There's a huge access-to-justice movement in this country, spearheaded largely by Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin. It certainly informs a large part of our work, because information, advice, and representation are absolutely essential to people to be able to exercise their rights in a free and democratic society. Part of the difficulty with the Social Security Tribunal is that you have a single adjudicator, which has replaced the former board of referees, which was a three-person tripartite system. It included a representative of labour, a representative of business, and an independent chairperson. The current commissioner of the Social Security Tribunal has tremendous powers to determine whether or not a hearing will be in person or not. Recent data has indicated that about 80% of hearings have been by video conference and teleconference. When we look at the EI program, we have a number of stakeholders. We have business, labour, and government. Whose needs are currently being met by the current Social Security Tribunal? Clearly, labour is not represented and business is not represented. Certainly the interests of government are being addressed, because the new model was created primarily to save money. When the previous government created this model, they put forward a number of assertions, including that the old system was inefficient and costly. They combined four tribunals, as you may be aware: Social Security, CPP, OAS, and EI. I won't go into detail, but there were four to deal with those particular programs. The model is ineffective.
We've also been pushing in our proposals for a long time.... When the model was created, and I think this is critically important—and I would call upon the government to address this, because this wasn't a making of the current government—and it is almost without precedent, there is no statutory requirement for the commissioner of the Social Security Tribunal to table a report in Parliament. This is highly unusual when we look at other statutory schemes, agencies, boards, and commissions. We've called upon and had discussions with the chairperson to table a report, and she has given assurances, since the body was created that, yes, she intends to so. We have yet to see those reports, and they're not required to do so. Surely every tribunal should be required to talk about their experience, to talk about the number of appeals, to talk about the effectiveness, to talk about those issues, and to publish decisions. None of those things are being done. I think it's certainly within the mandate of the government to ensure that there is more accountability.