Canada Phone Wait Times

Estimated average hold times by service category — inbound voice calls

🌏 Canada-wide 📞 Phone / Voice only 📋 9 service categories 🕑 Values in minutes ⚠️ Illustrative estimates

At a Glance

31
Longest typical wait (min)
CRA — Auditor General Oct 2025
35
Shortest typical wait (min)
Credit Cards
27
Average across all categories (min)
55%
Avg. chance your agent
is based in Canada
450
Max recorded wait ceiling (min)
Banks (BMO) — Reddit reports

Visual Overview

Typical Wait Time by Category (minutes)

% Agent Located in Canada vs. Offshore

Wait Time Range — Min / Typical / Max (minutes)

Range band (min–max)
Typical wait

Category Detail

Category Typical Wait Range Tier Agent Location Notes
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Real Voices — What Canadians Actually Said

CRA — 10+ months
"It's frustrating, it has created a lot of stress for me. It just keeps hanging over my head."
Bill Bisson, taxpayer waiting 10 months for CRA to resolve a dispute — CBC News
Rogers — ~7 hours total
"I spent 2 hours and 38 minutes on one call alone just trying to cancel my business internet. I kept getting 'we are experiencing heavy call volumes' no matter what time I called."
Anil Sedha, Winnipeg business owner — CBC Go Public, Nov 2025
BMO — 7.5 hours
"BMO phone support wait times are always 3 hours... another year later, still like this."
Reddit user, r/PersonalFinanceCanada — confirmed by multiple users reporting 3–7.5 hr waits — Reddit thread
IRCC — calls disconnected
"I used multiple phones simultaneously to call back-to-back because individual numbers get 'blacklisted' for the day after being disconnected. Waited 45+ minutes when I finally got through."
Immigration applicant, CanadaVisa forums — CanadaVisa.com
Telecom industry — systemic
"It reduces the need for these telcos to compete and to provide good customer service because they think, 'Customers need us, so we don't really need to do anything to improve our service.'"
Prof. Eugene Chan, Toronto Metropolitan University — CBC News, Nov 2025
CRA — 2+ hours
"CBC News found waits exceeding 2 hours despite the CRA website estimating only 8–11 minutes."
CBC News investigation — Radio-Canada / CBC

📋 Data Sources

  1. Auditor General Report on CRA Contact Centres (Oct 2025) — avg 31-min CRA wait, only 18% answered within standard
  2. Taxpayers' Ombudsperson Annual Report 2023-24 — 2,833 complaints, wait times top issue
  3. Taxpayers' Ombudsperson Annual Report 2024-25 — contact centres remain #1 complaint
  4. Reddit: Best times to call CRA (r/PersonalFinanceCanada, Mar 2025) — 30–40 min waits at peak hours
  5. CBC Go Public: Rogers customer service nightmare (Nov 2025) — 7-hour cancellation ordeal
  6. CCTS 2024-25 Telecom Complaints Report (Jan 2026) — 23,647 complaints, up 17% YoY
  7. Reddit: BMO 3-hour phone waits (r/PersonalFinanceCanada) — 7.5-hr max reported
  8. Auditor General 2019: IRCC Call Centres — 1M callers hung up on hold, 7M calls deflected
  9. IRCC Processing & Service Delivery Report (Oct 2025) — 40% call answer rate
  10. Globe and Mail: Auditor-General targets CRA (Oct 2025) — wait times doubled year-over-year
Disclaimer: All wait-time values are approximate estimates inferred from aggregated publicly available information including online consumer forums, social media discussions, published news articles, industry surveys, and government or regulatory reports, supplemented by synthetic interpolation where data are sparse or inconsistent. These figures are for illustrative and educational purposes only. They do not represent measured, audited, or verified performance data for any specific organization, brand, crown corporation, government department, or named service provider. Actual wait times vary significantly based on time of day, day of week, season, staffing levels, call type, and individual circumstances.