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?