Human Resources Committee on Jan. 31st, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Madame Chabot, your time is up.

I will now go to Madame Zarrillo for two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you very much.

I want to say how important this conversation is to the residents in my community and to the case workers in the MPs' offices who are receiving calls. I really appreciate all the information we are getting today.

I want to revisit a comment from Ms. Crescenzi. Thank you for your comments earlier. They were very informative. I want to get some clarification on this dedicated team and the timing. You said it was coming very quickly. Could I get the timing?

I also want to ask.... I'm not sure if it's Ms. MacDonald, or even if this is possible.... I'd like to get some information about proactive education in the community around identity fraud. The situation that we're in, where many of these EI recipients have been defrauded, is very sad and it can be devastating to their lives. I'd like for us to be able to proactively get ahead of that in the constituency, so anything you can do there would be appreciated.

[Lori MacDonald]

Maybe I'll go first and then I'll flip it over to Mary.

There are two important things.

We do have a regional inquiry unit in place for MPs to access. We have a standard practice to return those calls within 48 hours, and we do that 99.5% of the time. Please, I encourage everyone to call. We never want to see someone suffering and going through these issues of their claim not being processed. Reach out to that regional inquiry unit. In fact, I've asked my team in the Quebec region, at the direction of the minister, to make sure they're reaching out to all MPs in Quebec to help them with these cases that are coming to them and to try to resolve these issues more expediently. The regional inquiry unit is there to help and to help triage some of these issues.

We also use the cyber security centre, which has significant products in terms of education on cybersecurity. We would be very happy to share those contacts with the committee so that you can get educational products.

I'll flip it over to Mary.

[Mary Crescenzi]

I'll answer the question in regard to the dedicated team.

We have two layers of dedicated teams. One is associated with a newly formed dedicated team that will be stood up this week in the call centre. That is in regard to being able to.... When the situation occurs that the individual on the line is saying that they're faced with identity fraud, or we see a flag in the system that indicates there is an issue with their file, that call would be transferred over to a dedicated team that we are training now to be able to ask those second- or third-level assurance questions that normally would have had my team calling back.

At the same time, we are almost doubling the resources in the Quebec region, where we are seeing a disproportionate representation of these types of activities occurring. As we said earlier, we will be able to reach out to those who are most in need and respond in the next two weeks to those 2,000 who have been identified as an urgent requirement. We will then continue to work through the volume that we're seeing with the expanded capacity.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you.

That concludes your two and a half minutes, Madame Zarrillo.

There are still two five-minute slots in the second round—one for the Conservative Party and one for the Liberal Party—but we're reaching our one hour. Unless there's objection from the committee, I will go to Mr. Jeneroux and then Madame Martinez Ferrada for their two five-minute rounds. Is that okay with the committee? I see a thumbs-up.

Given that there's no objection, I will now go to Mr. Jeneroux for five minutes, and then we'll conclude with Madame Martinez Ferrada for five minutes.

Mr. Jeneroux, the floor is yours for five minutes.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate there being no objection to allowing me to speak to this. I'm hoping to get in four questions quickly.

Repayments are a big issue in my riding of Edmonton Riverbend. Many people who lost their jobs due to COVID applied for benefits and are now facing serious repercussions. People who have been properly submitting their information on a monthly basis and providing all necessary updates are being severely punished by Service Canada's mistakes. They say 48 hours is the callback time, but honestly, these are people in their most desperate time of need. To have even 2% who weren't able to get that 48-hour callback when they reached out to their member of Parliament's office, in my opinion, is unacceptable, so I'm hoping we can reduce that to a shorter hourly period for our offices.

Many students in my riding have been asked to return their benefits, and they even received...though they followed every proper step along the way. Mr. Groen said that it takes about six weeks in many cases. Ours are at about three to four months.

For my four questions, I'll go in order and hopefully get through all of them.

How many cases is Service Canada now reviewing and currently seeking repayment from?

Ms. MacDonald might be best to answer that.

[Lori MacDonald]

I'll refer this to Mr. Groen.

[Cliff C. Groen]

Thank you.

I do not have that information directly available with me, but I would be happy to provide it subsequently to the committee.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Groen.

Question two is this: As of today, how much money is Service Canada trying to collect from Canadians from payments that should not have been approved?

[Lori MacDonald]

Thank you for the question.

Again, we will come back to the committee in terms of that.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

Question three is this: How many of these reimbursements have been reconsidered and waived by Service Canada?

[Lori MacDonald]

Again, Mr. Chairman, we don't have that information with us today for the purposes of this committee, but we can provide that information through a subsequent submission to the committee.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

This will be my final question, Mr. Chair.

Is Service Canada at all considering not collecting these funds?

[Lori MacDonald]

Mr. Chairman, overall, I would say the government has a fiduciary responsibility in terms of debt repayment. We do that with our colleagues at CRA. There are very specific policies and guidelines in terms of that debt recovery. I would say that we have been very clear, in terms of debt recovery, that our first and foremost tactic is to notify of a debt and then to work with the client to repay that over time. There is no requirement to do that in an immediate fashion; in fact, in each individual case we work with them to determine what they're able to pay back, over what period of time and what amount, as we obviously understand that people have different financial circumstances and financial needs.

As I said [Inaudible—Editor] information, we'll provide it to you.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

Thank you, Ms. MacDonald.

Maybe I'll be a bit more direct. Have there been discussions with the minister, with your supervisors or the deputy minister, in terms of not collecting these funds?

[Lori MacDonald]

Thank you for the question, Mr. Chair.

We have constant conversations with respect to the collection of debt. It could be anything from how we collect the debt and what the communication messages are on collecting debt, to what impacts there are across different populations in terms of collecting debt. Prior to the pandemic and during the pandemic, there have always been conversations about the collection of debt and how we do that for the government overall.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

Mr. Chair, I'll cede my time. However, I do look forward, with respect to the first three questions, and I'd even say the fourth question, to getting some answers in a relatively quick fashion. These are questions that we're hearing directly from my constituents in Edmonton Riverbend day after day, and with respect to my caseworker and caseworkers across the country, I think many of them would love to hear the answers to these questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Jeneroux. Your time had just about concluded anyhow.

We'll conclude with Madame Martinez Ferrada for five minutes.

Ms. Crescenzi, when you're answering a question, would you lift your mike? It's popping and the interpreter.... Thank you.

Madame Martinez Ferrada is next, for five minutes.

[Soraya Martinez Ferrada, Liberal, Hochelaga, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It's my turn to say how important this issue is. As my colleague Ms. Chabot said, and as some witnesses have also said, this is a problem that disproportionately affects Quebec. Yes, I have received several calls about this in my constituency office.

I would like to come back to your presentation, Ms. MacDonald. On the one hand, you said that you were dedicating additional resources to this problem; on the other, you said that you were going to use other methods to try to reduce the wait.

I also sense some confusion about the number of people who are waiting, whether it's fraud cases or people waiting for EI confirmation. Could you describe a little more clearly the department's response plan for finding concrete solutions? What are the numbers now? You’re talking about other ways to reduce the wait. What are they?

Like my colleague Mr. Jeneroux, I have also received calls at my constituency office, and I expect to be able to provide quick answers to constituents who call me. Committee members would very much like you to provide us with a clear plan for the department's response to this problem. Can you shed some light on this?

[Lori MacDonald]

Thank you for the question.

Mr. Chairperson, I'll start off, and then I'll ask my colleague Cliff Groen to answer as well.

As it relates to the very specific issue of fraud, as we indicated earlier, we have right now in our inventory about 10,000 cases, and we know that around 2,000 of those are urgent requirements. We have hired additional investigators to assist with those cases. We have realigned resources within the department to do those investigations, and we have trained additional staff to take calls very specific to identity fraud to assist in unlocking those cases on a very quick basis. We will have the vast majority, if not all, of those 2,000 cases resolved in the next two weeks, but we will continue to triage additional cases, because every day we get new cases. We will also continue to hire new staff to help us with those cases.

In terms of processing, we have identified and hired additional staff for call centres, additional staff for processing. At the same time, we've streamlined our internal processes to take pain points out of the system and create more efficiencies. We use data analytics. We use interventions in terms of robotics. We also look at changing our caseloads so that we can actually process cases across the country regardless of where the client is.

These are just some of the things we've put in place to ensure a more efficient processing of EI claims. I will ask Mr. Groen if he would like to add anything.

[Cliff C. Groen]

Thank you, Ms. MacDonald.

I would like to highlight a few important points. First of all, in terms of the payment of EI benefits, the results since the beginning of the pandemic have never been better than they are today. We have been able to pay benefits within our service standard 88% of the time, whereas prior to the pandemic it was closer to 80%.

We know that some people are waiting, but the vast majority of applications are being processed in a very short time frame. In terms of the number of applications received and processed, as of today we have received approximately 3.1 million EI claims, and we have already processed 2.9 million. Currently, 200,000 applications are being processed, including those we received last week.

We will do everything we can to resolve existing problems.

[Soraya Martinez Ferrada, Liberal, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Chair, again, there are two figures out there, and I am trying—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Madame Martinez Ferrada—

[Soraya Martinez Ferrada, Liberal, Hochelaga, QC]

Is it okay? May I continue?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Yes, but we're coming to the end. You have five seconds, Madame Martinez Ferrada.