Government Operations Committee on May 25th, 2020

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

I will ask the official from the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, Scott Jones, to elaborate on that.

I would say that the monitoring and the very effective Government of Canada perimeter within which all of our secure government activities are placed and take place have resulted in a remarkable absence of real cyber-incidents over the past time period during COVID when so much activity is happening.

Scott, do you have something to add?

[Scott Jones, Head, Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, Communications Security Establishment]

Yes. Thank you, Minister.

In general what we've done is that we've worked with commercial partners and with cyber-centres from around the world to take down anything that is impersonating the Government of Canada to try to dupe Canadians into taking some sort of online action. We've taken down hundreds of websites or malicious indicators, but we've also taught the commercial sector what the official CERB site, for example, looks like, so that they know and can recognize it and can take the malicious sites down on their own as well. That way they protect all Canadians quickly.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Could you tell us how many victims there were before these sites were detected by your services?

[Scott Jones]

Unfortunately, because we look for the malicious activity, we don't look towards Canadians. The CSE Act precludes us from looking towards Canadians. We don't have a count of victims. We have to turn to our colleagues at the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, if a Canadian has reported it.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Are there any teleworking public service employees whose computer systems have been targeted by a cyber attack?

[Scott Jones]

In general, the Government of Canada is targeted with approximately two billion malicious activities per day. A lot of that is purely reconnaissance, looking for any vulnerable service, but we're able to take action and we block those with our colleagues at Shared Services.

Yes, there continue to be attempts to target Government of Canada users. The extreme majority of those, greater than 99%, are blocked before any public servant even sees them.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Among the 1% of cyber attacks that remain, have there been any consequences either on government data or on the personal data of Quebeckers and Canadians?

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Give a very brief answer, please, Mr. Jones.

[Scott Jones]

We have seen no breach of any government systems since the beginning of this event.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

We'll now go to Mr. Green for six minutes.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I certainly appreciate having the opportunity to hear from the honourable minister today.

As you know, constituency offices across the country have been absolutely inundated with calls for every single government announcement, particularly as it relates to EI benefits and CERB, and certainly for small businesses it's the same, so I can appreciate the Herculean effort it must take to provide responses throughout the public service.

We've been hearing, though, from many people that they've had problems with the processing of their EI and CERB applications and cannot get in touch with an agent from the CRA or Service Canada. A constituent in my riding, Shannon Cooper, applied for EI leave on March 19 and is still waiting to receive her first payment. She has needed to call Service Canada to help sort out problems with her application. One of the biggest challenges she's facing is that when she's finally able to talk with an agent on the phone, her call gets dropped and the agent doesn't call her back. This has happened multiple times. She's now gone with close to 70 days without pay.

Given the IT infrastructure challenges that certainly all of government is facing, are you aware of this issue of calls being dropped by call centres?

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Well, to be—

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Minister, before you attempt an answer, I would just remind Mr. Green to, again, try to keep his questions focused on the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. That is the frame of reference.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Chair, respectfully, CERB applications are in direct response to COVID, and it's a very important question.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

It is an important question. I appreciate that. I'm just trying to make sure the precision of the question is there.

Please go ahead.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

It's rooted in CERB, so I assure you it's 100% related.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Thanks for that question.

Of course, because serving Canadians quickly, effectively and securely is a high priority for our government, I always regret to hear that somebody is having a challenge having an interaction with our government.

I can say that, through the work of the public servants of Canada to very quickly ramp up the capability to work from home, and even call centre employees who are working from home in some cases, it has been a unique circumstance. Given the millions of Canadians who have needed the government's help and the millions and millions who have received that help, I'm very proud of the work that has been done, but we will never stop trying to improve our systems and the infrastructure and the secure tools that are needed.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I can appreciate that, and I would expect that and hope that, certainly from the government's perspective. However, in order to basically address these challenges that you're faced with, understanding that it's probably a function of old technology—and I'll let you comment on that in a moment—do you know exactly what percentage of calls are getting dropped? What type of evidence are you using to help improve the systems of IT?

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Thank you for that question. I'm going to ask Paul Glover to answer.

[Paul Glover]

Thank you, Minister, and thank you, Chair, for the member's question.

Absolutely, we are aware of these issues and I'm pleased to report that the situation is improving each and every day. The number of calls that were being directed to ESDC and CRA by Canadians were literally unprecedented, so steps have been taken to improve the system's ability to handle the number of calls that are coming at it and route them quickly and properly through to agents.

We have been tracking the number of calls. It has improved quite substantially, and the number of calls being dropped now is very few.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I like the generalities, but I would prefer the specific—

[Paul Glover]

Yesterday, there were none.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

There were none. No calls were dropped yesterday. Is that your assertion?

[Paul Glover]

With all respect, it would depend on the definition of “dropped”. There are busy signals where, because there is a limit to the technology and the number of calls, or how long the system knows an average call will take for somebody to be placed on hold, it gives them a busy signal, so they don't even get in. If we don't include those types of calls, for calls that entered the system and then were routed through, I'm not aware of any dropped calls in the last number of days.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Just to close it out, in terms of the improvement you've identified, I'm very happy to hear that. I think our constituency offices might have a different anecdotal perspective.

Could you just give us a sense of, when this unprecedented wave happened for dropped calls until now, what it would have been at its peak?