Evidence of meeting #14 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 41st Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was homelessness.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Karen Jackson Senior Associate Deputy Minister, chief operating officer, Service Canada, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
I think we have a distinction to be made here between how people are applying for EI, which is highly electronic these days, and how much we are still processing. There is a difference between--
Liberal
Senior Associate Deputy Minister, chief operating officer, Service Canada, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
About that, yes--
Liberal
Rodger Cuzner Liberal Cape Breton—Canso, NS
Okay. Great.
If I can continue, last week I asked a question in QP using statistics related to EI call centres. I said that “only 32% of incoming calls are being answered within required times and 51%” were being hung up on.
Your reply was that with regard to the call centres, they “have a much better record than what the member purports”. Would you like to clarify that now?
Senior Associate Deputy Minister, chief operating officer, Service Canada, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
Sure: yes, I can explain that statistic of 32%.
Senior Associate Deputy Minister, chief operating officer, Service Canada, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
It applies to calls going through to an agent, to a person.
So to back up, we have well over 16 million calls being dealt with through an interactive voice response system...people who are getting the answers to their questions--
Senior Associate Deputy Minister, chief operating officer, Service Canada, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
--without wanting to get to an agent. Then--
Liberal
Rodger Cuzner Liberal Cape Breton—Canso, NS
--you also share...? The 51% who are being hung up on: is that number correct?
Senior Associate Deputy Minister, chief operating officer, Service Canada, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
If I could...the 32% number--
Senior Associate Deputy Minister, chief operating officer, Service Canada, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
--is people who want to get to speak to an agent. They're speaking to an agent, and in this case, 32% of those calls are being answered within three minutes.
Liberal
Rodger Cuzner Liberal Cape Breton—Canso, NS
Okay. The 180 seconds is the service standard, okay? But it's only 32% who are being responded to in that time. Fifty-one per cent are being dropped--51%. Those are order paper responses. That's what we got on the order paper that the minister signed off on.
So I guess what I'm asking is this. If 32% are getting through, and if the likelihood when you phone of your call being dropped...if you have a better chance of getting told to phone back at a later time than you do of actually getting someone, is that an improved level of service?
Senior Associate Deputy Minister, chief operating officer, Service Canada, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
I--
Conservative
Liberal
Rodger Cuzner Liberal Cape Breton—Canso, NS
Because repeatedly we've talked about going automated and how it's going to be automated.... On the order paper responses we got--and I'd like to present the order paper question to the committee, if I could--on EI service levels, it's the worst performance in the last six years. The percentage of EI calls being hung up on is the highest in the last six years. On the speed of EI payment, it's the worst performance in five years. As well, the average EI processing time is worse now than it was five years ago.
So I guess the question is, if we're getting more automated--we seem to be going downhill--how is it making sense to let 600 people go and close 98 EI processing centres and get better as their numbers continue to go down...?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Ed Komarnicki
Okay. I think we'll get a response to that. Perhaps you want to respond to some of those. We'll give you about equal time to finish off, if you could.
Senior Associate Deputy Minister, chief operating officer, Service Canada, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
Okay. Very quickly, on the question about the average payment in 23 days, it does include both notice of payment or non-payment, so that's the clarification from the article in the Charlottetown paper.