Human Resources Committee on June 6th, 2019

[Cliff C. Groen]

I would like to say that, since the implementation of the new system three weeks ago, the waiting period is less than three minutes. There are various reasons for this. Of course, 100% access helps, and we aren't in a peak period for pensions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

MP Morrissey, please.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Ms. MacLean, you made the comment in your opening statement that you are the face of the federal government in a lot of cases, and I agree, especially to those who are.... As we often hear, and I'll be candid, the system handles the majority well. We never hear about it. It's the small group who are under-serviced that we hear about.

I'll give you a reference to one case. A gentleman on EI called in and said that it had been seven weeks since he had filed a claim. He still had no response back, and it hadn't been settled. Then it went to eight weeks, and his bills were piling up. When he finally reached out to my office, we talked to the agent responsible for dealing with it, who said, “Yes, we see the file, but there is nobody available to look at it. If somebody looked at it, it could be turned around.”

Those are the unfortunate situations that give the whole system a negative...and we've heard the Auditor General's report.

I want you to comment. You made a reference to budget 2016. The funding you got there allowed you to begin addressing accumulated problems. What occurred in 2016 that allowed you to begin to address these public issues?

[Leslie MacLean]

In budget 2016, our organization received $73 million over two years to enable us to improve our ability to have agents accessible to answer phone calls. Budget 2018 further sustained that funding, providing us with $127 million over three years for our EI call centres.

We recognized the great pressure upon our staff. That enabled us to retain or hire an additional 384 staff, and as—

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

So there was a personnel issue that was impacting the face of government to the people who need it most in some of these cases.

[Leslie MacLean]

Absolutely. The additional resources to help us answer the phone obviously made a huge difference as per the improvements I noted in my opening comments.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

You identified almost $200 million to bring in more personnel to deal with the issue. Was this to deal with the growing...or was this situation caused by a previous cutback? What were the two dynamics that were driving you? Obviously, you needed these personnel. Was it because of a growth in the demand coming to these departments, or was it to fill a void that was created? Was there a shortcoming in the department?

[Leslie MacLean]

I would speak, if I may, Mr. Chair, to two issues.

One is the importance of timely processing of claims for employment insurance or for pensions. Member Morrissey, you noted in your opening comments the person who was waiting several weeks for a decision.

We recognize that even when we meet our service standards, as we have consistently for the last few years in terms of the processing of EI claims, we're able to process 80% of them within our 28-day service standard.

For the people who fall outside of that, the 20%, they may wait only one more day, or there may indeed be a complexity.

Budget 2016 provided us with—yes—the additional resources in call centres to boost our capacity. It did also provide us with an additional $19 million to help us with the processing of EI claims, for example. That helps us by providing more staff capacity. It does help us address the issues.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Recently my office—when inquiring about EI claims—has been getting a message from Service Canada telling them to have the client phone the centre, which puts another layer on it.

When an MP's office reaches out, they become the client through the signing of a statement of waiver.

Could you check into that because it's just putting an unnecessary step in the process. Once an individual reaches out to the MP, we are the face of the government as well. When we do reach out on these clients' behalf, this is an unacceptable answer from Service Canada to be advising an MP's office to have the client call. The reason they are calling the MP's office is because they didn't get service in the first place.

I would like if you would follow up on that because there has been a subtle change over the last number of months I've been told, or number of weeks.

The other area you referenced is the in-person Service Canada centres. This is an area where, again, I get complaints from people dropping into Service Canada centres and not getting service. You referenced that they would be assisted in helping file their claims. A lot of the time, they are simply told there's a computer over there, and they should go and fill out the forms.

That's an issue I would like you to address as well because, again, that's all the face of government.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

I'm sorry, but very briefly.

[Leslie MacLean]

Very quickly, we do maintain, as I'm sure everyone in the room knows, dedicated lines for members of Parliament to phone in. We get about 44,000 calls on that a year, and we absolutely understand that the MP is representing his or her constituent at that point. I will follow up on that.

In terms of people not being supported to apply online, computers are there for people to completely self-serve if they wish, or to have coaching and support from our staff if they wish.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

It's a matter I would like you to focus on.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you, Mr. Morrissey.

[Leslie MacLean]

I would be happy to follow up. If there are specific locations, I would welcome the information off-line.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Mr. Ruimy, please.

[Dan Ruimy, Liberal, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Do you want to add anything else because you're sharing your time?

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

I'm happy with the answers.

[Dan Ruimy, Liberal, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Thank you for being here today.

I'm going to keep going on the line with the Auditor General this morning.

I understand the service standards portion of it, but it almost seems that there's a disconnect between the Auditor General and, for instance, your department. They are saying that your numbers might be skewed because you were looking at it in a different way, or you didn't take into consideration dropped calls.

If we're going to move forward, when you do an audit the most important thing is to make sure that both sides are on the same page as to what the criteria are.

In your opinion, is there a disconnect between the criteria, or is that something you now can move forward with based on the recommendations that have been given by the Auditor General?

[Leslie MacLean]

I would note that our direction on service standards across the Government of Canada comes from Treasury Board and their policy of service. I would also note the criticality of the direction that the service standards be relevant for clients.

Call centres are an excellent example of where we have extraordinary quantities of metrics that we track. We track average handle time and how long are people spending on the phone. We track first contact resolution. We track all of these things that might not help a citizen actually receive the service. We have for public reporting purposes a wait time for our call centres and we report against that. We work very closely with the Treasury Board Secretariat to ensure we're faithfully applying the service standards.

As per the earlier testimony, there was discussion on this particular issue in terms of why public standards are being captured. The Chief Information Officer of the Government of Canada undertook to ensure that call centre standards would be part of what would be updated in the next direction from Treasury Board. We will absolutely comply with that. We've been reporting our service standards publicly for a very long time, and it's very important for us to ensure that the data are accurate, that we are transparent, and that we're complying with Treasury Board policy.

[Dan Ruimy, Liberal, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Thank you.

I'm still not sold on why there seems to be a disconnect there, but we'll move forward.

Two of your call centres were audited, right? I understand that both of those call centres had service standards in place.

[Leslie MacLean]

Yes.

[Dan Ruimy, Liberal, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

How did those service standards that you had in place match up to the actual audit? Were they meeting the criteria? Were they below the criteria?

[Leslie MacLean]

Mr. Chair, I might ask for a precision of the question. Are you asking for the results of our performance against our service standards?

[Dan Ruimy, Liberal, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Four call centres were evaluated. Immigration is not your department, and with immigration, I would imagine that people are on the phone for quite a while because there are lots of questions.

You have said that you divide your numbers by different criteria, so if somebody is calling for EI, and somebody is calling for a different.... I'm just trying to get a sense of the two call centres that were evaluated. Did they take into consideration the different criteria that you were putting in place based on why people were calling, for example?

[Leslie MacLean]

Thank you, I've got it. I appreciate the clarification.

For the two call centres that were audited, we did not meet our service standards. Our published service standard is that we will respond to 80% of calls within 10 minutes. Our most recent public report, which I think I have here somewhere, makes it clear that we fell considerably short for employment insurance whereas, as I noted earlier for members, there has been steady improvement over the last few years.

For pensions, we came very close to meeting our service standard, but we did not fully meet it.