The Government of Canada has begun an initiative called ePayroll to develop a recommendation to modernize the way employers send payroll, employment and demographic information to government departments and agencies. The objective is to reduce the administrative burden for Canadian employers and streamline the delivery of government benefits and services. The initiative is being led by Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) in partnership with Employment and Social Development Canada and Treasury Board Secretariat – Office of the Chief Information Officer and is part of the government’s Budget 2021 commitment to propose a near real-time solution to better service Canadian businesses.

The project will result in a costed implementation plan, including the following:

  • A business case
  • A transformation blueprint
  • A project management framework

The first phase of the research at hand provided the CRA with a quantitative measure of public opinions and perceptions, while the second phase (qualitative) will complement the results from the quantitative phase and provides the CRA with better contextual information regarding public opinion towards the ePayroll solution. Both phases will inform strategic decision-making by helping to gauge the comfort level, biases and misconceptions Canadians have towards an ePayroll solution, as well as identify new challenges and opportunities that could impact Canadians.

Quantitative Methodology

The survey is comprised of 1,717 Canadians, between 18 and 65 years of age who are in the workforce or looking to join/rejoin the workforce. This sample of Canadians includes an oversample of 75 individuals in the Territories.

The survey sample was drawn from two sources:

  • the Nanos Probability Panel, which contains about 40,000Canadians who were randomly recruited to join the panel by land and cell lines with live agents
  • a supplemental random recruitment of adults by land and cell lines to ensure coverage of the Territories

The resulting sample contains individuals who were all randomly recruited by telephone, thus allowing a margin of error to be associated with the research. All respondents self-administered the survey online.

The online survey was conducted between March 31 and May 28, 2023, in English and in French. The survey programming was tested extensively online in both languages.

The margin of error for a random survey of 1,717 Canadians connected to the workforce, between 18 and 65 years old is plus or minus 2.4 percentage points, 19 times out of 20 (95% confidence interval). It is important to note that the results for subgroups have a larger margin of sampling error than for the overall sample because of their smaller sample sizes. Also, the margin of sampling error is highest for questions where 50% of the respondents gave one answer and the other 50% gave another answer. The margin of sampling error decreases for questions where the observed percentage for a particular response approaches 0% or 100%.

Qualitative Methodology

 The qualitative component of this research program featured in-person focus groups among Canadians, 18 to 65 years of age, connected to the workforce (excluding retirees or those permanently out of the workforce).

Focus groups were conducted in the following communities:

  • Vancouver (two groups)
  • Sudbury (two groups)
  • Halifax (one group)
  • Moncton (one group)
  • Montréal (one group)
  • Trois-Rivières (one group)
  • Yellowknife (rural) (one group)
  • Winnipeg (Indigenous Peoples) (one group)

The two (2) Quebec groups and one (1) Moncton group were conducted in French and the remainder were in English. Each session was up to 120 minutes in length.

Each group had between 4 and 10 participants, with 10 being recruited per group to achieve this target. A total of 79 participants attended the focus groups out of a total of 100 individuals recruited.

Readers should note that qualitative research is designed to reveal a rich range of opinions and interpretations rather than to measure what percentage of the target population holds a given opinion. These results must not be used to estimate the numeric proportion or number of individuals in the population who hold a particular opinion because they are not statistically projectable. The focus group research will allow the CRA to gauge the views and gather in-depth insights from specific communities of interest.

The research was commissioned by CRA and was conducted by Nanos Research.

This publication reports the findings of this research.

To view the full report in English, click here

To view the full report in French, click here