is basically the only place you can go to get these answers.”

Vittoratos said the agency has no option but to improve services.

“They have a big responsibility to be on the ball, essentially, to be able to provide the service that Canadians need,” he said. “It’s rightfully so that they’re under scrutiny.”

And they’re prepared for higher call volumes when the peak tax-filing season rolls in.

On average, the agents tackle about 40,000 unique calls a day during the non-tax months of October to December; however, that can climb to an average of 90,000 unique calls a day during the peak months of February to May, Serjak said.

The agency said its goal is to answer an average of 70 per cent of unique callers during the tax season.

Still, some people may have to wait to speak to an agent.

Serjak said the aim is to keep wait times under 30 minutes. The agency has set up a team to monitor and divert calls to the phone menu if the wait time is going to be longer than the half-hour limit.

“They can check our website for the current wait times and then determine when is the best next time to call in order to reach an agent,” she said.

The CRA faced flak last year for giving incorrect or bad advice to taxpayers calling for help.

In a scathing report published last fall, Auditor General Karen Hogan said call centres were failing to answer questions about individual taxes, estimating the accuracy and completeness of responses at just 17 per cent. The numbers were better for business tax or benefits questions, with accurate responses to those calls 54 per cent of the time, the report said.

Serjak said the agency has since beefed up its training program, revised its accuracy evaluation of agents and set up tools to see how they’re doing on the accuracy and completeness of their responses. Before an agent gets on the telephone, they go through anywhere from two to 13 weeks of in-classroom training, followed by weeks of live training on the phone alongside a more senior agent.

She added the agency has now achieved an accuracy rate of over 90 per cent as the targeted training and coaching continue.

Vittoratos said this year, inaccuracies may not be as big of a problem because last year’s tax season included massive tax-related changes, such as to capital gains taxes, which created “a perfect storm.”

Long processing times for services last year were also a cause of frustration for many and the CRA says some Canadians may still see that for certain services.

“That we recognize has been a pain point for Canadians,” Serjak said. While there has been progress, she said, “there are some longer-than-what-we-would-like timeframes.”

Certain services, such as a T1 adjustment or refiling taxes, are still seeing long wait times. For example, a refile on paper or via phone can take up to 16 weeks, while the standard timeline is eight weeks from the time the request is received, according to the CRA website.

Serjak said efforts at the CRA are ongoing and the teams are closely monitoring progress.

“We continue putting resources against that and working through our backlogs,” she said. “But we are in much better shape now than we were just a few months ago.”

While there are internal metrics to track progress, Serjak said the CRA is also planning to launch a public tracker for Canadians to follow the agency’s performance and maintain transparency.

“They can track the progress that the CRA is making on some of the improvements,” Serjak said.

2)Carney rolls out plans to build up domestic defence sector, add 125,000 jobs

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Kyle Duggan, February 17, 2026

Canada has failed both to adequately fund its military and to build up the domestic defence industry, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Tuesday as he rolled out an ambitious new plan to grow the defence sector.

Canada’s first-ever defence industrial strategy, unveiled Tuesday by Carney in Montreal, sets new guidance on procurement and funding decisions, looks to hike Canadian firms’ share of federal defence contracts to 70 per cent and vows to add 125,000 defence sector jobs over the next decade.

“Over the last few decades, Canada has neither spent enough on defence nor invested enough in our defence industries and we have relied too heavily on our geography and other countries to protect us,” Carney said. “This has created vulnerabilities we can no longer afford and dependencies we can no longer sustain.”

The $6.6-billion plan, which bills itself as a “paradigm shift” for how government engages with industry, will prioritize building military gear domestically — especially to cover “sovereign capabilities” critical to national defence or Canada’s commitments to allies.

If Ottawa cannot build at home, it will partner with allies or buy directly from them under “strong conditions that spur reinvestment into the Canadian economy,” the strategy document says.

The strategy warns of a need to “mitigate” the risk of Canada getting locked into advanced military systems owned and controlled by foreign governments that can exert control over their intellectual property.

Christyn Cianfarani, president of the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries, called the introduction of the defence industrial strategy a “historic turning point.”

“For the first time, we can see a clear, accountable vision for the defence sector” that comes with specific targets to grow Canada’s sovereign industrial capabilities, she said.

The document states that Ottawa will select certain Canadian defence firms as “key strategic partners” and enter into formal partnerships with them to build “world-leading champions that can meet Canada’s needs.”

The strategy seeks to increase Canada’s defence exports by 50 per cent within a decade — just as the European Union looks to massively scale up defence spending in response to Russia’s war on Ukraine.

“We will be very deliberate and open in terms of defence and security partnerships we sign with allies throughout the world and what opportunities that opens up, and be clear about what the guardrails are around … the types of exports we would envision with those countries,” Carney said.

“We will be broadening our partnerships. We’re deepening with our closest allies.”

The document also promises a suite of policy shifts to come — such as planned legislative changes to the new Defence Investment Agency to make it an independent office.

The agency is currently housed within Public Service and Procurement with a staff compliment of just 85 people, which is set to expand to roughly 400.

But the strategy cautions that “even with more efficient defence procurement, Canadian companies will still need to engage with multiple agencies.”

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre dismissed the document as a “salad bowl of buzzwords” and called on Ottawa to instead cut bureaucracy and streamline its purchasing decisions.

The government pledges in the document to advance a package of reforms early this year to its industrial technological benefits policy, which sets out how procurement projects get graded in terms of how they contribute to the domestic economy.

It promises a new strategy on expanding production of critical minerals tied to defence and the creation of a new program to support domestic production of ammunition and explosives.

The strategy said by 2029, Ottawa will stand up a new plant to produce nitrocellulose, which is a propellant used in munitions.

Also on Tuesday, the government set new serviceability targets for its fleets — the percentage of military vehicles ready to be deployed.

The government set deployment-ready targets of 75 per cent for the maritime fleet, 80 per cent for land vehicles and 85 per cent for aerospace — targets that national defence officials called ambitious but achievable. According to publicly released figures from National Defence, the last reported serviceability levels were 59.6 per cent for the maritime fleet, 51 per cent for land vehicles and 42.3 per cent for aerospace.

The department cited personnel shortages, past underfunding, aging vehicles and other supply chain issues as factors affecting the availability of military platforms.

3)Federal public servants seek legal advice as they face job cuts

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Catherine Morrison, February 13, 2026

Several law firms in Ottawa say they’re getting an influx of calls from federal workers looking for advice as the public service faces job cuts.

Malini Vijaykumar, a partner at Nelligan Law, said unionized employees need to go through their unions to file grievances or complaints.

She said she has also seen an increase in inquiries from non-unionized executives and employees in human resources who are navigating the changes.

Vijaykumar said some employees have been told that their positions may be affected about a year from now, while others have heard layoffs may come within months.

“They are really stressed out and trying to understand what their options are,” she said.

A government program and spending review is looking to eliminate about 40,000 public service jobs by 2029, from a peak of 368,000 positions in 2024.

That includes 1,000 executive positions over the next two years.

Vijaykumar said that, unlike workers in the private sector, public servants typically can’t engage in individual severance negotiations. 

“Instead, you’re looking at the decision-making process and seeing if there was something discriminatory about it,” she said. “Just the fact that you’re being affected in a workforce adjustment … that’s not typically something that you can negotiate or contest if you’re a government employee.

“The system is just so different and a lot of the education for folks has been letting them know that.”

Federal unions have warned of threats to services and public safety as a result of job cuts. The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada staged a demonstration Friday in Ottawa to protest cuts at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

The union set up a public display of commonly recalled food products to show the potential impact of federal cuts at the agency.

The union representing employees at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said late last month that staff have been told 1,371 agency jobs will be cut as part of the government’s cost-cutting exercise.

The Agriculture Union said it “categorically denounces” the cuts and warns they point toward a “looming food safety crisis” in Canada. 

Christopher Achkar, managing partner at Achkar Law, said the business is seeing a “surge” due to the workforce adjustment in the federal public service.

“Many people are receiving these notices and are unsure what they mean and how they affect them,” he said. “This is across the board and many people are unsure of their options.”

A government website providing data on workforce reductions as of Feb. 1 shows the government is targeting a reduction of 8,706 employee positions and 465 executive positions across almost 30 departments through the workforce adjustment or career transition processes.

The federal government has not yet confirmed the number of jobs being eliminated for some departments.

4)Fact File: Why it’s tough to verify some of Carney’s claims about ‘protected’ jobs

Courtesy Barrie360.com and Canadian Press

By Craig Lord, February 15, 2026

Prime Minister Mark Carney has made a series of claims recently about how much the federal government’s support for tariff-stricken industries has protected jobs in Canada.

Some of his figures on the number of workers being supported come close to federal records. Experts say that while there are models that can help estimate job creation tied to federal programs, measuring their impact on the labour market is seldom an exact science.

THE CLAIM

Since March 2025, the federal government has announced multiple measures to protect Canadian industries and workers vulnerable to U.S. tariffs. These measures have included changes to make it easier to access employment insurance, large pools of funds to help companies hold on to their workers and policies that encourage domestic firms to buy Canadian.

Speaking at an auto parts manufacturer in Woodbridge, Ont. on Feb. 5, Carney touted the results of what he called “the most comprehensive set of trade resilience measures in Canada’s history.”

“Our measures have created and protected 18,000 jobs across steel, aluminum, lumber and the auto sector. They’ve prevented more than 20,000 layoffs,” he said.

“We provided income supports for more than 6,000 workers, with a total of 190,000 more expected to benefit, including in the auto sector.”

THE FACTS

On the day Carney made that claim, The Canadian Press reached out to the Prime Minister’s Office to ask for the source of his figures.

The next day, Feb. 6, the PMO forwarded the request on to Employment and Social Development Canada.

After two deadline extensions, ESDC provided a short answer around 5 p.m. ET on Feb. 10, the following Tuesday.

That reply stated that the estimate of layoffs avoided — 20,000 — came from the federal government’s work-sharing program data, while the figure on workers receiving income support was taken from the employment insurance program.

The federal government’s work-sharing program offers income support for workers with reduced hours when their employer is facing a downturn in business outside the company’s control.

An ESDC web page tracking the program estimates that 18,621 layoffs had been prevented since March 2025 as of the week ending Feb. 7, 2026 — slightly below Carney’s figure. The program has approved 1,450 total agreements with employers representing 48,979 employees at a total cost of $307,818,851, according to the federal government’s statistics.

Another ESDC web page states that 8,360 people have become first-time recipients of employment insurance since April 1, 2025, though those figures are not divided by industry.

ESDC’s Feb. 6 response did not include Carney’s 18,000 jobs “created and protected” figure. The Canadian Press requested additional information related to those numbers the following day.

The department requested multiple extensions through the week and did not provide a response by the final deadline of noon on Feb. 13.

Tony Stillo is the director of Canadian economics at Oxford Economics and previously worked at the Ontario Ministry of Finance, where he modelled the labour market impacts of various government policies.

He said there are a number of ways to chart potential job impacts and some are more clear than others.

With direct financial supports such as the work-sharing program, Stillo said, applicants have to provide the federal government with regular and detailed payroll data that helps to inform statistics about the number of jobs affected, or the number that otherwise would have been lost.

“The jobs at risk is a bit of a subjective figure, but that’s kind of a reference point,” he said.

Stillo said economic models are fairly reliable when it comes to the number of jobs created, lost or maintained across a supply chain. A tiremaker might be able to hold on to more workers if the automotive company they supply is also doing more business, for example.

He said the models get less reliable when they examine “induced” job impacts — knock-on effects from a loss of income across the economy. If an autoworker isn’t stopping into his local dinner on the way into his shift, the person serving his coffee might see their job put at risk. Stillo said those second-order effects are harder to predict.

Stillo said governments typically don’t report induced job figures and default to more verifiable figures.

“That’s where I would draw the line, that induced effect. I would stick to the direct activity at the plant, employment in this case, and then the supply chain, not the re-spending of the incomes that have been supported,” he said.

Randall Bartlett, deputy chief economist at Desjardins, said it’s “standard fare” for governments to estimate the labour market effects of their policies. He also said it’s hard to know whether Carney’s 18,000-job figure is accurate without also knowing “what’s under the hood” of Ottawa’s models.

Outside of direct income supports, Bartlett said, the federal government will have to derive job estimates from comparisons to historic data.

Policies like Budget 2025’s proposed “productivity super deduction” — a measure allowing businesses to write off the full cost of investments like new equipment in year one — might be judged against how much similar policies drove business investment and job creation in previous years.

“Those are much harder to track and they’re really based on different estimation approaches and they’ll give different results,” Bartlett said.

Statistics Canada said in its January labour force survey that employment in tariff-sensitive manufacturing was down 51,000 positions from a year earlier.

Stillo said in a recent report that tracking the impact of the trade war on the jobs market has been challenging, in part because the monthly labour force survey has diverged at times this year from StatCan’s survey of employment, payrolls and hours — a separate measure of employment that’s usually less volatile but also less timely than the labour force survey.

Stillo said when tracking individual data sets is difficult, it’s more important to take a step back.

“We think the big picture is the economy is struggling to grow and will continue to do so because of the trade war, the uncertainty related to that,” he said.

Stillo added, however, that modestly stimulative interest rates from the Bank of Canada and fiscal policy supports from multiple levels of government are offering “tailwinds” to the economy.

While exact figures are hard to nail down, Bartlett said the labour market has proven surprisingly resilient to the trade war so far and the impact of the federal government’s policies has thus far been “positive.”

“We can quibble over individual numbers. Reasonable people can disagree on what those numbers are and what does constitute reasonable. I think they have helped to prevent certainly some layoffs, maybe added a little bit more to hiring than we would’ve seen otherwise,” he said.

Bartlett said Ottawa’s task now is to decide whether these programs are continuing to work as designed or need to evolve, and whether taxpayers are getting “bang for their buck.”