Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My name is Pierre Laliberté and I've been a commissioner for workers at Employment Insurance Commission since 2016. I was therefore present for many of the deliberations on this issue. Having followed all of this quite closely, I have to say that it's a bit disappointing to be here conveying our concerns to you about what is being introduced in Section 32 of Part 5 of Bill C‑19, rather than celebrating the creation of the new board of appeals. It's too bad, but it is what it is.
I really like the remarks that have been made before me. I think they do a good job of pointing out the concerns and issues in connection with this reform.
The reform was announced in 2019 after a long process of study and consultation. Here, I will respond to Mrs. Kusie's comment about whether consultations took place. Consultations were held across Canada. They were facilitated by KPMG, which was mandated by the government to do a field investigation. I attended the seven or eight meetings held at the time.
Based on KPMG's observations, which were absolutely terse about the performance of the Social Security Tribunal, the minister at the time, Mr. Duclos, convened a working group that brought together stakeholders from the business community, the labour community, the community in general and the department, of course, to come up with a compromise and find something that could work.
The objectives were clear. The first was to reinstate a fast, unencumbered process that would meet people's needs. It must be said that at the time, the backlogs were horrible, in the style of what Mr. Boulerice mentioned earlier. Next, they wanted to bring back a peer justice system with the participation of community members. Finally, they wanted to bring back community-based justice by facilitating in-person hearings.
While cost was not central to the exercise, but it was an underlying issue. They discovered that, despite the fact that the Social Security Tribunal was created to save money, exactly the opposite was true. Right now, a decision by the Social Security Tribunal, which operates much more efficiently today than it did four years ago, still costs $4,000. When we had the boards of referees, which were local tripartite groups, it cost about $700 per decision. You can do the math. As you can see, even though the objective was to reduce costs, they didn't succeed.
Among all the organizations involved in this issue, I have not found a single one aligned with what's being recommended here. My colleague Nancy Healey, who is the commissioner for employers, and I sent a letter to Minister Qualtrough to voice our concerns. My colleague also made an effort to consult with her stakeholders and found that they did indeed have concerns about this. This led us to recommend that Section 32 be removed from Part 5 of the bill, rather than trying to amend it on the fly, and get the job done appropriately.
I'm not going to go into everything that has already been said. But I will talk about one thing in particular, and that is the role of the Employment Insurance Commission.