Human Resources Committee on June 11th, 2009

[Liliane Binette]

On March 20 of this year, we enhanced the program by including amounts for job separation. The refunded amount can cover up to four weeks. The centre of excellence has been in operation for at least a year, but I do not remember the exact date when the program started up. I will have to send you that information.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Yes, I would like to know the date, as well as the number of workers who have benefited from the program and the amount--

[Liliane Binette]

The amount provided, on average?

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

The average, as well as the total amount. I will do the arithmetic.

[Liliane Binette]

Yes, of course. Can I forward that information to you?

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Yes, but it normally goes through the Chair.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Raymonde Folco]

You can send the information to the Clerk, who will then pass it on to the members.

[Liliane Binette]

Certainly.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

If you could provide the data by province, that would be even better. I have another question for you.

In response to a question from my colleague, Christian Ouellet, you said that the time needed to process an employment insurance application is now 24 days. Is that not a result of the basic attitude or principle that seems to guide your organization? The impression out there is that when unemployed workers come to your office, they are assumed to be frauds and have to prove that they are not. In other organizations, however, particularly the Revenue Agency, people submit their tax return and then receive their refund. Audits are carried out after the fact. If problems arise during the process, corrective measures are taken. The attitude is completely different.

Perhaps you could explain why that is.

[Liliane Binette]

Rather than looking at it in terms of fraud, I prefer to view it from the perspective that, in order to abide by the framework of the Employment Insurance program, we must ensure that individuals have worked the required number of hours and have received a certain amount in wages. I sincerely believe that, all across the country, our employees at Service Canada centres do their utmost to support people when they are having problems—for example, when they are trying to get their Record of Employment from the employer. Our employees help them prepare their application for benefits. They let them know how to obtain information more easily. If individuals are having trouble receiving their ROE, they help them secure it. After a certain amount of time has elapsed, they themselves will send a letter to the employer.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Raymonde Folco]

I am sorry to have to interrupt you in the middle of a sentence, but I must ask you to conclude your answer.

[Liliane Binette]

Certainly.

It is a whole framework of operation, but in terms of attitudes, we receive comment cards from our clients that reflect a very high level of satisfaction among our clients, in terms of services provided to assist them make their application or help them understand the Employment Insurance program.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Raymonde Folco]

Thank you.

I would like to interrupt the proceedings for a couple of seconds to say something to the members. We have now had two complete rounds, even more. I still have Mr. Lobb, from the Conservative Party, and Mr. Savage, from the Liberal Party, on my list of speakers. Since I have to leave at 12:30 p.m., this is what I would like to suggest. It is now 12:20 p.m. We could finish off with Mr. Lobb and Mr. Savage or, if Committee members prefer, we could continue the questioning. In that case, an Acting Chair would have to be designated to chair the meeting from 12:30 to 1:00 p.m. Those are the two options available. I would like you to tell me what you want to do.

Mr. Savage.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

To have such distinguished guests is not something that happens every day. I'd like to see us go as long as we can. They've booked the time, and we've booked the time.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Raymonde Folco]

Is there unanimous consent to continue until 1:00 p.m.? In that case, I would ask you to elect an Acting Chair.

Is there any objection to that? If there is no objection, I will continue to chair the meeting until 12:30, after which the Clerk will ask you to vote on an Acting Chair.

Mr. Lobb, please.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you for your time, and again, thank you for attending today. On behalf of the constituency of Huron—Bruce, I would like to say thanks for your work, which serves Canada and is done to help those who most need the help.

I just have an observation. I know we've talked a lot about the number of days to process claims and how that's obviously very important, and the percentage, and the argument over it. I just sometimes wonder, when I hear that coming from members, if all honourable members return responses and fix problems within 24 days; I'm not so sure it would be at the 80% level. That's just an observation.

I can go back to my own working career and the companies I've worked for. At one of the companies I worked for, they'd really never had any layoffs before. In 2007, I believe, or 2006, they had to start to lay people off. I know there were some issues, a lot of them surrounding the human resources department, because they'd actually never had to do that with the record of employment.

I wonder if you could give us a little bit more information on how your department and your agencies work with companies to help them along with the record of employment. I know from our casework in our riding that a lot of the issues are about the records of employment.

[Liliane Binette]

Certainly, and thank you for your question.

We do that through a different set of actions. One is that we do have agents across the country who know their employer populations, and they do undertake to meet with employers and provide them with information. They also organize information sessions to inform them about how this works.

We have another set of actions that is linked to a specialist position, a citizen services specialist position, in our offices across the country. One of their main responsibilities is to be proactive with employers: to reach out to employers and to provide them with information about the employment insurance program but also other programs that can help them, including, these days, work sharing.

We also offer to support employers in providing them access to the record of employment on the web. We train them in terms of how to do that. We offer them support in terms accessing the information from our specialized call centre on the record of employment on the web.

For employers, we also work with the Canadian Payroll Association as well as the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. We have regular discussions and seminars with them. In turn, they can help their members.

We also share best practices across the country. If we have a specialist who has come up with proactive ways to reach out to employers, ways that we have not experienced before, we share that with our other specialists so that we reach out not only in a proactive way but also on a very regular basis to help with the regular business, with changes, and with simplification activities.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Thank you. I just want to cut you off because I want to ask one more question before my time is up.

Again, that's my experience as well. We have a company that will be shutting its doors at the end of the month. Service Canada provided excellent service to them to get them transitioning.

I have one last quick question. As someone who's new to government and new to the layers of bureaucracy, which I had heard about only from afar in my private life, I am, as a former business person, impressed with what I have seen, not only with being able to reallocate work according to region and according to capacity and bandwidth, but also with the steps that were taken in October to which Mr. Savage alluded. It seems rational and reasonable to me to bring those resources within Service Canada first, to make sure they're fully utilized before bringing on more new employees. As a taxpayer, I'd like to thank you and your department for operating your bureaucracy in an effective manner.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Raymonde Folco]

You have good timing, Mr. Lobb. I'll give the floor to Mr. Savage for five minutes, and Mr. Lessard will now take over the chair.

Monsieur Lessard, s'il vous plaît me remplacer la présidence.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you very much.

First of all, I want to provide some comfort to Mr. Komarnicki that I'm not satisfied with the answer on the $60 million. A simple reading of the estimates indicates that this $59.7 million--and these are the government's words--is funding “to compensate for the reduction in administration costs charged to the Employment Insurance Account”.

Last week at the Senate--and I believe Madame Binette was there and perhaps others--in response to a question from Senator Ringuette, which was “with regard to the $59.7 million for EI...” and then it goes on to say “to add the $60 million to human resources for processing purposes”. The answer that came back from Su Dazé said, among other things, “This is not additional money to HRSDC. We have one pot of money and it is a matter of allocation, so it is a zero-sum gain.”

I still need a little reassurance that it wasn't a cut in administration and then an additional $60 million that made up for that cut.

[Paul Thompson]

I will jump in and then maybe turn it over to Mike.

I was indeed at the Senate committee meeting that you referred to. The issue here, as I said, was that there was a base level of activity, and with the updating of the technical formula that Mike referred to, that same level of activity was just billed differently to the consolidated revenue fund as opposed to the employment insurance account. There was a decision to invest an incremental $60 million in EI operations. There was no change in--

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Mr. Thompson, did that $60 million have to go to Treasury Board?

[Paul Thompson]

Which one do you mean--the $60 million incremental investment? That was approved through the Treasury Board.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

When was that approved by Treasury Board?

[Paul Thompson]

I don't know. That's something that we'd have to--