Human Resources Committee on May 30th, 2022

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you, Minister.

Could there be some information about the $145 expediting fee and the returns on that? I'm not sure that was included in the initial email about how to apply for those refunds and the timing on those refunds.

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

Sure. In the initial email, it was clarified that, if someone applied and their application was complete, and they had not received their passport within the service standard, then they should not be charged that. That information has been reiterated to all frontline Service Canada staff, both in person and on the phone, but we can certainly share where citizens can apply for a refund if they had been charged that fee erroneously.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

You have five seconds left, but we will get to a second round with you, I believe.

At this time, we have Madam Gladu for five minutes.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Minister, for being with us today.

Before the 600 employees were hired, about how many employees did you have processing passports here in Canada?

[Lori MacDonald, Senior Associate Deputy Minister, Employment and Social Development and Chief Operating Officer for Service Canada, Department of Employment and Social Development]

We had approximately 1,500, and we have around 2,100 to 2,200 right now.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

It was about 1,500, so really, you're adding almost another third of your contingent, but the increase in passports.... You said that you're expecting 4.2 million this year. That's a 250% increase from the number you processed in 2021. Even if you've increased employees 30%, and the expectation is that things are going to go up 250%, and that's before we include the 10-year renewals coming at us next year, what plans do you have to further increase your staff?

I know you've increased hours, but what are your plans to address what looks to be a tsunami headed our way?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

Let me start, and then I'll turn it over to officials to take it from there.

One thing that's a bit of a challenge for us is that Service Canada doesn't do the forecasting. IRCC does the forecasting, and the original forecast for this year was for about 2.4 million passports, which gets us into the ballpark of where things were prepandemic.

Now, you can't necessarily forecast for human behaviour, and that's one reason we've made a lot of changes over the past couple of months. We did anticipate a big increase, a doubling, in the number of passports, but right now, we're seeing a quadrupling of the number of passports that are in demand, and we're seeing this happening all at the same time.

The difference prepandemic was that the reason it was predictable was that you knew there were about 2.5 million passports needing to be renewed, but they would happen over the course of the year. What we're seeing is, you know, a big chunk happening all at the same time.

I'll turn it over to Lori to talk about what we're doing in terms of planning ahead.

[Lori MacDonald]

There are a couple of things. Aside from the 600 we've already hired, we're hiring on a weekly basis, so we anticipate at least doubling that hiring over the course of the next several weeks. We have hiring processes under way constantly.

We're also realigning approximately 600 staff within Service Canada right now to the passport offices, so we'll take staff from other jobs. We do an evaluation with respect to where we have some flexibility to assign to passports. At the same time, one of the things that we put in place in anticipation of the 10-year passport was technology to support intake at all 317 Service Canada centres. That capacity didn't exist prior to the pandemic but it does exist now. It will help meter what happens in terms of people coming in with their passport applications.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Thank you.

Through the chair to the minister, there were 2,700 government employees on leave without pay due to their vaccination status. Of course, we know now that members from all parties are out gallivanting among the unvaxxed, so I wonder if any of those 2,700 might be able to be brought back to work in order to augment the workforce.

[Lori MacDonald]

Right now we're respecting the policy that's been put in place in terms of staff members requiring a vaccine. For Service Canada, about 249 were off and have refused vaccination for various reasons, but that doesn't impact our entire program overall. We have about 29,000 staff. Those 249 are spread across the department overall, so there is no impact on us really in terms of passport applications or processing. We meter out the work in other areas to augment that.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

It's unfortunate that we can't bring them back, considering there are no mandates anywhere else and other countries have all dropped theirs. We certainly need the folks who are trained to do the work.

I could share similar stories to the ones that Mrs. Kusie indicated, of people who were unable to visit dying relatives. I had one particularly awful story of a fellow who had been in the country for 10 years from Vietnam and he had never been anywhere. There was an opportunity for him to go to a family wedding. Six months in advance of the wedding he actually applied for the documentation he needed to travel and heard nothing back. He escalated it through my office. I tried the line for MPs. I escalated it to the immigration folks as well and unfortunately he missed this life experience, which he can't get back.

You've indicated that people should go in person. We have had a lot of stories of overload at the in-person kiosks, where people are lining up hours before they open and they are still not able to be managed.

Is there any way that people can be aware before they show up of whether there is any chance of being processed that day?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Before you answer, I need unanimous consent to continue as the lights are indicating a vote has been called. It's my understanding it's a 30-minute bell.

Do we have unanimous consent to proceed to close to one o'clock?

I see unanimous consent.

Minister, give a brief answer, please.

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

I will actually turn it over to Mr. Simeoni to talk about the measures we've taken to get people through offices more quickly.

[Peter Simeoni, Assistant Deputy Minister, Service Canada, Citizen Service Branch, Department of Employment and Social Development]

In addition to all of the staffing we've been talking about, we've introduced an appointment system. The numbers we were looking at just this morning told us that we have 223,000 appointments between the months of April and August. That's a lot of space going forward for clients to find a way into a Service Canada centre.

Lineups have been a challenge. There is no doubt about that. We are changing how we're operating and we're moving staff around, so if there is a lineup in the morning all the counters get that line moving. As the day progresses and people are not waiting, we can do other things in the back. We've opened up waiting rooms as well. There are a variety of measures. We're trying to make it easier on people, particularly as summer comes. We do not want people lining up outside unnecessarily. About 11 of our 35 offices have chronic lineup problems. That's a lot, but it's not all 35. We're working on that and we expect things to get a lot better.

On contact centres, as of this morning we're looking at a 27-minute to a 55-minute wait time, which is not instantaneous, but at the same time it is comparable to what clients would experience with other utilities, for example, in the country. We can be reached.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Madam Gladu.

Mr. Van Bynen, you have five minutes.

[Tony Van Bynen, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Firstly, thank you, Minister, for sharing your thoughts with us here today.

I'd like to build on the reference to other countries. We've heard that increased demands for passports is an issue in many countries around the world, and others are facing similar situations. According to The Guardian, the U.K. passport office is advising that passport wait times have tripled and clients should plan accordingly. According to ABC in Australia, officials have also warned clients to expect longer than normal processing times. It seems that our counterparts are also grappling with this.

Could you please add some international context to what we're seeing here in Canada with passports? What does the scale of the demand and our response look like in comparison?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

I think that around the world, and particularly in similar countries to Canada, there's a great demand to travel. People were at home for two years, so now they're ready to get back out and see the world. The situation that we're experiencing in Canada is actually not unique, and other countries are also struggling with the increase in demand and passports that have expired over those past two years.

To put it into context, in Australia, they're recommending at least six weeks to apply before a passport. In Ireland, it's about eight weeks for mail-in service. New Zealand has an online system so it's a bit faster at 22 working days. In the U.K., they're saying up to 10 weeks to get a passport. In the United States routine processing is eight to 11 weeks, and in fact, their expedited processing is five to seven weeks. In Sweden, it's 27.7 weeks to get an appointment for a passport, and in France they actually don't tell you what the wait time is but to expect serious delays.

That's not to give any excuses or justification whatsoever. It's just that when you design a passport system in Canada or around the world, you do it in a way to maximize efficiency. Because passports typically are quite predictable, they're not really built for these massive surges. Even though we've taken a whole range of measures in terms of hiring an additional 600 staff, probably hiring another 600 staff and moving 600 internally, there is a huge demand right now.

The other thing I'll add on is that the Canadian passport is a document that has a lot of integrity. It's recognized around the world and it's a secure document. While we're able to expedite documents on an urgent basis, it has to go through a really rigorous process, because we need to ensure that integrity is maintained.

We're doing everything we can to speed it up, but we're, unfortunately, not out of line with many of our international counterparts.

[Tony Van Bynen, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

I'd like to build on the issue around the expedited process that was introduced. There are risks and benefits to this new process. For example, are there any considerations related to security? What impact has the introduction of the new process had on processing times? What are the risks that might be related to that?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

I'll turn it over to Ms. MacDonald for that.

[Lori MacDonald]

Integrity is one of the most important pieces of our passport program. That's why, when the minister referred to the new applications for people who've never had a passport before and children, integrity is a goal of that passport, so it takes longer in terms of reviewing that information. Above and beyond that, we do special training with our frontline staff on integrity and what to look for in terms of things like fraudulent cases or cases where we see interruption from other countries, as an example.

We work very closely with our intelligence communities to share information with us, and we have monthly updated sessions with our frontline officers, all with the goal of ensuring that integrity is achieved in each of our passport applications. That's one area we don't compromise on when we're looking at streamlining processes and supporting how much more efficiently we can process the passport. That's the first goal. We look at things we can do that are easier to streamline, that are low-hanging fruit, where we can omit something from the process to make it move more quickly. The example would be the new renewal process we put in place, where we now allow a passport to be 15 years old and a shorter processing time.

[Tony Van Bynen, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

I'll cede the last few seconds of my time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

You're so kind, Mr. Van Bynen. Thank you.

Next is Madame Chabot for two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Our perception is that something is wrong at Service Canada.

We're talking about the number of employees assigned to passport applications. A few months ago, we were talking about the number of employees assigned to processing employment insurance files. In both cases, the number of applications to Service Canada was predictable, but Service Canada failed to adapt.

Last week, I was in Rimouski, and I could see that some people were still waiting for their employment insurance benefits when they returned to work. In the case of EI, you have to be indigent to get the cheques; in the case of passports, it must be an emergency.

It seems to me that the organizational culture of Service Canada needs to be seriously changed, and that this must include additional resources, to meet the needs.

Are you committed to strengthening Service Canada to meet the needs of workers and citizens?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

Thank you, Ms. Chabot.

With all due respect, I disagree with you. I have travelled across the country to meet with Service Canada employees, and they are dedicated public service employees. However, you have to understand that there has been an increase in the number of applications.

As we talked about the last time I testified before the committee, with respect to employment insurance, there are predictable increases in the winter and summer. The situation with the Omicron variant and the closures that it caused were not predictable. So there was an incredible increase in the number of requests during the winter, particularly in Quebec. However, as a result of conversations we had with you and other Quebec MPs, we took action. We then saw an impressive drop in the number of EI claims waiting to be processed, thanks to the actions taken by Service Canada. So I want to thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. Service Canada has responded to the request.

With respect to passports, we had anticipated an increase in the number of applications. However, our estimate was $2.4 million. We now understand that this was not enough, so we are adjusting.

What I want to say is that Service Canada employees are dedicated. They work extremely hard, they work overtime and they work on weekends. When I spoke with them, I could see that they want to provide the services, but there is a great demand.

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

I met a Service Canada employee who was exhausted. She said the culture within Service Canada is not a happy one. I believe that more resources are needed immediately to meet all the needs of citizens and workers.