Thank you so much, Deputy.
Hello, everyone.
As you know, Service Canada balances the protection of the public fund from fraudsters, while at the same time, we understand the priority of putting real clients into pay as quickly as possible. As our deputy indicated, we are working with a number of clients who have been the victims of fraud as a result of their credentials being either stolen or compromised through the private sector or financial institutions. These are not unusual sorts of circumstances, unfortunately, these days. We have heard from the International Public Sector Fraud Forum that these activities are happening across the country.
In support of those clients who are most in need, the 2,000 that our deputy indicated, we are redirecting our staff to focus on contacting these clients immediately and working through those issues. It really is on a case-by-case basis, but we hope that, in terms of the straightforward cases, we will be able to address them during the conversation of the second-level and third-level assurance questions we will need to have answered appropriately.
Unfortunately, there are more complex cases. There may be cases where the fraudster is trying to represent a legitimate client, and we will have to work through that as well. We are also developing, and will introduce later this week, a dedicated team at the call centre who will be taking on those calls, and we'll move the conversation of verifying identity right at the first point of contact to expedite addressing those concerns.
We are also hiring those additional resources in the Quebec region. They are starting imminently and they will be able to bolster our capacity. Unfortunately, the Quebec region has seen a disproportionately larger number of impacted...cases of fraud associated with compromised and stolen identities, but we have a dedicated action plan that will bring all of these activities to bear quickly and in a timely way to offset those impacts as quickly as possible.