Human Resources Committee on May 4th, 2020

[Professor Jennifer Robson, Associate Professor, Carleton University, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for the opportunity to join you today. I'm Jennifer Robson, an associate professor of political management at Carleton University.

To try to minimize some of the technical problems that I've been aware of in recent meetings, I am going to deliver my remarks today in English only. I do apologize in advance, particularly to Madame Chabot and and Monsieur Lafrenière, but I just know that I will make a mess of things if I try to think about what I'm saying and click different languages back and forth. I do apologize.

My remarks today are informed by my research on Canadian social policy and by the countless inquiries that I've received from Canadians about the emergency income supports during the pandemic. Members of the committee may be aware that since March 25 I've been regularly updating a plain-language summary of income benefits. In fact, I just posted an update to that before beginning the testimony today. Finally, I'm also speaking as a mom of three who, like millions of parents, has been trying to figure out how to juggle full-time work and home-schooling at the same time.

I've previously described the economic shutdown due to COVID as a medically induced coma. As a country, we might be slowly starting to come out of that coma, but we're still not able to do much without some kind of life support. As we regain consciousness, there are some important truths that we need to grapple with.

COVID-19 hasn't hit all Canadians equally, whether in health or economic effects. I'm going to focus on four different kinds of inequalities that have mattered in the crisis and will continue to matter during the economic reopening and eventual rebuilding.

The first one is inequalities in information and technical capabilities. There has been uneven information and help for individual Canadians to understand and use government benefits. At the same time, it has been evident that government has not always had adequate data or IT systems to be able to launch or adapt programs as nimbly as policy-makers, or the public, might want.

The second one is inequalities in the financial resources that households have to self-insure against an income interruption and the inevitable need to wait, even a short time, for government help.

The third one is inequalities in how COVID has impacted paid work. There are people whose work has been largely immune to the shutdown, workers who were suddenly deemed essential, too many Canadians who suddenly lost all or most of their paid work, and then there are those whose pre-COVID unemployment has been significantly prolonged.

Finally, the fourth one is inequalities in the responsibility for unpaid care and unequal opportunities to fully participate in the economic reopening and eventual rebuilding.

Let me add a little more detail and offer some recommendations to the committee.

The Government of Canada does not have enough information about Canadians or the computer systems to be able to design and deliver income supports in a way that can nimbly handle big month-over-month changes in employment and income. The fact that the back-end system that runs EI was able to ramp up from processing an average of five claims a minute to processing 1,000 a minute is nothing short of a public administration miracle.

As you heard from the deputy minister himself, there is much we cannot do as quickly as we should, or even at all, because our IT systems cannot handle rapid changes or fine-grained exceptions to general rules. While many have touted a national basic income as the right answer, the fact is there is no magic list of Canadians to be able to find and send a cheque to everyone, let alone whoever would meet the eligibility criteria that Parliament might set. Therefore, I hope this committee might support a plan to invest significantly, and for the long-term, in the back-end capacity of government so that we are better placed to not only prepare for the next macroshock but to also address the wide range of needs of Canadians who experience microshocks all the time.

Too many Canadians find government programs confusing. They are confusing. Online frequently asked questions and call centres are no substitute for personalized guidance and help. I don't have to tell you as MPs how important it is that Canadians have access to local, accessible and accurate help to use government programs. You and your constituency teams have been playing a vital role in connecting people to the help they need, but you can't do it all. No one network could.

We need to build a properly resourced web of non-profit, no-fee services to answer questions, problem solve and advocate for clients who can't do it themselves. Here I would encourage the committee to look into the Citizens Advice bureaus in the United Kingdom or the Financial Empowerment Centers in the United States as sources of inspiration.

Many Canadians are going to continue to need income support for the next while, and they will need active measures to get them back into the workforce. We have to hope that the emergency wage subsidy will mean that some share of layoffs won't become permanent. However, many sectors that were the hardest hit in job losses, sectors such as accommodation and food services, retail trade and education services, are also lower down the list for reopening in provincial plans. We want to incentivize work, but work that is safe to do.

The emergency programs such as CERB are going to have to be wound down gradually and likely morphed into more nimble designs that can handle a wider range of cases. This is going to be hard to do, in large part because of the same gaps in federal data and IT that I mentioned a moment ago. Work should also be under way now with provinces to adapt and expand active-measure employment programs so that they can be more effective, handle increased demand and work within the constraints imposed by social distancing, which is likely to continue for some time.

One-third of Canadians came into this crisis without enough liquid savings to pay for even a poverty-line standard of living for one month, let alone keeping themselves at their usual level of consumption. A bit of additional liquidity in the form of mortgage and tax deferrals will have helped some, but part of the rebuilding phase is going to have to be rebuilding household finances, and I hope the members of this committee will work with colleagues on the finance committee and others to find better tools to help households reduce debt and build emergency savings.

Finally, too many families with kids are going to face awful and unreasonable choices during the reopening, as they continue to juggle unpaid care and returning to paid work or a job search. By best estimates, two-thirds of the lost employment in March—and we'll get updates on Friday in terms of those lost hours of paid work as well as jobs—was among women, but it is moms who lost the most paid work, more than other women without kids and more than dads.

Provinces are taking a range of approaches to reopening, but it increasingly looks as though most elementary schools will not be able to reopen until September. Child care services that were already unable to meet demand precrisis won't be able to operate at full capacity for some time to come. I worry about the potential loss of child care spaces as operators lose revenue and lay off staff. I worry about mothers being left out of work or job hunting, even as governments lift public health restrictions. I also worry what will happen to household finances if, on average, 40% of the earned income of the family vanishes because mom has to stay home with the kids. This isn't a private problem for families to solve; it's a macroeconomic disaster waiting to happen.

With provincial agreement, federal support should be directed at protecting existing child care spaces when current revenues put a centre's viability at risk. We should also increase the number of child care programs that can work within provincial health guidelines so that parents, and moms in particular, can participate in the economic reopening and eventual recovery.

Thank you. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

We will continue with Sylvain Lafrenière of the Mouvement autonome et solidaire des sans-emploi.

Mr. Lafrenière, you have the floor for 10 minutes.

[Sylvain Lafrenière]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, committee members.

I feel my comments follow on well from Ms. Robson's.

I speak on behalf of the Mouvement autonome et solidaire des sans-emploi, or MASSE. We are a coalition of around fifteen organizations in Quebec spread across most of the province's regions. Most of our groups are particularly active on the issue of employment insurance, but a few also work in related fields, such as income security, social assistance, and workplace health and safety.

We offer a variety of services: individual support for those involved in a review process or a proceeding before an administrative tribunal, general legal information, and training and information sessions for other stakeholders, particularly in the union movement. Personally, I represent the Mouvement in dealing with political bodies and other stakeholders in the field.

Our network is fighting for a fair and universally accessible unemployment insurance system. Let me remind you that this has been an important goal of ours for a long time. Let me also remind you that the employment insurance program has been under attack since the 1990s and, since then, it has not been substantially improved, despite periods when the unemployment rate was quite low, particularly in recent years.

This background is important because, at the beginning of the crisis, we were very concerned about the government's capacity to meet the demand that was expected to be, and indeed was, very strong. MASSE had already begun to make representations regarding unusual delays in processing claims. Since November, several groups have spoken out about the situation. The 28-day period was being exceeded for an increasing number of files. We were concerned and wondered how Service Canada would manage to meet the high demand that was coming.

We also wondered what happened to claims filed before March 15. Were they processed, or were they late due to the subsequent influx of claims? This is a question we are currently asking the government.

In this context, we appreciated the announcement of the Canada Emergency Response Benefit, or CERB, and more importantly, that it was assigned to the Canada Revenue Agency, which probably allowed for more efficient processing of claims. We applauded...

[Technical difficulty]

Pardon me, did someone say something?

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

There is a problem, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Yes, clearly something went wrong. Is it fixed?

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Yes, it's fixed for me.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Mr. Vis, you had your hand up. Did you have a point of order?

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Yes, Chair.

It's already 3:38 p.m. Pacific time, and as all three of these witnesses are excellent, I want to ask all committee members for permission to extend our meeting to ensure two rounds of questioning, to respect all of the witnesses who came forward today.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

That question should probably be extended to the House of Commons folks. There are significant demands on our resources.

Can we have Mr. Lafrenière complete his statement? That will give the House of Commons folks time to figure out whether that's possible. Then I'll come back to the point of order.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Thank you, sir.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Mr. Lafrenière, you may continue.

[Sylvain Lafrenière]

Thank you.

What people particularly appreciated about the CERB is that a great deal of effort went into simplifying the process and that a somewhat unusual eligibility criterion of $5,000 in income was introduced. The rationale is slightly different from the employment insurance program. It is also a shortcoming in the current employment insurance program to which we have been objecting for a number of years. The criterion has given many part-time workers access to the CERB.

Another positive feature of the CERB is that it has helped the self-employed, who in fact make up more than 15% of Canadians. The vast majority of them would not have been eligible for employment insurance because, in many cases, they do not pay into the plan. Even today, the system is not tailored to them. For us, this is a positive measure, but it also proves quite clearly that the employment insurance system needs a complete overhaul. This is something that we will have to consider later, because it has still not been done.

On the other hand, we note that some irritants arise from the CERB, including the question of voluntary leaving, which is still not allowed under the law as we understand it. In our opinion, this is a step backwards because it is permitted under certain employment insurance rules, subject to certain conditions, of course. One of the conditions involves health and safety. When health and safety are at risk, voluntary leaving is allowed. It is not allowed in this instance, and in our view, that clearly puts certain employers' workers at a disadvantage.

I know that this is not the case everywhere in Canada, but in Quebec, we are starting to talk more and more about lifting the lockdown. We get the impression that this could give an undue advantage to some workers, especially since, to our knowledge, the wage subsidy rules are not very restrictive for employers when it comes to protecting their employees. They could take advantage of them to chip away at certain working conditions.

In addition, we welcome the subsequent expansion of the CERB. I am thinking specifically of the addition of workers in seasonal industries. I am also thinking of all the people who had suffered significant financial losses, but continued to receive a modest portion of their usual income. We can also add people who recently reached the end of their employment insurance benefits, and were faced with a job market that was almost non-existent in some sectors.

We can only deplore the fact that it took the government a little while to add these people to the original program. This has caused a sense and a period of uncertainty, particularly among people in areas where, of course, seasonal work is important.

We were a little disappointed with the CERB for students, which provides a smaller amount than the CERB. We have been very involved in the debate around this issue. It seems that certain things were not taken into account. For example, given the minimum wage in Quebec, $1,250 represents, roughly speaking, part-time employment income for three days a week. That is not the kind of job most university students are looking for at this time. These are mostly students with modest incomes who need to earn an income in order to continue their education. We found the rationale that this would be some kind of disincentive a little bizarre. That is not what we see with the majority of these students, who are struggling to study and working hard to get there.

What we also object to with the CERB is that there are still no legal regulations. To give you a concrete example, we still do not know whether there would be any recourse for someone who has been denied the CERB. It really bothers us because we sometimes need to represent people.

We are concerned that we do not know whether or not a recourse mechanism is in place and that, if there is, we are unaware of it.

We also deplore the continued shutdown of Service Canada offices across the country. Of course, we are not asking that the offices reopen completely and normally, but we consider it an essential service that must be provided to the public.

It should be noted that the unemployed who are most likely to turn to this type of service are the most vulnerable groups in society. They include low-income individuals in remote areas with limited Internet access—I must say that in Quebec, we are still experiencing difficulties in that respect—as well as people with little education and seniors who have trouble with digital technology.

I will conclude my presentation by saying that MASSE was also quite disappointed with the government's lack of consultation, particularly with our agencies, both from the Minister's office and from Service Canada. We understand that the situation was urgent and that decisions had to be made quickly. These were major measures that needed to be implemented quickly, and we understand that very well.

We have read that the emergency programs will only last a few months, but the recession is coming and it will hit hard. However, we hope that, moving forward, the government will set up measures to consult with civil organizations to help it reflect on future programs.

I will simply conclude by thanking you once again for your invitation to appear, on my behalf and on behalf of all our member groups.

Of course, I will be happy to answer any questions about my presentation or other aspects of employment insurance that I did not have time to address today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you very much, Mr. Lafrenière.

Colleagues, we are about 14 minutes from the end of our scheduled time for Mr. Vis's point of order. If we were to do a full round of questions, that would take us about 10 minutes past that time. I don't think that's unreasonable and I have the assurance of the staff that they are okay with that.

I welcome your comments, but two full rounds would take us about 30 to 40 minutes past time, which I think is bordering on unreasonable, but I'm in the committee's hands. My suggestion is that we do one round, which is six minutes for each party, and we wrap up after that.

Very well. I see a few thumbs-up on the screen.

We will start with six minutes, with Mr. Albas for the Conservatives.

You have the floor, Mr. Albas.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all of our witnesses for their expertise and for being in front of this committee today.

I'd like to start my line of questioning with Dr. Robson.

One topic I have repeatedly canvassed for here at this committee is the tragic case of pregnant women being denied the CERB by Service Canada. The minister has pledged to fix this, and you argue that it is an IT problem. Our systems are antiquated and plans to fix them are years out.

Could you speak about this issue a bit, please?

[Prof. Jennifer Robson]

My understanding is that the issue is that pregnant women who are applying for the CERB through Service Canada are of course accurately declaring they are pregnant, and then finding they are being shuffled into maternity benefits. If I understood correctly from the testimony of the deputy minister last week, this is because the back-end system that runs the employment insurance side of the CERB, separate from the CRA-administered side, is not able to distinguish or to handle those exceptional cases.

In normal times it is not uncommon for expectant women who find themselves laid off to take some time of regular EI benefits, and then transition to maternity or parental benefits, sometimes with an adjustment to the number of weeks they will qualify for. I do not have a full sense of, and I was not able to glean from the deputy minister's testimony, exactly the nature of the technical limitations, but I did note that he referred to the antiquated system of COBOL, which is older than me, so that's getting up there in years.

Members may be interested that, on my Twitter feed over the weekend, I posted a brief snapshot of COBOL code, which does only one thing: It prints records from one file onto a piece of paper. It struck me that if that is the complexity of the code required to simply print something, then creating exceptions to cases, to tell a long-standing system to do something different, to make an exception that if somebody says she is pregnant she can still receive the CERB, must be rather complicated from an IT perspective.

That said, I am disappointed because it struck me that this is obviously a series of cases that ought to have been expected. I have not heard similar concerns for women who have been applying through the Canada Revenue Agency. I wonder if it might not be worth the committee's time to pursue and understand how the back-end system is different at the CRA relative to Service Canada.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

You mentioned being local and accessible, and our offices are trying to do that from all sides. We've spoken to other people who have told us it's not a technical issue. They've been told the CERB legislation actually precludes expectant women, and Service Canada staff has cited specific parts of the legislation to justify that.

The minister has said that's not true. Do you think this is just a failure of training? I know you said it could be the back-office COBOL, but to me, we need to get an answer for these expectant mothers.

[Prof. Jennifer Robson]

I have read the legislation myself and provided some comments to one of the first media reports that broke the story around expectant mothers. My reading of the legislation, Bill C-13 that created the CERB, is that it does not exclude expectant women. It does contain a provision that says you cannot simultaneously claim maternity or parental and CERB benefits, but it also does acknowledge those same benefits as contributing to the minimum $5,000 of work income to qualify. It seems to me the legislation does anticipate there might be some workers who are in fact pregnant or have had children, and they still require the CERB.

The reports I have heard have included mixed messages from Service Canada personnel when they're called. I think that individual Service Canada officers are no doubt trying to do their best, and that with exceptional cases there is no doubt confusion as to what the exact rules are. To some degree the answer you get might depend on the time of day you call and who happens to be on duty that day. That's why having clarity and having access to additional and local support to problem-solve will always be important in my view, no matter the kinds of programs government is developing.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Do you think the fact that the CERB was able to be implemented fairly quickly, and pay people just as fast, shows that a half-decade timetable on fixing an antiquated system like EI is simply unacceptable?

[Prof. Jennifer Robson]

I'm not an IT expert, so I won't be able to comment, unfortunately, on the acceptability or the accuracy of a timetable for updating software. I do understand—and it's been reported in the media—that several legacy systems within the Government of Canada are mission critical in delivering key employment and income supports to Canadians, and they are all in need of serious updating. It's a long-term project. I do hope that work will be done to ensure not only adequate resources but also public support to be able to sustain the project.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Dr. Robson.

Thank you, Mr. Albas.

Mr. Vis, I see your hand raised. Do you have a point of order?

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

It was related to the earlier point. You missed it when I raised my hand.

I would ask whether those of us who were not able to ask questions, because I did have a lot for Mr. Preston and Ms. Robson, could receive their email addresses so that we could follow up after the meeting.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sean Casey]

Thank you, Mr. Vis.

Next we have, from the Liberals, Ms. Young for six minutes.

Go ahead, please.

[Kate Young, Liberal, London West, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses today.

Dr. Preston, I'd like to talk to you and ask you a few questions if I could. I want to thank you for bringing us the hard truths of this pandemic and the impact on Canadians who have disabilities. You raised a number of issues, but I'd like to start with a very general question.

How do you think the government has responded, in general terms, to this pandemic?

[Dr. Jeff Preston]

I have a lot of answers to that question. I would say, right off the top, that personally I have been very appreciative of the way in which the government jumped into action right away, putting out messaging around social distancing and taking it seriously by not trying to carry on as though it was business as usual. I think that was a critical step. That meant not just that I was able to shelter at home safely but also that my support workers, for instance, were also able to keep themselves isolated. I think that was absolutely critical.

I also think that the CERB is a great move if only for the fact that it is going to mean some more money in the pockets of people with disabilities, provided they have been able to work previously. This, I would say, is maybe one limitation. There are a lot of individuals who would be on programs like ODSP who are not able to access it because they haven't earned money. They've only had their support services.

The other issue that we're hearing about now is that this income will be treated as income, meaning that ODSP payments in Ontario will be clawed back for those who do receive the CERB, so you're adding another layer of paperwork now for people with disabilities in terms of reporting and keeping track. They'll actually have to put the money away, and that's a complication.

[Kate Young, Liberal, London West, ON]

I appreciate that and I think it speaks to how we hope the provincial governments will decide not to claw it back.

In your presentation you talked about caring for the caregivers. Last week a motion was passed by unanimous consent for the government to implement measures to provide additional support for persons with disabilities in order to assist with extraordinary expenses incurred as a result of COVID-19 and to examine the best way to do this.

I wonder how you hope this additional support will help you and your PSW.