Human Resources Committee on Feb. 10th, 2023

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

Thank you, Minister.

I know there's a lot of anxiety in the community. A lot of organizations have really built capacity. They had to build capacity because the need is so high in the community.

I want to just put in your ear that we are looking for supports for women's groups that often have children involved. It's getting very difficult right now with the price of food.

That is the other thing I want to talk to you about right now. It's the school food program and the impact on children right now of inflation and the cost of food. In that regard, I know there are conversations in the agriculture committee and with the Minister of Agriculture around food security, but there are more conversations rising right now. I know you've met with a number of groups around food security and food banks.

I want to understand how that could intersect with your ministry and how those conversations are going. What I'm hearing from the ground is that they want this intersection between agriculture and your ministry, Minister.

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

Certainly part of my mandate is poverty reduction. With regard to school food as well, it's making sure that we do have a national school food policy in place. As you noted, I've met with a number of groups right across this country that are interested in both of those things.

In fact, I'm not sure if it's happened yet, but I have a poverty reduction council and Minister Bibeau has a food policy council. We've actually put the chairs in touch to have a joint meeting to talk about the intersection between poverty and food security. If they haven't already, they will be meeting to discuss this to provide some advice and guidance to both of us as ministers.

Of course, Minister Bibeau and I are jointly tasked with developing the national school food policy, which is something we've been consulting and engaging on.

I think what's really important is recognizing the links between food insecurity and poverty, recognizing where they are different, and making sure that we are developing policies and programs that address people who are living in poverty and people who are food insecure. I think this joint meeting in this new relationship between these two councils is going to really help us have a better understanding and a better approach when it comes to addressing food insecurity and poverty in Canada.

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

Thank you, minister.

In regard to that—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Madam Zarrillo, you're way over time.

I would just caution members of the committee that the study reference is service standards for passport renewal. We should endeavour to stay close to the topic area.

Thank you.

We'll go to Mr. Duncan for five minutes, please.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Minister, thank you for being here this morning.

I am going to take my five minutes to summarize a lot of frustration that millions of Canadians have had when it comes to the performance of Passport Canada and yourself over the past several months.

I had to chuckle, though. I'm not a regular member of the committee, but I did notice in the introduction for our notes here that you were asked to appear at the committee to answer for this before December 14, 2022. I said to my staff in preparation this week that you couldn't even meet the customer service standard of the committee about the customer service failures you had the last several months with Canadians. That is kind of the height of irony, if you will.

I think your appearance here this week is timely. You might say that I'm a bit frustrated or angry at what's happened here with the customer service to Canadians.

This week the Parliamentary Budget Officer gave quite a scathing review, in contrast to the rosy picture you were trying to paint here this morning of how things are well. He appeared at a Senate committee and had quite a few things to say about your leadership and the department that you're responsible for. He said, “I think if you ask anybody who asked recently for a passport, employment insurance, old age security, and the list goes on, they are probably very well aware that the level of service Canadians are getting is not what one could expect from a world-class public service.”

He said, “Another one is passports, which seem to be better but still not great.” He said that “something is not right”. He frankly called out some of the stats. I think “virtually eliminated” would be a reference to this.

He said, “I'd be curious to see in the next departmental results report what Passport Canada will claim are their achievements the next time we see a departmental results report. I wouldn't be surprised if they claim some sort of success, despite the disaster we've seen in the last couple of months. I think there is clear room for enhanced leadership to improve service delivery for Canadians.”

That wasn't months ago when we were in the chaos. This was actually this week, and it was about where we currently stand.

Minister, is the independent PBO wrong or are you?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

Hi, Mr. Duncan. It's nice to see you. Thanks for joining the committee today.

To be clear, regarding your opening comment, I was scheduled to appear on December 14, but the House rose and the committee cancelled the appearance. I was very much looking forward to appearing at that time, but it was decided—because the House rose—that we would push it into the new year. That's not something that was my decision. That was a decision of the committee.

With regard to the passport program, I have been clear from the beginning: What happened in the spring was unacceptable, and Canada should never be in that position. Canadians should never be put in that position.

I want to clarify, though. For the in-person service, obviously, there were long lineups. The experience of Canadians getting a passport was not appropriate and should not have happened. We have now changed how that experience takes place at Service Canada centres and passport offices.

For the in-person 10-day service, service standards were met the entire time. If someone went to a passport office, they got their passport within the 10-day standard 93% or 94% of the time. The challenge was in the mail system. That's where we saw huge delays and that's where we saw the backlog.

I also want to comment—

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

The point is that there were millions of Canadians who attempted to go and stand in line, but after eight, 10 or 12 hours, they walked away and couldn't submit their application. The 10-day time frame was met for those who were lucky—those who waited with lawn chairs and everything like that for days on end or overnight, or who showed up at two o'clock in the morning. We're not counting the millions of people who just walked away in frustration and couldn't get it in a timely manner.

In the interest of time, if things are so rosy, in terms of the workforce and increased number of staff.... In the Library of Parliament report, I noticed the stats on workforce capacity. In November, you stopped publishing those online and giving regular updates. If things are good, getting better and now fine, why did you stop publishing them?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

We continue to update the passport information online. We can send you the link and you can check it, because we think it is something that's very important.

I want to say that there were a lot of lessons learned, obviously, from this situation. After we saw those reports—particularly out of Montreal, which was the apex of the crisis in the week leading up to the Saint-Jean-Baptiste holiday in Quebec—we very quickly instituted new measures to make sure everyone who arrived at a passport office was seen by a manager, assessed, given an appointment and assured they would get a passport.

Was it pretty? No, it was very messy, absolutely.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

I would argue, in my remaining time.... We're running the clock out here.

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

The fact is that we changed it. The situation is very different now.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

If I could have some equal time to respond, I'll say the system was very broken. There were many people turned away who couldn't get that appointment because they had left in frustration.

Again, that's a deceptive description about how we do that, and it speaks volumes. This never should have happened in the first place, Minister. You should have known this was coming and—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Duncan. Your time has gone by.

I want to clarify that the minister is correct: This committee sets its own agenda, and not the minister. The committee chose its schedule and calendar.

Mr. Coteau, go ahead for five minutes, please.

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you so much, Minister, for being here today and joining us.

There's no question there was a lot of frustration and things were.... The system was not responding to the needs and what constituents and Canadians across the country were expecting.

I want to give you the opportunity, because there have been a lot of questions that haven't painted the full picture of what went wrong. Can you take a few minutes to explain what went wrong in the system so that Canadians can understand with a bit more detail?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

First of all, the big challenge was the very quick change from travel restrictions to lifting travel restrictions. Understandably, that meant thousands of Canadians wanted to travel. They had done the right things for two years. They had stayed home. They had made sure they were protecting themselves and protecting their loved ones.

When the travel restrictions were lifted, there was a clear desire to get out and see the world after that difficult time. That meant that we went from getting about 120,000 applications a month in the year prior to getting over 250,000 as of March 2022. That number was sustained over that period of time. Hindsight is obviously 20/20. Had we known three or six months in advance when travel restrictions would be lifted, absolutely, yes, we would have been able to hire those additional 1,200 people.

We knew there was going to be an increase in travel. If we take ourselves back to February 2022, the vast majority of the country was in lockdown. There was the omicron outbreak. The country wasn't thinking about travelling. When those restrictions were lifted, people wanted to get out, so we did start hiring folks in January. At that time, it would take about three months to train a passport officer, so we only started to see the benefit of those trained passport officers later in the spring. It was insufficient for the volume we received. Passport applications are very integrity-intensive in the sense that we have to make sure they are connected to the right people.

There were two other things that happened that were factors that led to the situation we saw in Canada in the spring.

First, we had about 80% of applications come in by mail, as opposed to in-person passport applications. That's the reverse of the prepandemic norm, when it was about 80% in person and 20% by mail. We're close to that ratio now. Processing by mail is a lot less efficient, because about 25% of applications are incomplete, and having to call someone to verify information, etc., takes additional time.

There are two other points to that. One, we saw a huge increase in applications for children's passports. About 50% were applications for children, and those are more integrity-intensive.

The other thing was that about 80%-85% of the applications were for new passports, for first-time passport holders, as opposed to renewals. Renewals are much simpler. We have information in the system. It's a quicker process to go through. When you have to deal with new passports, it takes a lot more time to establish the identity. Of course, we just didn't have the staff to respond, particularly to the mail-in system.

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

It sounds like there were so many challenges all coming in at once and creating this big challenge within the system. I know there were some measures put in place by your officials in your department. What were some of those big measures that were put in place? Will we see some of those innovative measures remain in place as we go forward?

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

Of course.

First of all, the system as it was moving for two years was at a low volume. When we saw this big increase, it did overwhelm the capacity at the time. There were a number of things senior leadership at Service Canada did to rectify the situation, but by that time a backlog had already accumulated.

The first thing was to hire additional resources so that we could process the applications that were in the system. As I mentioned, the—

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

Mr. Chair, I have a point of order. There is no interpretation.

Can you suspend the meeting until this is resolved please?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Chabot.

We will suspend for a couple of minutes while we check out the sound quality.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

I call the meeting back to order. We are resuming the meeting.

The minister has indicated that she's prepared to add additional time to her scheduled meeting next week.

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

Mr. Chair, if I understand correctly, the minister has just said she would be available for another 10 minutes when she is here next week so I can finish the block.

I am agreeable to that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Madame Chabot.

Go ahead, Ms. Gray.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

For clarification, it would be more like 15 minutes because of the finishing of the current line of questioning and then two more rounds of questioning, so—

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

Mr. Chair, I cannot hear the interpretation of what Ms. Gray is saying.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

There's no interpretation again.

My question is this: Is the minister going to choose to be here in person next week, or will she also be virtual next week? That's for clarification.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Madam Minister, can you clarify?