Human Resources Committee on Sept. 29th, 2011

[Cheryl Fisher, Acting Assistant Deputy Minister, Citizen Service Branch, Service Canada]

Thank you very much.

The service standard that we maintain is 90% coverage within 50 kilometres. We measure it by the driving distance, by the roads.

We also look at where we have pockets of rural communities, and we often do scheduled outreach services in small communities. Scheduled outreach services are those in which our staff from a Service Canada Centre, who are fully trained, travel to these communities so that the latter can access full services, just as if they were at a Service Canada Centre.

We bring a computer; we have the Internet hook-up, and we work with community partners. We go right into the communities.

That's really how it works. We have 331 Service Canada centres. Of those, 274 do scheduled outreach, where we travel to the communities. We cover a pretty good distance to remote rural communities, and northern communities as well.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Great, thank you.

I'll turn the rest of my time over to Manon.

[Manon Perreault, NDP, Montcalm, QC]

Good afternoon. Thank you for being here today.

You said earlier that Service Canada has some 17,000 employees.

I'd like to know how many of the people in your service centres have a functional limitation.

[Carolina Giliberti]

I'm sorry but I don't have the answer to your question on the breakdown. I will make sure you get a written response.

[Manon Perreault, NDP, Montcalm, QC]

I have another question for you, but you can also give me an answer in writing.

Do you have programs that would help meet the particular needs of those employees, to make up for their limitation, to help them realize their full potential and maximize their abilities?

[Carolina Giliberti]

We have a number of internal programs for employees of Service Canada and HRSDC--the entire portfolio, for that matter--as well as a number of things that we do as part of our external services to Canadians. We make sure we're very sensitive to the needs of people with disabilities.

We do have a number of programs that are geared for people with disabilities within the public service, and as part of the response on the actual number, we'll make sure we include information about the types of programs. I am familiar with them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

I want to advise you that your time is up, but I have a question.

Are the scheduled outreach sites outside the 50-kilometre range?

[Cheryl Fisher]

Actually, the 90% within 50 kilometres include the scheduled outreach sites. So it's 90% of Canadians who live within 50 kilometres of a Service Canada centre or a scheduled outreach site.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

Thank you for that clarification.

Mr. Butt.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

And thank you very much for coming. I hope you were sitting in the back earlier and heard my compliments about the Mississauga Service Canada office, which I did have an opportunity to visit very shortly after the election on May 2. I really do want to compliment your centres and staff. From my perspective the general layout of the centre, at least the Mississauga one, is very welcoming. I think our residents are getting great service from those locations.

Within Service Canada offices I'm sure you have a cookie-cutter kind of approach, because you obviously have services you have to provide across the country regardless of the region the Service Canada office is in. Do you make an attempt to localize or regionalize some of the services you're delivering in certain parts of the country? I'm sure the issues that residents have in Ms. Hughes' riding in northern Ontario are going to be a lot different than they might be for my residents in a suburban Toronto riding.

Do you take time in each of those 308 locations to regionalize the services and the outreach and the programs a little? Obviously, there are different needs for different Canadians, depending on where they live; and there are different circumstances given the varying unemployment rates, which could be higher in certain areas and lower in others, and given the other support programs we have. How do you deal with these differences within each of your centres?

[Cheryl Fisher]

Thanks very much.

Thank you for the compliment earlier. It's always nice to hear positive comments.

One of the things about Service Canada is that in our quest for delivering service excellence, we really focus on citizen-centred programs and services. We really try to tailor the service experience that we provide to citizens in order to meet their needs.

As an example, we often bundle services by life events. Rather than a person coming into our office and having to know that they need CPP, EI, foreign credential support, or something like that, we actually take a life event approach. If they are experiencing unemployment or they're looking for a job, we try to tailor services to meet their needs.

The specific answer to your question is that really we do both. We have standard programs that we deliver nationally. Those are our core programs. They're available in every Service Canada centre and outreach site wherever you go. Those are the Canada pension plan, employment insurance, old age security, and CPP disability. We also offer the social insurance number. If someone needs a social insurance number, they can come to any Service Canada centre.

We get into some of the more regional needs when, for example, an office is in an area where we have a large number of seniors. Obviously our statistics and the way the staff would approach the citizens would be much more geared toward supporting seniors. The staff would be much more knowledgeable of all of the things that seniors would have access to. The same goes for rural locations. We often have a particular need in rural communities, and we try to balance it that way.

So it's basically a national program tailored to the needs of the citizen wherever they live.

I think that answers your question.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

I have a supplementary question to that. I'm sure a couple of my colleagues who represent ridings that are heavily multicultural will be interested in this.

We mandate that services have to be provided in English and French in Canada. Those are the two official languages. But in our regional offices, do we attempt to have--though I realize that we can't mandate this--staff available who speak other languages? I'm thinking especially of a community where you have a language other than English or French that's very predominant in that region.

Do you do your best to try to have people available who either can translate or provide help and assistance to that client in their mother tongue?

[Carolina Giliberti]

Yes. I think one of our efforts is to ensure that we do meet the needs of Canadians. Many Canadians, as you mentioned, have different languages, which we try to address. In fact, in all our sites we have a service called CanTalk, a phone system that allows us to hook up the client with another individual who speaks their language to allow for the translation so that we can meet their needs.

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

That's excellent.

That's it for me, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Ed Komarnicki]

All right.

We'll now move to Mr. Simms for five minutes.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

How much automation do you say you have right now for the EI processing centres? What percentage of them are automated?

[Paul Thompson]

The modernization agenda that we've outlined is to take us from 40% up to 70% automation.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Okay, but if I were to call and ask for my EI claim to be processed, what are the chances that it would be done automatically?

[Paul Thompson]

We are already making progress on that 40% to 70%--

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

But where are we right now?

[Paul Thompson]

We're at around 50%, at just over 50%, I would say. It fluctuates at different times of the year. Certain types of claims lend themselves to automation more than others, so it's not a stable number. It moves around.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

And the rest are done how—just manually?

[Paul Thompson]

There's a manual intervention that's required on the remainder. Some of those are complex claims that could never really be automated. We never--

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Would a complex claim be something like the pilot projects--the best 14 weeks, for example, or those sorts of things? Or would that be under automation as well?

[Paul Thompson]

I don't think that would necessarily mean it couldn't be automated, but it's generally the types of claims that require more fact-finding around them or that have some unusual circumstances around them that would--