As your colleague mentioned, we've had a website up for a few years in our attempt to raise awareness. We had letter-writing campaigns to members of Parliament urging them to end the contracting out.
We were surprised, actually, by the numbers. I think we got a few thousand responses from Canadians in the first couple of days of our campaign, and they were shocked. They were like, “What do you mean this is contracted out? What do you mean these aren't public sector workers answering these calls?”
In July 2021, the PSAC national president wrote to Minister Hussen and Minister Gould respectively, urging them to meet with us to discuss the contracting out of 1-800-O-Canada. A year later, we received a response from the senior associate deputy minister of ESDC, who, instead of addressing our concerns, requested that we remove the campaign website.
On August 16, 2022, I met with Minister Gould in Toronto to discuss the passport delays at Service Canada. I took the opportunity to discuss this campaign, and I was promised that she would look into this topic and get back to me. That was three months ago. We are hoping for a follow-up from the minister on this topic. We're really hoping that decisions are made to end the contracting out.