Human Resources Committee on June 11th, 2009

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

Does $60 million come out of the administration of EI?

[Mike Saucier]

The $60 million that the minister has referred to does, yes.

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

You're saying that it came out of EI originally, and then was put back in.

[Mike Saucier]

There are two $60 million amounts, and they're separate entries. The first $60 million you referred to in the supplementary estimates, as I mentioned, is a technical adjustment to the formula. The second is an adjustment as an increase to the administration of EI, so there has been an additional amount of $60 million provided for the administration of EI benefits.

[Paul Thompson]

Can I jump in and attempt to clarify?

On the one hand there were certain activities that continue, that are no longer billed to EI, that are billed for the CRF, so the level of activity on this technical adjustment has not changed. Then there is $60 million of incremental activity that was funded with this infusion of additional resources. The one is a technical adjustment as to where existing activity was billed--the CRF versus EI--and the other is $60 million in incremental activity on top of that.

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

But is it the case that $60 million was moved out of administration and into something else in the EI fund?

[Paul Thompson]

It was simply a technical adjustment as to which account paid for ongoing activity in the department, based on an updating of a technical formula, as was indicated.

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

It was administration.

[Paul Thompson]

It was administrative activities. Some get billed to CRF and some to EI, but the level of activity was not affected by the technical adjustment, whereas there was incremental activity with the infusion of resources.

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

When did the department first identify that they were going to need some more resources to deal with the increasing unemployment?

[Liliane Binette, Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations Branch, Service Canada]

Thank you for your question.

In fact, Mr. Savage, you know that there are two important peaks in the EI period, year after year. One has to do with the winter, which is usually in December, and the other one deals with the summer peak, which starts in June. In early October, we started seeing an important increase in the number of EI applications. Overall, for the year, we are talking about a 19.3% increase, but when we looked at when the increase really kicked in, it was in the last six months of the year. So it started in early October.

Between October and the end of March, we saw an increase of 30%, which was significant. So already, in October, we engaged in more activities to deal with the peak in the season. We took people from other lines of business that are not linked to direct public services. We seconded them to EI processing activities. That was the national workload strategy across the country.

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

But it was in the last....

[Liliane Binette]

Then we saw that it would not be sufficient and that we would need to hire additional staff.

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

And that was late last year.

[Liliane Binette]

Yes.

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

Because on December 19, in a newspaper article, the minister denied that there were any “delays in getting money to the swelling ranks of Canadians whose jobs have been lost in the economic downturn”. That doesn't seem to fit with that.

[Liliane Binette]

We undertook to put as many people as possible on the processing activities so that it would not create important delays in relation to the key performance indicators we have. We have kept an average of 23 to 24 days for processing applications. But given the important increase in the number of applications, we knew that what we were doing would not be sufficient, and if we could not have additional resources, it would result in additional delays. But we did get additional resources, which we applied to EI processing activities.

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

That was in February or March--

[Liliane Binette]

Yes, it was in February.

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

--long after the issue was raised.

[Liliane Binette]

As I said, we kept realigning people within the organization to focus on EI processing as a priority.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Raymonde Folco]

You will probably get a chance to come back to this.

Monsieur Ouellet, à vous la parole.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Mr. Thompson, you said in your opening statement that more than 85% of Canadian workers now have easier access to benefits. What do you mean by that? Do you mean that it was difficult for the people who came before them? What are you basing yourself on in referring to 85% of Canadian workers?

[Paul Thompson]

As I explained, the Employment Insurance program is based on 58 separate regions, and, in 41 of those regions, the unemployment rate is on the rise. So, in those regions, we have reduced the number of hours required to access EI, and extended the benefit period. Furthermore, 85% of Canadians reside in those 41 regions.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

So, you are not basing yourself on the number of people who have lost of their jobs.