Human Resources Committee on April 17th, 2007

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

The Auditor General had expressed two main concerns in her opening statement. One of those was that Service Canada “has not determined how accurate, complete, and reliable the data should be, and it does not have a systematic means for measuring data quality”.

In your statement, you talked about some of the things you're doing. You said, “We will then determine the potential cost to federal programs of any errors”, and you have some measurement things in there. What's your timeline? When are you planning to be finished the work to that end?

[Peter Simeoni]

We expect to be able to report our goals and our status in terms of those goals this fall.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

To the Auditor General, just in terms of what you've heard today—and I know this doesn't constitute an audit by any means—how satisfied are you with what you've heard today in terms of some of the progress?

[Sheila Fraser]

We recognized in the audit that the department had made progress on several issues. There are certainly firm commitments that have now been made for next March, both on the question of data quality and on the question of the policy itself. As this committee can probably imagine, we will be following up to see that those commitments are actually kept.

If they are kept, I think we'll say we are very pleased with the progress that will have been made, because this is an issue that has been around for a very long time. It will be good to see it resolved.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. Lake. That concludes our third round.

I know that Madame Bonsant wanted to ask a couple of questions.

Make it just a couple of quick questions, please.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

My question concerns the 2.1 million social insurance numbers on which we placed dormant flags. Do those numbers belong to the 900-series or the regular series? They are regular series numbers.

In many couples where one of the two spouses does not work, no income must be stated on the tax return. Therefore, the number cannot be dormant, it already appears on the tax statement. We must be careful, because there are many fraudulent cases. There are not only cases of fraud concerning employment insurance, but many cases concerning social assistance. Banks, caisses populaires often see clients come in with 7, 8, 10 different cheques bearing the same social insurance number, with different names, but one same address. Those institutions are bound by confidentiality. By dealing directly with the banks, you might be able to detect cases of fraud through social insurance numbers.

Does the government intend to do that?

[Peter Simeoni]

Mr. Chair, on the first point, of the 2.1 million that were dormant as of June 2006, none of those would have been 900-series SINs, by the nature of them. All of those now have expiry dates on them, so they simply wouldn't be part of the dormant population.

As far as working with financial institutions is concerned, from time to time we find ourselves doing it when there is a loss of personal information. We learn a lot about their practices in the process. And we provide advice to their customers when bank files and other files go missing.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

What do you do when funeral homes or hospitals advise you of a death, and also gives you the social insurance number? Do you cancel the number, or do you place a little red flag on it?

[Onno Kremers]

We take that information—and that information is particularly important for us to get on a very timely kind of basis—so that we can do two things: one, stop the payment; and two, proactively kick-start any survivor benefits.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

I'm not talking about what happens to the survivors, I'm talking about the social insurance number of the deceased person. For example, when my mother passed away, her card was withdrawn. What do you do with that number?

[Onno Kremers]

The number never gets cancelled in the system, but it is definitely annotated as a number that cannot be used.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Then why are there so many cases of fraud where people using the name of a deceased person, manage to get a social insurance number, and the problem recurs? Why don't you cancel the number? There's so much fraud going on, this might be an intelligent way of putting an end to it.

[Onno Kremers]

If someone comes forward with that particular number, it would be annotated on our files and we would know it.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

In any case, if the system were truly working well, my dear sir, there wouldn't be any fraud.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Madame Bonsant.

Mr. Martin has asked for just one additional question. Then we're going to suspend for five minutes. There's not a whole lot of committee business today.

So because we have a little bit of time, Mr. Martin, you may have just a quick question. Then we'll wrap up.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Just to the Auditor General again, and it's off topic, but since we have you here--I think I did this the last time. You've done a review of passports. It's a real fiasco out there. I don't know if you're watching it or not, but I know that anybody who is trying to manage or run a constituency office is inundated--me, two or three people sometimes, full-time, flat out. This past Easter weekend I had a staffer in for a day and a half trying to find a passport for somebody who was going to Italy who had applied in December and who reapplied in February. They sent out the passport on the Thursday before Easter; it didn't show up. They were leaving on the Monday. I and one of my staffers and three post offices that were shut for the weekend were looking for this passport. We had the Prime Minister's office, the Foreign Affairs office, and a guy named Bill, who was on duty for the weekend. He was the guy answering all the questions, but he couldn't do anything; he had no power to do anything, no authority. I didn't ask him where he was; maybe he was in India or some place, I'm not quite sure.

It's such a waste of resources. If we could only get this thing fixed....

You had identified some issues, but you were concerned about security. I think in some ways we've allowed security to overwhelm almost everything now to the point where we can't find the flexibility anymore to do what we need to do to service our constituents--real, honest, hard-working, ordinary Canadian citizens who need a passport, who are going away, who have done all the right things but can't get it. There are parts of the country, rural and northern Canada, where we have no passport offices and people are actually driving 12 hours to get there to find out that they can't get a passport anyway because the rules won't allow it. For example, for an emergency passport now, apparently somebody has to have died. I know that wasn't a recommendation you made, but it's an interpretation that is now being put in by some people. We just don't get them. I feel at the very least those of us who live in northern and rural Canada are really being discriminated against.

Have you followed up any further or done anything more on that? I know you said at that point you were.

[Sheila Fraser]

Mr. Chair, in the February report we tabled our follow-up of the audit we had done on the passport the previous year because the public accounts committee had asked us to do a follow-up. We normally would have waited a little longer. Our work was essentially completed in August-September, as was this report, which was obviously before all the problems in January-February. We did note in that audit that there was a not bad forecasting system at head office of the passport office, but the individual offices didn't have contingency plans in place for surges in demand. Of course, with the western hemisphere travel initiative, the demand went up suddenly in January. I think a lot of people had speculated that it wasn't going to happen, so waited, and then of course with a lot of travel in Canada in the winter, the demand was enormous. I was told by the department even the printing presses for the passports were running 24 hours a day; they were right up to top volume.

I think there are lessons learned, and we will be going back, because we went in so quickly after the initial audit. We will be going back at some point, and that would certainly be one of the issues we would look at--how well they managed these spikes, because one could expect there will be another one coming with the land border crossings.

We'll have to take a look at how well they manage those fluctuations in volumes in the contingency planning.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much. I would just thank all the witnesses for being here today. We appreciate your taking time to come and respond to our questions. I'll ask the committee to suspend for five minutes before we come back and deal with committee business.

Thank you once again for being here today.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

I will call the members back to the table so that we can deal with the issues we have at hand. Then we can hopefully dispense and move on to what other members have to do for the rest of the day.

Under new business, we have witnesses coming in on Bill C-303, so we need to look at a budget, which you have in your package, that would give us an opportunity to be able to bring some witnesses in to talk to us. We've set aside some days that we've all agreed upon. I believe it's four days to hear witnesses—to hear the sponsor of the bill, and we have some provinces coming in, and then to hear people for and against the bill.

I would like you to have a look at the budget you have before you. It is something that has been put together by the clerk. What we want to move is that the budget of $23,400 to study Bill C-303 be adopted.

Is there any discussion on that? It's pretty straightforward, something that's been put together as a suggestion by the clerk. Do we have any discussion?

The question is, all in favour, then, of the budget...?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Okay. That is agreed.

Mr. Martin.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Pursuant to Standing Order 97.1, I move that the committee request from the House an extension of 30 sitting days to complete the study of Bill C-303.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

This is as a result of the fact that we are going to go over the date; I believe it was supposed to be reported back on May 1. This does not mean we'll need the full 30 days. We'll deal with it as we come out from there.

So that's a motion that you move. Is there any discussion on it?

Yes, Ms. Yelich.

[Lynne Yelich, Conservative, Blackstrap, SK]

I would be in favour of that.

Can we just add a couple of witnesses, then? I have, in my province, people who set up their own day care with government help, and they would like to put their position on record, so I wonder, if we're going to extend it, whether we can extend by a couple of witnesses.

We were a little lax on this end: we were so caught up in employability and Bill C-257 that this slipped by us.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

That's not a bad.... I know there are witnesses on both sides who would like to come, and we're limiting it to four days. Why don't we deal with the issue, first of all, of the sitting days, which we need to extend for Bill C-303 and as well for Bill C-284? Why don't we deal with that issue first? Then we can entertain adding on another day or so to this.