Human Resources committee  Good afternoon, and thank you all for welcoming me. My name is Jim Bishop and as was just stated, I am the government relations chair for the Funeral Service Association of Canada, or FSAC, as it's commonly known. I'm also the owner and operator of Bishop's Funeral Home, which i

Human Resources committee  In reference to what I was saying, what I was referring to is the time gap between vital statistics and when we have finished meeting with the families to make our arrangements. We fill out the civil portion of the registration of death with the family. That in turn is turned ove

Human Resources committee  Ultimately the goal would be to have an online system set up that way down the road. I'm not sure about the logistics of the implementation of that. I do see our role in this increasing.

Human Resources committee  With respect to Canada pension plan, there are forms that are online which we print up on behalf of the family. Some families will ask us to help and sometimes we will offer that help initially to help them fill those forms out and submit them. Some families prefer to do it thems

Human Resources committee  It's slightly different from province to province, but in most cases there's a wallet size and a certificate size, and they're issued the same way that birth certificates and marriage certificates are issued. Of course they're all done in the same departments in most provinces. T

Human Resources committee  As I mentioned earlier, one of the key delays is the time the doctor takes to fill out the cause of death, sign off on the death certificate, and then forward it to vital statistics. It doesn't come back to the funeral home for us to forward. The doctor does it. Once we've filled

Human Resources committee  No. It has our incorporated seal on it, but banks, insurance companies, Canada pension plan, all the agencies that people deal with accept it. We qualify who the legitimate person making the affairs is. We'll ask for the first page of the will to see who the named executor is so

Human Resources committee  I couldn't give you specific figures, but as far as those benefits are concerned, you would have a situation whereby somebody's overpaid. What if that responsible party didn't realize that's where that source of income came from and they spent some of that money? Then you have to

Human Resources committee  For sure.

Human Resources committee  In the time that I've been with FSAC, we haven't really had a go-to person beyond our normal lobbying with the government on the different issues that we run into, but the introduction of this bill definitely opened the door to a discussion that was long overdue as far as we're c

Human Resources committee  Quite often we do, unfortunately. What appears to be the case in some estate matters is that the family don't view it as a death benefit that's there to assist in the payment of a funeral, but rather money in the estate that can be used for whatever purposes they see fit. Oftent

Human Resources committee  Part of the delay.... I'm not trying to put this all on the doctors and say the doctors are negligent in their timely fashion of filling out that paperwork. There are also cases where there has been an autopsy and people are waiting for the toxicological results; they're waiting

Human Resources committee  Of our membership and the people in our industry whom we've talked to about this bill, there are of course no negatives. It's a no-brainer. It seems to be a very great streamlining process for people who look after the executorship of an estate. With the public, they are always

Human Resources committee  Policy-wise, I couldn't speak to that because I'm not sure what logistics would be involved on their side. On our side, my take on it is that whatever they decide, if it's going to expedite things and make it easier for families, that would meet my main concern. As for how it goe

Human Resources committee  No, I don't believe we need a different role. It's just that we are the people on the ground who are dealing with these families on a day-to-day basis, and we are the first point of contact for these families. As far as streamlining is concerned, as I said, we would like to par