💰 The Hidden Economy of Waiting: How the CRA and Telecoms Profit While Canadians Suffer
By Tina Winterlik aka Zipolita
When you’re poor, even waiting costs money.
Every time you call the Canada Revenue Agency and hear that automated voice — “Your estimated wait time is… 45 minutes” — that isn’t just an inconvenience. That’s your phone minutes, your data, your money slipping away while you sit in limbo.
Now multiply that by millions of Canadians trying to reach the CRA in the past year.
The Auditor General says there were over 32 million calls to the CRA’s phone lines — and fewer than a third ever reached an agent.
Do the math.
Let’s say half of those callers waited at least 30 minutes. That’s 16 million hours of hold time.
Even if each caller spent just $2 worth of airtime or data, that’s over $32 million dollars — a quiet, invisible transfer of money from struggling Canadians to telecom corporations.
And who are those callers?
Seniors on fixed incomes. Single parents. Gig workers. Disabled Canadians.
People just trying to get answers about benefits, clawbacks, or missing tax slips.
People who don’t have unlimited plans — or can’t afford to waste their last $10 of prepaid credit on a government phone line that never picks up.
How many people gave up because they simply couldn’t afford to stay on the line?
How many missed deadlines, lost benefits, or got hit with penalties because they couldn’t afford to wait?
📞 The Business of Bureaucratic Failure
We’re told the CRA is “understaffed,” that “modernization is coming,” that “automation will make things easier.”
But what if the inefficiency itself has become profitable?
Every dropped call, every disconnected attempt, every data timeout — all of it feeds the telecom industry.
You pay. They profit.
And the CRA, by outsourcing communication to endless call queues and broken online systems, has quietly built a system where poverty itself is monetized.
This is the hidden economy of waiting — a system that drains money from the people who have the least, under the guise of “public service.”
⚠️ When Digital Systems Replace Human Help
Now the CRA wants to roll out automatic tax returns, promising “efficiency” and “accessibility.”
But what happens when the same system that can’t even answer your call starts filing your taxes for you?
Who will you call when it gets your information wrong — or misses a credit — or triggers a clawback on your benefits?
When the human connection disappears, the digital system doesn’t free you — it cages you.
And those on the margins — the poor, the elderly, the disabled — will be the first trapped inside.
💥 The CRA: Clawbacks, Chaos, and the Crushing of the Poor
For years, we were told that CERB was “help for everyone who needed it.” And yet, here we are — years later — with people like me being clawed back, threatened, and ignored.
We tried to do the right thing during a crisis. The government rushed out a program, made the rules vague, and told us to “apply in good faith.” Now they’ve turned around and blamed us for their mistakes.
I’ve spent hours — days — trying to reach a real person at the CRA. You call, you wait, you hang up. You call again, and the line cuts out. You send documents, and they “lose” them. There’s no one to talk to. It’s an endless maze designed to wear you down until you give up.
❌ CERB Clawbacks: Punishing the Poor for Surviving
The pandemic was terrifying. We were told to stay home, stop working, and keep each other safe. CERB was supposed to keep us afloat. But the CRA’s own records show that hundreds of thousands of people are now being told they “weren’t eligible.”
Why? Because their systems couldn’t keep up, their definitions were unclear, and their communication was chaotic.
Now they’re clawing it back — often from people on social assistance, disability, or part-time gig work. It’s cruel.
⏳ The CRA Can’t Even Answer the Phone — But They Can Take Your Money
According to the Auditor General’s October 2025 report, only 18% of callers reached an agent within 15 minutes — down from a target of 65%.
Accuracy of advice? For individual taxes, only 17%.
That means if you did manage to get through, there was an 83% chance they’d tell you something wrong.
And yet, when it’s time to collect, the CRA works like a machine.
💣 Poverty by Policy: Keeping People Down
Every missed call, every clawback, every lost document — it’s not random. It’s structural.
People who are poor or disabled don’t have accountants or lawyers to fight back.
The system relies on exhaustion. It’s economic bullying in a polite government envelope.
🧩 The Bigger Picture
The CRA should be helping people rebuild after years of economic chaos — not punishing them for trying to survive.
Canada needs to wake up. Behind every statistic is a real person — a mother, a senior, a student, a worker — who trusted their government to help them when they needed it most.
And now we’re being told to pay for their mistakes.
This isn’t “service modernization.” It’s a digital cage.
💠Reflective Questions
- How much money have Canadians collectively lost in phone minutes and data trying to reach the CRA?
- Who benefits most from a system that keeps people waiting — or disconnected?
- What happens to democracy when the government replaces human service with digital walls?
- Is “automatic filing” really convenience — or control?
- How would a compassionate tax system look if it was built by and for the people it’s supposed to serve
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