Human Resources Committee on April 17th, 2007

[Peter Simeoni]

Mr. Chair, that's one of the questions that we are currently working on. We're looking at those programs that use the SIN for administrative purposes and want to see to what extent their current clientele of recipients have dormant flags associated with the SIR and the SIN.

Our expectation is that will be extremely low. For example, in a program like EI, you cannot receive EI if there is a dormant flag on the SIN. Other programs don't work exactly the same way, so we want to look hard at whether or not some of their clients have gone dormant or were dormant when the benefit was paid. We don't currently have information on that, but I expect the next time I'm invited to speak to the committee about that, I would be happy to make a presentation on the results of that work.

[Sheila Fraser]

I would like to add, Mr. Chairman, that we said in our audit that as of June 30, 2006, slightly over 2.1 million SINs had been identified as dormant. This does give managers some indication, if they wish to use it.

The problem is that we subsequently noticed a lack of consistency between the application of various programs and the way this indication was dealt with. Some people did a little more work, but others did not take this fact into account. Procedures in this regard should be strengthened, because they must be clearer and much stricter before an account identified as dormant can be reused.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

You're quite right. Of course, there was some improvement between 2002 and 2006. The number was reduced almost by half.

[Sheila Fraser]

Yes.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

I think it went from five million—

[Sheila Fraser]

To about two million.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

I certainly agree with you. What surprises me is that we still cannot determine how dormant SINs are used and whether they are being used appropriately or not. We are quite concerned that people may be abusing them or using them inappropriately. Do we have any information on this?

The question is to either the Auditor General or to Mr. Simeoni.

[Sheila Fraser]

To my knowledge, there aren't any numbers. I think that Mr. Simeoni confirmed this.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

If you want to respond, please give a quick response, because we're out of time.

[Peter Simeoni]

The nature of a dormant file means it hasn't had any activity at all in government programs in the past five years. We know they're not being used. Some additional files may go dormant in the future, but they're not showing up in CRA and they're not showing up in EI. They're not making contributions and they're not receiving CPP. It's the nature of the dormancy. They're not being used to access government benefits.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

One of the suggestions that has been made to you over the years is to have a sort of key to prevent the use of dormant numbers. In other words, people wanting to reactivate their social insurance numbers would have to prove their identity again to the department.

Has that been done?

[Peter Simeoni]

It's precisely what would happen if I left the country for more than five years, I came back, and I applied for some kind of federal benefit. There would be a dormant flag on my file because I didn't file with CRA or have any contact with Canada at all in that time. When I came back, I'd have to prove that I was me. I would have to go through the same validation process at that time for a dormant flag at Service Canada.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

This is what happens when I give Mr. Lessard an additional question.

[Sheila Fraser]

I know. I really don't want to prolong this, but the audit clearly showed there were programs that did not follow up on a dormant flag.

For example, if a card was to be reused, old age security and the Canada student loans program do not have that kind of rigorous follow-up. It's fine and well that the accounts will be indicated as dormant if they haven't been used for five years. But if they are then to be reactivated, there should be a really rigorous process to make sure it is a valid reactivation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

We're now going to move to Mr. Martin and the NDP.

Sir, you have seven minutes, please.

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

Thank you.

I'm not going to chase the security angle of this, because I think it's been covered. I want to understand how what you found might in some significant way impede the delivery of service to citizens.

For example, in the last year or so, through conversation and in listening to people who come into my office, I've discovered there are senior retirees, literally hundreds of thousands of them, who aren't accessing the programs they're qualified to receive. It seems to me there has to be a better way of informing those folks that there's a program and they don't have to live in poverty. They could access it, they paid into it, and they should automatically be getting it.

If we decided as a government to move to a system where we in fact began to be proactive on the CPP, OAS, GIS, etc., would the problems you've discovered with the SIN process and the program support that, or would there be a problem in doing it?

I have a further question on this. I'm wracking my brain to understand why we didn't move to this previously. I think they do it in Quebec. In Quebec they actually contact people to make sure they're getting what they need.

Maybe they're not doing it because they don't have the confidence in the SIN number that they should have—and by “they”, I mean government—to actually move to begin to deliver that kind of program across the country.

[Sheila Fraser]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I refer the committee to an audit we did on the old age security program, which was tabled in November 2006. In fact, we looked at the whole question of how proactive the government had been in informing senior citizens and citizens in general about the benefits they could receive. We noted in that audit that in the last two or three years the government had put much more attention into that and been much more proactive. We noted that there had been quite a bit of improvement.

I think one recommendation we made was that they still weren't tracking very well the potential numbers of people who could be receiving the benefits and looking at how well their outreach activities were working. But there had been improvement in the last few years.

We also noticed that they used the Canada Revenue Agency database, for example, for the guaranteed income supplement, which is an error. I think there were a lot of questions raised about people who needed it not applying for it and receiving it. But I don't believe that would necessarily resolve the issues with the social insurance number and the register.

Before 1976 the process around applications and receiving a number were not as rigorous, and certainly not as rigorous as they are today. In fact, many people have told me they received a new social insurance number every time they had a summer job. So people could have more than one social insurance number--duplicates--that they received over time. It's a question of cleaning up the register.

The links to vital statistics in the provinces will also give better information to be able to take out numbers for people who are deceased. Then there's the whole question of people who have emigrated from the country whose numbers may still be in the register.

So it's a question of actually improving the quality of the information in there and maintaining it over time. I don't think it would really resolve the issue. Obviously some files might become active if people haven't applied for benefits to which they are entitled. They would have to reactivate their numbers.

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

I had a meeting in Sault Ste. Marie just this past week, and about 75 people showed up because they were concerned that they weren't receiving the benefits to which they were entitled. In fact, we found a couple in that bunch.

When you did the review I think there were over 300,000. We still have over 100,000 who are not getting their GIS, according to Stats Canada and the information we have at our disposal.

I'm particularly concerned about families who come into my office after the death of their parents and discover, in trying to tie up the estates, that they actually qualified for Canada Pension or OAS. They had never received it and lived in some pretty desperate poverty. In some instances, they had actually gone in to see if they qualified and were told they didn't.

Would that have anything to do with some of the inadequacies or shortcomings of the SIN system we have in place? Why aren't we able to track these people and identify more quickly whether they are or aren't qualified? Why do we have so many people out there who qualify for some things but are told they don't? At the end of the day we have families weeping over the conditions in which some of these folks had to live before they died--living in poverty because they didn't get what they had coming to them.

[Sheila Fraser]

The social insurance number and the register in and of themselves do not give people access to programs. They have to apply. For the government, the social insurance number has essentially always been treated as a file identifier for government programs. So you have to make an application for old age security. The guaranteed income supplement is generally triggered by an application. So you have to apply for these programs.

I think the challenge for the government is to communicate and make those programs known to people so they make those applications.

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

What I'm saying, too, is that there are people who do apply and who do go in to check this out. It seems to me, in my own circumstances, that the one thread that follows me through my working life is my SIN, until I get CPP or whatever. If you want to go back and check up on me, I give you my SIN and then you have my history.

There are people who are actually applying for CPP and some of these other things and are being told, in some instances, that they don't qualify, when in fact they do.

[Sheila Fraser]

I'm afraid I really can't answer. I don't know. Perhaps somebody from the government can answer those questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

We'll have to wait until next time. Mr. Martin can pick that theme up again when we get to his next round.

Ms. Yelich, I believe, is going to share time with Mr. Brown.

Go ahead, for seven minutes.

[Lynne Yelich, Conservative, Blackstrap, SK]

I'll pick up on that for a minute. I guess the Treasury Board has given us the use of the SIN, and you can't access any of these programs at all unless you have a social insurance number, whether it be some of the northern programs, rural native housing, social assistance, or tax case appeal. You can't, unless you have a SIN, and I understand that. I guess what you're suggesting, Mr. Martin, is that what we have to do is give everybody a SIN.

I just want to ask the department something. The Auditor General expressed some concern about the number of excess SINs, and the department has made some significant progress, I believe. In your opinion, do you feel there is still a serious problem?

[Peter Simeoni]

The Auditor General, in all the reports done by her office on the social insurance number, has done a comparison, as I mentioned in my opening statement, of the population resident in Canada over a certain age and the number of SINs that are held. As I pointed out, not surprisingly there are more SIN holders than there are Canadian citizens in the country, because an awful lot of Canadians, we've discovered, and studies tell us, are expatriate and living abroad. And they would have left with their social insurance numbers.

I wouldn't propose to the speak for the Auditor General, but I think the theme of those reports was whether the government has considered what this might mean: Have you looked at the risks it poses? Are you trying to work away at the excess?

I think that's prompted a lot of good action. As was mentioned earlier, there were five million excess SINs, in the language of the Auditor General, a huge portion of which were dormant, in 2002. That number has come down considerably. The number in the report was 2.9 million, 2.1 million of which were flagged as dormant, leaving a difference of roughly 100,000 SINs. We think that is probably explained as people who are simply not in the country right now and haven't been gone for more than five years, so have not yet been flagged as dormant. They will be if they stay away longer, or they'll return and start showing up again.

Through the vital events agreements, through the deactivation of more than a million 900-series SINs, and because of the questions posed by the Auditor General on the excess, we've managed to clean and do some really good work in improving the integrity of the SIR. It's one of those things where the two numbers will never match, and our job is to continue to find ways to improve that integrity.

I think we've taken the big steps. The steps that will come in the future will be smaller steps, and they might be hard steps, so we have to keep working away at that.

[Lynne Yelich, Conservative, Blackstrap, SK]

Before I pass it on to Patrick.... The numbers were high. Can you actually say that there are that many out of the country? Do you have some supporting data?