Audit, Financial and Scientific Group
OTTAWA, April 3, 2018 – CRA has confirmed that a solution to the ongoing Phoenix issues is available. CRA has completed analysis on their corporate administration system (CAS) and it has the capacity to pay all CRA employees.
The AFS Bargaining Team met with senior CRA officials on Thursday, March 29th to sign the new AFS Collective Agreement and bring it into force. This collective agreement runs from December 22, 2014 to December 21, 2018.
We are pleased that this new agreement introduces numerous improvements to our members’ rights and brings in long awaited pay increases for all of our AFS members.
At the request of the AFS Group Executive and as per PIPSC By-Law 17.3.2.1, the PIPSC Elections committee is conducting the 2018 AFS Group election to the National AFS Group Executive. As per AFS Group By-Law 7.5.1 - the year before the year divisible by three (3), elections will be held for the President.
AFS Group By-Law 6.3: The term of office shall be three (3) years.
We'd like to provide an update on the PSTAR grievances, FPSLREB File Nos. 566.34.9832 & 9833 (Myles & Alcock). The Institute and the CRA had a pre-hearing conference on January 23 to resolve a number of procedural issues designed to streamline the hearing itself. The major issue is that the CRA asserted that the case itself should be split in half so that they could raise a technical objection to the Board's jurisdiction. Essentially, the CRA wanted to prevent a hearing on the merits (i.e. whether our members were entitled to severance).
The AFS Group Annual General Meeting will be held on Saturday, June 9, 2018 at the Lord Elgin Hotel in Ottawa. The AFS Group By-Laws provide for seventy (70) delegates including the eleven (11) members of the AFS Group Executive. The fifty-nine (59) official delegates are allocated on the basis of population by region and chosen by the Regional Representatives.
Present: Doug Mason (President). Regional Representatives: Shawn Gillis (Ontario and Treasurer), Mark Muench (CS National Consultation Representative), Phil Choo (BC / Yukon), Manny Costain (CS Regional Representative and Secretary), Robert Trudeau (Prairies/NWT), Brian Hassall (HQ), Allaudin Alibhai (NCR IT), Steve Parent (Quebec), and Al Ravjiani (Toronto).
Absent: Chris Roach (Vice-President and Atlantic Regional Representative).
On January 29, 2018, PIPSC President Debi Daviau met with Revenue Minister Diane Lebouthillier for the first time at the Canada Revenue Agency headquarters in Ottawa.
A number of issues of particular significance to our CRA members were discussed, including the distribution of the audit workload at Agency offices across Canada; the need for more resources to tackle international tax evasion; and the delay in the Employer signing the recent collective agreement.
On December 13, 2017, Member of Parliament Sheri Benson (Saskatoon West) presented a petition to the House of Commons on behalf of the Professional Institute about the Canada Revenue Agency’s Greater Toronto Area (GTA) Service Modernization initiative.
Minister of National Revenue Diane Lebouthillier has since tabled her response (below).