Certainly. Thank you very much for the question.
I'm responsible for the employment insurance call centres. We also had a CERB call centre that we implemented. Back when the pandemic first hit, the volume of calls that came into our call centre was unprecedented. On any specific day, 10, 20 or even 30 times more calls would be received.
Since March, we've implemented a number of measures. There are two main pieces I would flag. We invested a lot in our technology to increase people's ability to access our phone lines. Prior to that, there was a significant blockage. People would just receive a busy signal. They weren't able to even get into our automated response. Through enhancements to technology, that situation no longer occurs. That has not been occurring since May of last year.
Secondly and most importantly, we've invested in a significant number of new call centre agents. Prior to the pandemic, we had about 1,100 EI call centre agents. By the end of March, we will have over 3,000 EI call centre agents, which has resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of calls we are answering. Because the demand continues to be very high, wait times are longer than we would like, but they are actually starting to go down and we anticipate that they will continue to reduce.