Minister, it's a pleasure to finally see you. I'm so sorry that we haven't had the opportunity to meet. I was very happy to have a meeting with your colleague the parliamentary secretary; it's just unfortunate it was not with you. I hope we will be able to do that sometime in the future, after we return from this.
I want to thank you very much for your response to two of the letters I wrote. I received the responses today. I thought it was a bit unfortunate that I received them today, on the day of the committee meeting, but thank you nonetheless. I still look forward to receiving responses to the additional letters, one regarding maternity benefits, as discussed previously by my colleague Rosemarie, and one regarding the registered disability plan, which I'll talk about a little more later.
I want to talk first about Service Canada. We've heard a lot about it today, and I am also hearing about it from my constituents and constituents across the country. In particular, some of the most vulnerable communities, including seniors and Canadians in rural communities, have had trouble accessing Service Canada through telephone lines, given the closure of the service centres. I'm hearing really unfortunate things, such as individuals attempting to contact Service Canada 100 times in a day and individuals who wait for two hours on the phone only to hear a dial tone or busy signal and then the call hangs up. I've also heard of one client who phoned Service Canada every day for 30 days consecutively and was not able to get hold of anyone.
Despite our letter and despite your reply.... I will point out that in your letter, Minister, your reply admits that there can be delays of up to two hours. This is still not being addressed.
Within our letter, we did make suggestions, the first one about local numbers. Perhaps using local and regional numbers would assist. Perhaps you could implement a callback system whereby if a constituent was able to leave a message, they could receive a call back.
Minister, I would like to know, please, if you have considered these options, either implementing regional numbers for better service or a callback service.