Thank you, Chair.
I want to pursue the question raised by my colleague Mr. Barlow. In all the hearings to date and with the witnesses who appeared, there were what I term three themes that came out.
There was financial distress at a difficult time in a person's life. The big thing that government should be concerned about was the insensitive structure that people had to navigate, with no one particular door to go to. EI was part of it, and Service Canada, and there were a number of the child benefits in those, and each case is slightly different. They are not the same.
I have experienced this in my constituency. Even if I focus on employment insurance, it is not simple. It's cumbersome at a very difficult time.
How is Service Canada going to deal with this? It's been identified that there should be one dedicated line, for instance, with people who are trained on dealing with individuals who are suffering in this case, and it can be different from region to region. That's been a big issue that's been brought to this committee, and it's an issue that, quite frankly, should be resolved by government, and it should have been resolved by now.
Could you comment on that briefly? There is a patchwork of delivery. It's not simple to navigate. I've seen, in looking at your comments, wonderful statistics that it takes this much time, on average, to get here or to get there and everywhere, but that's not the real world. It is a cumbersome, insensitive system to navigate.
If I look at the testimony that was given here this morning, it is that bereavement is not allowed, but if you get the doctor to say you may not be feeling good or something, we will put you on that. Bereavement should be part of the system that triggers EI benefits for sickness, and this does occur in a way: People are told that if they say this or that, they're not eligible, so they should simply get the doctor to say that they're not feeling well or that they're under stress.
We shouldn't be forcing people to provide information that is totally inaccurate.