Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for your question.
I'm happy to say that over the course of the past year we've actually put two new services in place to augment...our vulnerable populations where we have not been able to re-establish the site visits. We hope to do that this year, once some of the guidelines have been increased in terms of access to travel and so on.
These two measures include two new alternative service delivery models to reach those more vulnerable populations. One is called “e-service”, where clients can actually go online, fill out a form and send it to us, and we respond within 24 to 48 hours. We've actually reached many thousands of Canadians with this new service.
The second measure is through eCOLS, which is where we've used third party intervenors to support us and rule in northern communities to support particularly indigenous communities for service. That's a toll-free number where a Canadian can call the toll-free number—and we actually return their call as well—and we do all of their services for them online. This is also a system in terms of their being able to remain safely in their homes. Those two services are actually augmenting the service that is not available through the travel program.
In terms of the call centres, I'll turn to my colleague Cliff Groen. As Minister Hussen indicated, we have invested significant amounts of money in augmenting our service call centres this past year, including hiring up to 1,500 additional staff.
[Technical difficulty—Editor] to address some of the issues that were in place.