Good morning, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before the committee today.
At the outset, I will say that we recognize the difficulties that any delay in the payment of benefits can cause to claimants and their families. This has been a difficult time, as the COVID‑19 pandemic continues to have an impact on our communities, including economic impacts and job losses. Many Canadians relay on employment insurance to help get through these times, and time can be of the essence for them.
Despite an increase in EI claims over the pandemic, Service Canada processes the vast majority of claims efficiently and within the service standard. In the past year, Service Canada has exceeded the 80% service delivery target, with a rate of 88% processed within four weeks. The vast majority of the remaining 12% of files are completed within the following two weeks. Unfortunately, sometimes complex claims take more than six weeks.
This is typically Service Canada's busiest time of the year, due to the winter peak of EI claims. That, and an unfortunate recent surge in EI claims due to omicron, has caused some delays in the processing of EI applications. In fact, for the first four weeks of this year, EI claims were 35% higher than forecast. While the height of the peak period is starting to decline, some service delivery delays are expected to continue throughout the month of February.
To deal with the unprecedented volume of EI applications since the beginning of the pandemic, the government has invested an additional $825 million to increase Service Canada's capacity. These investments have made a tremendous difference. Since September 2020, Service Canada has paid over 4.4 million beneficiaries a total of $56 billion in EI benefits. Despite these record volumes, 88% of applicants have been paid within the four-week, or 28-day, service standard.
Furthermore, the capacity of the EI call centre has nearly tripled, from approximately 1,100 officers prior to the pandemic to nearly 3,000 officers by the end of March 2021. Our EI call centre officers are on track to answer more than seven million calls by March 31, 2022. Despite this high volume, there have been peaks where clients have experienced longer wait times. However, from April 1, 2021 to January 2022, the average wait time was 18.6 minutes.
That said, Mr. Chair, we are acutely aware that delays in processing applications can cause hardship to claimants and their families. We are prioritizing cases of urgent need, especially situations where claimants have no income. No claimant will lose benefits because of a processing delay.
We have reviewed and we will continue to actively review our internal workforce strategies to help us better meet the challenges of the influx of claims due to the pandemic, including both mobilizing thousands of staff across business lines to help with the delivery of EI and hiring new staff throughout this period. We are also pursuing additional ways to streamline claims processing. We have online resources to guide claimants through the process, and Service Canada has proactively reached out to the employer community to reinforce the importance of issuing records of employment in a timely manner.
Service Canada takes the integrity of its programs seriously, but the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us that in a time of crisis, there is an increased risk of fraud. From the outset of the pandemic, Service Canada has been actively detecting and preventing fraud in its programs. This week, we are finalizing our rollout of enhanced resources in our call centre to help clients whose legitimate claims were delayed or interrupted because of identity theft.
We are also implementing measures to validate the identity of clients more quickly and get benefits to them sooner. To combat the fraudsters who cause financial and emotional harm to innocent Canadians, we are constantly enhancing and prioritizing the security of our benefit programs. In 2020, the government announced it would spend $68.1 million over four years on departmental initiatives to protect the integrity of benefit programs. Further, we have more than 1,200 investigators in all regions across Canada dedicated to preventing, detecting and addressing fraud, error and abuse in the EI program. We are also significantly increasing the number of investigators dedicated to quickly resolving these cases.
In conclusion, Service Canada will continue to work hard every day to get Canadians their benefits in a timely manner.
I will be happy to answer any questions. Thank you.