Citizenship and Immigration Committee on Dec. 8th, 2016

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Jenny Kwan]

Thank you for that. I would urge the department to consider actually making available a person who could help people navigate through the application process, in a non-partisan way for all the people who have these challenges. Otherwise, at the end of the day, they do actually fall into our office and then we have to provide that assistance. I'll leave that for now.

The last time the officials were here, I raised the question of the EE, express entry, profile with respect to the glitch that happened with the website on which people update their information. It's just been hanging, and it has not updated. I wonder if you could quickly give me an update on what's happening with respect to that challenge.

[Robert Orr]

Certainly. There were some changes to express entry that were implemented on November 19, and then there were some issues with people being unable to successfully update their profiles. We have made changes, and I think people are now in a position to be able to do it. We've done an awful lot of outreach as well to clients to ensure that no one was disadvantaged through this process. We put Qs and As on our website. We've responded to Twitter posts. We've responded to questions via the call centre. We've also sent out an email to all clients with specific instructions on the situation.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Jenny Kwan]

Thank you very much.

My time is up, and we are going to move to the seven-minute rotation.

Ms. Zahid.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thanks to our officials for coming back to help us start the study on the modernization of client services.

Yesterday, Minister McCallum announced that spousal reunification applications will now be processed in 12 months or less. This is great news, especially for the riding of Scarborough Centre. It will be received very well.

I would like to thank you and your team for your work on this file. I understand that many of the efficiencies gained to make this reduction in processing time possible came from the work of a tiger team of young front-line civil servants who took a critical look at every aspect of the process and made suggestions for modernization.

Will you be applying this tiger team approach to the other lines of business within your ministry?

[Robert Orr]

Madam Vice-Chair, yes, there certainly has been some very positive work done on the spousal project, and it has been done largely through a tiger team. It has also been done through a variety of other inputs into that, including the work that was done with OCAD U, with other people influencing things and so on, but it's been very positive.

In terms of moving forward, yes, we would like to use tiger teams in different ways on different parts of the program. It is resource intensive, so we have to keep that in mind, but on the other hand, the results are very positive as well.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

On family reunification, we have heard previously about processing times for parents and grandparents and for the caregivers program, which are both pretty high, and families are waiting back home to be reunited. Perhaps there could be some sort of study or project undertaken on that also.

[Robert Orr]

On the issue of parents and grandparents, as you know, the intake has been increased and the level space has been increased. Likewise, we have significant level space for live-in caregivers. That is going to be the biggest positive step forward in those two categories.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

In many private sector organizations companies are creating an executive leadership position with responsibility for customer service experience, often titled as chief customer service officer or customer experience officer. This is an executive leader with the specific responsibility and accountability of making sure the experience customers have with the particular organization is as optimal as possible.

At IRCC is there one designated member of the leadership team with specific responsibility for the end user experience, or is the responsibility diffused among the leadership team?

[Robert Orr]

Madam Vice-Chair, indeed all members of the executive team are very conscious that client service is key, but yes, in September 2015 we did appoint one person, one senior executive responsible for client service, Ms. Lattimore.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Madam Vice-Chair, through you to Ms. Lattimore, is it your responsibility to oversee all client services in all categories?

[Michelle Lattimore]

Our role, Madam Vice-Chair, is to oversee the client experience. Often we find it's quite difficult talking about client service because we end up talking about service delivery and not necessarily the experience at the end of the day for the client. Our role is relatively new within the department. It is a year old at this point. We really have spent, as I've described, the last year focusing on trying to unlock new ways of learning from clients directly, insights that will lead us in the right direction as to where we should best make our investments to improve that experience.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you.

IRCC has established service standards for different lines of businesses. What is the consequence, if any, for the management leaders if these standards are not met?

[Robert Orr]

Madam Vice-Chair, we very much monitor the service standards on a regular basis to ensure that the various parts of the network are meeting the requirements.

In terms of overall management of them, we report to Treasury Board annually on how successful we have been in meeting or not meeting the service standards. It's something we certainly take very seriously.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Much of the volume of the constituency cases I have in my office, and I think for most of my colleagues as well, with regard to immigration is simply requests for information. People want to know where they are in the process, at what stage their application is. All they can find online is that the case is in process, and it will continue to say that for months and sometimes over a year. We can get more information when we inquire on their behalf, but sometimes we get the same answer, that it is in process.

Sometimes we are told that security screening is happening or they are waiting for the medical. Could this information not be made available to the applicants online rather than just saying that it's in process, so applicants can know at what stage their application is? For example, in any particular case, if you have five stages, they could know if they have passed the second stage and are on the third.

[Robert Orr]

The department has made considerable efforts to try to get more information online, and to get that same information even for those who've applied on paper, so that if they go online and create an account, they can get information about their application.

What we have to do—and I think that's a fair comment—is give better information online and feed more. We've made significant strides. It's a lot better than it was, but nevertheless, there's a further distance we can go to ensure the information is more meaningful for our clients.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Jenny Kwan]

Thank you.

I'm sorry I misread the clock. I'll add another 11 seconds to your time.

[Salma Zahid, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

With regard to my previous question, sometimes the PR applications are put into a review and don't meet that service standard you have put in of 10 months in cases of citizenship applications. Whenever we inquire, or the people whose applications are in there inquire, we're told only that it is under review. There is no time period given. What about that sort of application?

[Robert Orr]

We can look at it and try to see what we can do on that. Sometimes, it's quite true, we do not know how long it's going to take to complete that application, and that may be part of the situation.

I don't know if any of my colleagues have anything to add on this.

[Paul Armstrong]

Madam Vice-Chair, I would add to Mr. Orr's comments that we certainly monitor the progress of applications. Now, certainly, a case may be furthered for security or for medical review or for the need for more information. Using the global case management system, we're able to view cases and the stages where cases are electronically rather than looking for a paper file. I think that as time passes we will be able to enhance our client service.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Jenny Kwan]

Thank you.

I gave you an extra 20 seconds for cutting you off.

Ms. Rempel.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Going back to my colleague Jacques Gourde's line of questioning, just so you know, for all of us around the table here it is an enormous amount of work in our constituency offices to deal with immigration casework. Again, just to re-emphasize what some of my Liberal colleagues have said, this is a non-partisan thing. We have very small operating budgets, and I also will say that I have a full-time employee in my office who deals just with client service delivery issues.

I'll preface this by saying that the decision made earlier this year to take away MP access from embassies, as well as the ministerial advisory office, was very poor. It was a terrible decision. It really affected service delivery within our office. I'm glad to see that it has been semi-reversed.

I'm not sure what some of my colleagues would say, but certainly for me and my office, one of the biggest complaints we get from people is the reporting of failures in customer service by the call centre in Montreal. I would say that's probably, by an order of magnitude, the number one complaint that I get. People experience very long wait times on the phone, as well as very onerous automated call menus, especially for people whose English or French is their second language. The number one thing I have to respond to in my office is that they don't understand the information that was given to them or that it's confusing, or the charge is that it's unhelpful.

Do you track the call centre usage at all? We are going to write up a report here. Is there anything that you think could be done to overcome this? It's such a burden on our offices right now.

[Robert Orr]

I'll let Ms. Lattimore speak about the call centre in a little more detail, but I think we have made major changes there since August, and they're starting to pay off. They're not for all lines of business. We started off with the family class and the success there is being rolled out to other areas, but a couple of things are happening. One is the change in the attitude, which I suppose is the best way to put it. Giving a bit more scope for our agents to respond to things has, I think, helped our clients dramatically. It's also helped morale within the office itself, and then—

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

What would be.... I'm sorry. Go ahead. I was just going to say in terms of attitude, what are the critical success factors in performance evaluation that you use for a front-line call centre worker in Montreal? What are they tasked with managing? What would their supervisor be looking at in terms of an employment review framework or a performance review framework?

[Robert Orr]

First of all, we're looking at the number of calls they're handling and at how long they're handling them. All case calls are taped so we can do a playback on them. We do quality assurance on all calls that come into the call centre and so on. I think there are very stringent controls on the agents and what's going on there.

Ms. Lattimore can speak to that more, but—

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Would you be willing to table with the committee information on what the key critical success factors or performance review metrics would be for front-line call centre workers in terms of documentation?

To me, it seems a little off that quantity would be what their performance evaluation would be.