Evidence of meeting #55 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was passport.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Rosemarie Falk Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK
Wonderful.
In your mandate letter, you were tasked with implementing “modern, resilient, secure and reliable services” for Canadians and ensuring those services and benefits “reach all Canadians regardless of where they live.”
What is specifically being done within Service Canada to better serve rural Canadians?
Liberal
Karina Gould Liberal Burlington, ON
Thank you for the question. It's an important one.
I've had the opportunity, in the past year, to visit over 30 different Service Canada sites across this country. One thing that became very clear during the passport crisis was that, particularly for rural Canadians, doing a mail-in application was often the only opportunity, unless they travelled several hours to get to a passport office.
One thing we did was open passport services in 13 additional offices across the country. We're on track to open passport services in an additional 25 across the country, in order to make that more accessible for Canadians.
Conservative
Rosemarie Falk Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK
I represent a rural riding in Saskatchewan, as I'm sure you know. My office is receiving an increasing number of phone calls with respect to the limited services that are available to them through Service Canada. I've had complaints that there is only a single person working at our local office and that walk-ins, who have driven very long distances to get there, are being turned away because of that limitation.
I've also had a complaint from a constituent who got turned away from receiving service for not being masked—today—despite having a medical exemption.
When can Canadians living in rural Canada expect to see the service delivery standard of Service Canada, if not improve, at least return to the prepandemic service standard?
Liberal
Karina Gould Liberal Burlington, ON
Thank you, Mrs. Falk.
I'm sorry to hear about those instances. I'll certainly follow up with the regional ADM responsible to make sure we can address those challenges, because no matter where Canadians are across this country, they should be able to get good accessible services. It's something that's really important for me but also for Service Canada in general, so I'll be happy to follow up on those instances.
Conservative
Rosemarie Falk Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK
With that, why is a mask mandate appropriate for Service Canada but not necessary in other federal government settings?
Liberal
Karina Gould Liberal Burlington, ON
Service Canada follows the public health advice of the Public Health Agency of Canada. My understanding is that masks are now encouraged but are not required, so we will follow up with that specific Service Canada as needed.
Conservative
Conservative
Liberal
Karina Gould Liberal Burlington, ON
I will have to defer to Cliff on that for the specific date, but that has been a very recent change.
Jean-François Tremblay Deputy Minister, Department of Employment and Social Development
It was announced by the Treasury Board on Friday.
Conservative
Deputy Minister, Department of Employment and Social Development
We need to discuss it with each of the health and security groups for the implementation, but that should be in the coming days and weeks.
Conservative
Rosemarie Falk Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK
Have all the staff who are in a customer-facing role returned to work?
Conservative
Rosemarie Falk Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK
When will walk-in services resume in rural Canada?
Liberal
Karina Gould Liberal Burlington, ON
There should be walk-in services everywhere across the country, and that would have been the case for over a year.
Conservative
Rosemarie Falk Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK
That might not be happening in every Service Canada, since those are some of the complaints we are getting. Like I said, there are constituents who have to drive long distances and then are being turned away.
I just want to quickly touch on your passport comments. My office assisted constituents with their passport applications during your government's backlog, and it was very clear to me, actually, that rural Canadians were given very little or no consideration in the solutions implemented to speed it up. Constituents were expected to drive long hours, pick up their passports—in Saskatoon, in our case—and often given a very narrow timeline to pick this up before they were set to travel. There was no consideration for the added cost of the travel or for some of the unfeasibility of that expectation, whether that be access to transportation, time off work or the distance between Saskatoon and their travel departure point.
When considering solutions to the record passport backlogs in your department, did you apply a rural lens to this program?
Liberal
Karina Gould Liberal Burlington, ON
Mrs. Falk, I think that's one of the key lessons learned, actually, out of this crisis—
Conservative
Rosemarie Falk Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK
It seems to be consistent with your government. You don't seem to put a rural lens on anything.
Liberal
Karina Gould Liberal Burlington, ON
That's why we opened passport services in an additional 13 locations across the country, and we're going to be opening the services in another 25 locations over the course of the next year to make sure those services are available closer to where people live, including for rural Canadians. That's been something I have asked the department—
Conservative
Rosemarie Falk Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK
Canada is a very big country and there are a lot of rural aspects to Canada. That doesn't help my constituents, and it also wouldn't help the ridings that are to the north or south of me either.
Liberal
Karina Gould Liberal Burlington, ON
That's exactly why we're providing more services in more locations across the country. One of the things I recognized and feel very strongly about is that we weren't adequately serving rural Canadians.
We're helping to change that. There will be about 38, all told, put in new locations across the country that will help serve Canadians who live in more rural areas. I really appreciate your raising that, because I think it's a really important point.
