Yes, Mr. Chair.
In front of all those watching and listening, especially the people who fell victim to these delays, personally, I would be embarrassed to oppose an urgent meeting with the ministers responsible for this issue.
This is a disturbing situation. As elected officials, we should be concerned about it, and I hope that the ministers responsible are sufficiently concerned to appear before us and fill us in on the situation.
As you know, we could have a meeting on Monday with one of the ministers responsible for this, who would be accompanied by officials. They could then answer the tough or highly technical questions about Service Canada, and that would be fine, but that's not the point. There may be technical problems, yes, but this is political.
I could use the rest of my speaking time to share with you all the emergencies Canadians are facing. By the way, I am not trying to change my responsibilities as a member of Parliament here. It's not our role as members to do what Service Canada does, but we are here for Canadians. What are we supposed to tell people when they have been waiting for seven months?
I may be given a technical explanation, that requests did indeed surge in December and January. Also, the lockdown in Quebec surely resulted in more applications to be processed. In addition, Quebec could be harder hit by identity theft issues. All these contextual factors could help explain things to us. However, I see absolutely no justification for a delay of that magnitude in processing applications, a delay that has left people with no income since last fall. I look forward to hearing the numbers so I can compare them to the information we have.
I recently heard from someone who is waiting, who has no income and will be unable to pay the rent on Monday or child support. A Service Canada agent told them it was impossible to process their file any faster and that they had better find a job.
If this doesn't qualify as a political issue, I don't know what would. I don't know why people are refusing to hear from the ministers, who should be just as concerned about the situation as we are.
To sum up, I support the officials being here, as long as the ministers appear as well.