Human Resources Committee on March 26th, 2026

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

I'm going to have to turn to our officials to speak about the administration of how the staff are applied.

[Cliff Groen, Associate Deputy Minister and Chief Operating Officer for Service Canada, Department of Employment and Social Development]

Someone waiting over an hour would be an extremely rare situation. Year to date, the average wait time for our pensions call centre is under 20 minutes. It does vary from week to week based on call volumes, but lately the average wait time has been between 25 and 35 minutes very consistently.

We are deploying our resources to make sure that we have the appropriate number of resources both answering calls and processing claims to make sure that people can get the pay as quickly as possible. That's why since the end of January.... It had been 85,000 clients who were beyond that first month of entitlement, and now we're down to 63,000, and we're going to continue to decrease.

[Anna Roberts, Conservative, King—Vaughan, ON]

I'm sorry to interrupt; I have very limited time.

The employees of that department are feeling stressed out because of the overtime required for them to work, which is interfering with their family life. How much more of a cost is that going to be, and how are we going to protect our employees so that their mental health is not impacted?

[Cliff Groen]

While we are maximizing the use of overtime and all employees who are supporting the delivery of OAS can work overtime, they are not required to do so. If someone chooses to only work their regular full-time hours, there is no obligation for them to work beyond the hours they're able to.

[Anna Roberts, Conservative, King—Vaughan, ON]

What do you anticipate the cost of overtime will be upon completion of this program? I'm assuming the $6.6 billion does not incorporate the overtime that will be expected to be paid. What do we anticipate? How many more billions of dollars are we going to expect the taxpayers to pay because of overtime?

[Cliff Groen]

The $6.6 billion reference is related to the total projected estimate for the benefits delivery modernization program and is for the overall project, as the minister highlighted, to deliver all those—

[Anna Roberts, Conservative, King—Vaughan, ON]

It won't exceed $6.6 billion until 2030, which I believe is the completion date. We're going to stick to $6.6 billion, and no more, until 2030.

[Cliff Groen]

Yes, the current estimate—and it is a rough, order-of-magnitude estimate—is up to $6.6 billion for delivering old age security—

[Anna Roberts, Conservative, King—Vaughan, ON]

I'm sorry to interrupt, but that's an estimate.

If we continue to have these backlogs, we're going to continue to ask our team to help us out and correct these issues so seniors don't have to wait. How much more are we anticipating?

[Cliff Groen]

To deliver the old age security program, we came in 6% under the budget that had been forecasted. Therefore, we are confident that we will continue to remain under budget overall for the delivery. The delivery of benefits and the overtime—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Roberts.

Ms. Koutrakis, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Annie Koutrakis, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank the minister and all the witnesses for being with us this morning.

My first question is for Minister Hajdu.

We've heard a lot of talk about seniors not receiving their OAS on time. We've heard that it's oftentimes as a result of information that is not readily available or because there are errors.

I want to give you the opportunity to inform us here and all Canadians listening this morning of how the department is supporting seniors to complete applications accurately and resolve errors quickly during this transition period.

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

The first thing I'll point out is that there are far fewer errors when people apply online, so we've been concurrently working to encourage new applicants to apply online. That way they're automatically entered into the system, their data is clean, for lack of a better word, and they have all the information necessary for the claim to immediately be processed automatically. However, as I said, it is largely with paper applications that each applicant who's missing information or has information gaps in, for example, residency or other information can receive support through ESDC to ensure they can provide that information as quickly as possible.

This presents a delay for individuals in some cases because the information they're looking for is difficult to access. Some of the descriptions I've heard from the department are that someone wants to demonstrate a period of residency in Canada, but they don't have any mail, they don't have any documents or they don't have anything to demonstrate that they resided in Canada for the missing period or gap. The department staff will work with that individual to determine what other alternative documents could be sufficient to demonstrate that gap.

Don't forget that if you start your OAS and have missing periods of time that you can't prove, it's going to reduce and drive down your monthly benefit forever. The department wants to make sure that OAS recipients can get their full allotment and their full entitlement based on their circumstance. That is a large portion of the cases that are on the waiting list.

[Annie Koutrakis, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

I also want to speak a bit about the performance of the new system. I'm wondering if you can speak to the results testing to date, what that indicates and how the system is performing.

[Patty Hajdu, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

The biggest result I would point to is that the migration of the legacy clients, for lack of a better word, was so successful that we saw 99% accuracy in the migration. That's quite extraordinary. We had a very smooth transition.

People who were already receiving their benefits did not see a delay. They have not seen any overpayments. They have not seen any underpayments. They have seen the stable delivery of their benefits as if nothing had changed in their lives, which is exactly what you want to see when you do a big transfer of data like that.

Obviously, as I said, new applicants are where we're seeing some of those challenges, and again, it's related to very specific situations.

[Annie Koutrakis, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Thank you.

How much time do I have?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

You have two and a half minutes.

[Annie Koutrakis, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Minister Lightbound, this morning we've heard things about the cost of the system. I'd like to give you an opportunity to clarify this for us. What is the total projected cost for the contract for the system at this point in time? What are the primary deliverables?

[Joël Lightbound, Liberal, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Thank you very much, Ms. Koutrakis.

As Mr. Groen said, the cost for old age security, the topic of today's meeting, is 6% less than the estimated budget. It's $633 million to serve 7.7 million Canadians, as Minister Hajdu said. The transition was largely seamless. Yes, some payments were delayed, as Minister Hajdu said. We're working on that and we've cleared a significant number of cases.

Here's a more specific example. In Quebec, over 1.8 million Quebeckers receive old age security. At this point in time, the latest data I have indicate that fewer than 10,000 Quebeckers are still having problems, which are being resolved. That number is dropping week by week, month by month. The system is working, for the most part. It absolutely had to be implemented in a secure and stable manner, and that's what we're seeing.

[Annie Koutrakis, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

What reporting mechanisms are in place to ensure transparency for the public?

[Joël Lightbound, Liberal, Louis-Hébert, QC]

There are several. Of course, for a program of this magnitude, Treasury Board oversight is critical at every step of the process. In this case, my department also helped ensure that all procurement was done competitively. I would ask Ms. Paquette or Ms. Reza to speak to that in more detail.

For the Cúram software alone, that was a $120‑million contract with IBM. To implement the system, we have four suppliers so we're not depending on a single supplier. In each case, the procurement process was competitive.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you.

Ms. Larouche, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Minister Lightbound, ordinary people are now paying the price for Cúram screw-ups. More than 85,000 people have been affected. These are seniors who haven't received their benefits in months. They don't know what's going on, and they can't meet their basic needs.

On the other hand, during technical briefings, we were told that the cost overrun was acceptable even though it ballooned from $1.75 billion to more than $6 billion.

What do you have to say to the people who are being directly impacted by the system? Do you acknowledge that there were serious problems with the Cúram roll-out?

[Joël Lightbound, Liberal, Louis-Hébert, QC]

I might let Minister Hajdu comment on the system as such later. I think she might have things to add.

What I can tell you is that the Government of Canada considered the cost of not taking action to be unacceptable. In 2010, the Auditor General said that our systems were so old they were jeopardizing thousands of Canadians and Quebeckers who depend on their benefits. The responsible thing to do was modernize the system, which was vulnerable to cyber-attacks and in danger of total collapse. There was no choice but to take action.

Regarding the seniors who have been affected, the system as such is working. Applications submitted on paper take somewhat longer to process. I'll let Minister Hajdu speak to that. You referred to 85,000 people, but we're at 63,000. According to the latest information I've seen, it's about 9,000 seniors in Quebec, whereas 1.8 million seniors are getting their benefits accurately and on time. The archaic and outdated 60-year-old system put those people at risk. Sixty years is 22 years older than your humble servant. It would have been irresponsible to keep that system in place.

As to the cost, it was clear from the start that the 2017 estimates were the start-up costs. We had to assess cybersecurity and data entry needs, among other things. It was clear that it would be more than $1.7 billion. If we compare what we're getting for $6.6 billion to what other countries are doing, that's good value for money. That's very clear.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

I have more questions. Ms. Hajdu, would you like 30 seconds to add to that? Mr. Lightbound wanted you to speak to part of that.