Public Accounts Committee on May 30th, 2019

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Davidson.

I think what Mr. Davidson was driving at was that part of the technology at the museum was a data issue, the data of the conservation, if I understood the question correctly. Now you're responsible for the systems here and all the data and Phoenix. Just so we have confidence that lessons are learned, that in moving forward we're going to be able to go.... This committee, that's what we do. We try to make sure that we can have confidence in the public service and that they have the right people in the right places to deliver systems.

Our time is actually up on this, but we'll go to Mr. Glover and then we'll be coming back to Ms. Yip.

Go ahead, Mr. Glover.

[Paul Glover]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

With respect to the requirement for independent third party review on this project, the committee can have confidence that it was done. We did receive it and we did act on it. That was what changed from trying to do all 221 at once to scale: Start with those that need it the most, the most complex, and learn the lessons.

We did follow the recommendation and it did influence how we have behaved and it has improved our execution.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

I think all of us rural ones, and probably urban ones as well, anyone that has public servants and knows the Phoenix system, when we hear that there are 300 and some call centres, or 200, whatever the numbers are, and only eight out of all of them got the.... There are some similarities between that and Phoenix.

Ms. Yip.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

My question is directed to Ms. MacDonald.

It's good to see that the email responses have dropped from 31 days to five days. It is wonderful to see some improvement there.

Your call centre is very important to many Canadians inquiring about their immigration cases. I think it's very important to provide callbacks and not have dropped calls and long wait times. There is a new economic permanent resident program in which you are piloting the new callback feature. What is the progress on this?

[Dr. Harpreet Kochhar, Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Department of Citizenship and Immigration]

Thank you. I'll respond to that.

As you mentioned, we have reduced the email response time to five days. Actually, we're working towards bringing it down further to three days. I must say there are other channels that we are also utilizing so that we can get better service quality for our clients. We call them “clients” because these are not necessarily Canadians, but also permanent residents, students, those seeking work permits and others.

In terms of our callback functionality, which is one of a kind, that we have started in the permanent resident economic line, what we did was this. Instead of having people wait online, we have given them the option that we can call them back in approximately the same amount of time as they would have to wait online. If it is 23 or 24 minutes, we call them back precisely in that time. We've also done a quality control survey on that and the quality control tells us 96% of those who received the callback are very satisfied with the quality in terms of reaching back. They have time to have their questions formulated. They do it once. There are no repeat calls from that.

We are following that and expanding that from the permanent resident economic line to also the family class. It is going to move forward and we are hoping that not only does it allow the clients to have a positive client experience, but also that we are able to provide the right kind of tailored information to our clients.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

What is the timeline for expanding the program if this pilot program is successful?

[Dr. Harpreet Kochhar]

As we speak we have rolled out the two parts. As we move forward, this pilot is going to expand and keep on, as mentioned earlier by different deputies. We learn the lessons when we roll it out. We make some tweaks and we continue to roll it out.

Over the major lines of business, specifically permanent residency, we should be looking to the end of summer to roll out all of the features for that. Then slowly, we will add the temporary residency, citizenship and others, because we have huge business lines to which we want to give equally important service.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Would that be by the end of this year for everybody else?

[Dr. Harpreet Kochhar]

As we said, we are actually phasing it in, in such a way that we do it right, so right now we have a plan for the permanent resident line of business. We will continue to add. This might take us until the end of the year just to roll it out. Then we will continue to inform the public as we roll out more of those programs.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

You mentioned customized service. Will you be using the online chat services where you do it one on one?

[Dr. Harpreet Kochhar]

This is an important piece that we have already introduced, but it hasn't been taken up by the clients for multiple reasons. To customize somebody's data or update what they are looking for, in terms of information on a PR card or citizenship application and so on, we have a “my account” where they can log in and actually get that information.

When they call us, we try to go into the system, get all the information and also provide them with an indication as to where their application process is. That's more of a customization in terms of giving them actual information. That can be done by online channels too, and it's the choice of the client whether to go online and do that or to call us. Either way, we try to customize it accordingly. To do so, we also do a lot of user acceptability testing. We have a usability space through which we interact with clients and get that information so that we can make our programs more robust.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Ms. Yip, and thank you, sir.

We'll now go back to Mr. Christopherson, please.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

I will take an opportunity. It's the last moment of the last hearing, and I also want to give my appreciation and thanks.

Mr. Chair, Madam Mendès and I.... Mr. Arya, have you been here right from the beginning?

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Yes.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I thought so. Those are the four musketeers.

When we got here, as you'll recall, absolutely nobody had any experience doing public accounts except lonely me, and one of the biggest things about this committee, Chair...and I want to speak to you directly and include Madam Mendès as the lead for the government. The toughest thing to accept in this committee is that we have to completely change what we normally do when we walk through that door. This is a different universe. We're not sitting here as Liberals, Conservatives and New Democrats. We're sitting here as parliamentarians providing oversight, regardless of the party that's in power, and it's a non-partisan effort. That's easy to say and really hard to do.

Chair, I can't thank you enough for the leadership. I've been in your role and I did the same job for four years. It's not an easy job. I had the advantage of already having been on the committee for at least a decade. You came in cold and you've done an outstanding job. I've had a chance to travel with you and Madam Mendès internationally. We've all learned and brought back best practices from around the world, and I just want to say what an honour it has been to serve with all of you, Mr. Arya and everyone here now, but from the beginning, the four of us. This has been the most productive public accounts committee I've had the honour of sitting on, and I thank you all for that.

I have one question for the secretariat.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Christopherson, as long as you keep talking like that I won't cut you off.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

That's good. I'll just weave in my message and keep saying how wonderful you are, because you understand how bad it is that the government's not giving the Auditor General enough money to do his job. That's why I'm so pleased to see.... No, I won't do that.

I thank you, Chair.

Secretary, what troubled me, on page 16, 1.62 stood out. “We found that the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat developed a government-wide service strategy in 2017: the Government of Canada Clients First Service Strategy.” That sounds great. “The strategy prioritized providing services online but did not include call centres or mention the government-wide modernization of call centres, despite the fact that they continue to be an important way for clients to get information.”

That number is 25%, a quarter of all Canadians use that. How on earth did you get to the point where you were planning contact for services for Canadians, and never gave a thought to the phone? Twenty-five per cent of Canadians.... Given the fact that Michael Ferguson's mantra was, again, “Do service well”, don't measure how well you move paper or a message from one desk to another. Measure the outcome for citizens and how they are, or are not, receiving the services they're entitled to.

How could something this obvious—a quarter of all Canadians—be overlooked in this grand strategy?

[Alex Benay]

When the service strategy was issued in 2017, it was supposed to be channel agnostic. Since then we looked at the recommendations from the Auditor General and will integrate phones into the next series and issues of our June release for the digital policy and all the policy instruments that will come with it, and we will become very specific on various service channels.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I hear that, but my question was, how did it happen?

[Alex Benay]

The thinking at the time was that an agnostic service strategy was a better approach.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

What do you mean by agnostic service strategy?

[Alex Benay]

Not necessarily targeting one particular service channel. It could be mail. It could be in person. It could be digital. The thinking at the time was that an agnostic approach was good. At this point we've seen all the recommendations from the OAG and we'll move to make every service channel clear.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

People are paid good money to be planners. The whole idea is that they're supposed to think these things through. I understand if it was a small percentage, but a quarter of all Canadians? That's really disheartening. It's further disheartening that you don't seem to be able to acknowledge when anything is wrong. All you want to do is talk about how wonderful things are. I've told deputies before, don't come in here and be defensive. Do what the Auditor General did and approach the criticism that way. If it's wrong, say so, admit it, acknowledge you failed, and then say what you're going to do about it.

Don't spin. That's our job.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!