Evidence of meeting #34 for Public Accounts in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was populations.
A video is available from Parliament.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Jean Yip Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
My next question is directed to Ms. MacDonald. It's similar to the question that I just asked Madame Bégin.
Have you had any success in identifying and targeting outreach to people who, as I mentioned, are immigrants whose first language is neither English nor French and who have other barriers such as digital literacy or distrust of government?
5:05 p.m.
Senior Associate Deputy Minister, Employment and Social Development and Chief Operating Officer for Service Canada, Department of Employment and Social Development
Absolutely, for sure. We're actually working very closely with IRCC right now. We're working with them on their newcomer program, as an example, to meet with individuals, newcomers, as soon as they come to Canada, so that we can attach them to things like social insurance numbers, which a newcomer needs to access essentially any services or benefits.
We're doing work with IRCC, but we also use outreach groups. We have hundreds of partners in the community. As an example, we hold super clinics to support, because we don't know where these individuals are. We actually use groups that they gravitate towards as a way to pivot to them, to go to them, versus waiting for them to come to us, in order to help in terms of being able to connect them to services.
We work with provinces and territories as well—to the question earlier—to help them in sharing information and data with respect to newcomers coming to Canada and people who have been in Canada for a while but have never been able to access services.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
That really is all of your time, Ms. Yip. I'm sorry.
Ms. Sinclair-Desgagné, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.
5:10 p.m.
Bloc
Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné Bloc Terrebonne, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My series of questions is for you, Madam Auditor General.
In your report, you state that you found that, overall, the Canada Revenue Agency and Employment and Social Development Canada have not done enough to help hard-to-reach populations. In addition, you say you found that no tangible progress has yet been made in collecting, measuring or analyzing data on benefit take-up.
Also, we know that Canada has set a goal to cut poverty in half by 2030. Do you feel that the government is doing enough in its efforts to reduce poverty?
5:10 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
In our reports, we looked at four benefits designed to reduce poverty.
As I mentioned, the usual process helps reach many people. However, if we truly want to reach those individuals who are harder to contact, we need to tweak the approach or target it so we can overcome the barriers we face.
5:10 p.m.
Bloc
Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné Bloc Terrebonne, QC
Will the government be able to meet its poverty reduction goals by 2030?
5:10 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
That's a big question.
I know that the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development said in one of his reports that the government was on track with poverty reduction. This goal is a good example of an area where we could bring about significant change if we target the barriers preventing us from reaching those who need help.
5:10 p.m.
Bloc
Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné Bloc Terrebonne, QC
You say there hasn't yet been enough tangible progress. When it comes down to it, we may be on the right track, but that doesn't necessarily mean we'll meet our objectives, isn't that right?
5:10 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
It's very hard to answer that. We're not gathering any data to find out if things are changing right now. The other witnesses said it this morning as well: we can list all the initiatives that have been undertaken, but we're unable to clearly demonstrate that the goal is going to be achieved.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
Mr. Desjarlais, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.
5:10 p.m.
NDP
Blake Desjarlais NDP Edmonton Griesbach, AB
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I want to finish up that last portion, related to the barriers at financial institutions, to get the Auditor General's comments on record.
We've heard, of course, from some of the folks at CRA and ESDC. Thank you for that contribution. I think it was a really clear answer for me to know that you must do that work within a financial institution before you access the Canada learning bond, which is evidence as to why there's a significant barrier.
It leads me to think of the people who can't access financial institutions. We saw in Vancouver, just two years ago, a high-profile case in the news of discrimination at financial institutions, bodies outside our regulation. There was a 12-year-old girl with her indigenous grandfather, and she was going to open a bank account for the first time. She is still traumatized today. What happened is that the bank called the cops, and these two people were removed from the financial institution, and that young, 12-year-old girl was arrested for no purpose. That is a reality in Canada today at our financial institutions. When I talk about the need to understand barriers, that's a real thing happening in Canada. They are a real family we know of in Vancouver, and it's a real issue.
When we're looking at these barriers, in particular to the Canada learning bond, is it appropriate to be utilizing oftentimes private sector corporations to do the vetting for us?
5:15 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
I don't believe that the private institutions are doing the vetting for the federal government. They are the gateway to gain access to the benefits. I think that's why we talked about really needing to have an integrated approach to help those who are hard to reach.
Other witnesses have mentioned how complex it is to gain access to any of these benefits. When individuals have to go to many places, institutions they may not trust, that is a barrier, so how are you doing it differently to try to reduce that? It's a big challenge to get this hard-to-reach group.
5:15 p.m.
NDP
Blake Desjarlais NDP Edmonton Griesbach, AB
Thanks so much, Auditor General.
That leads me to a question about the effectiveness of Canadian programs and how we get that support to folks.
How do we get to that point? I see that these barriers are quite significant, but they are also matched with significant investments. Without diving too far into policy, simpler, larger benefits were mentioned by my colleague from the Conservative bench. I really enjoyed that idea, because a guaranteed level of basic income is one of those larger benefits. We can eliminate many of these patchwork programs and institute an income-based program that assists people.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
Thank you very much, Mr. Desjarlais.
Turning now to MP Kram, you have the floor for five minutes.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
Michael Kram Conservative Regina—Wascana, SK
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I would like to continue with the Auditor General for my next round of questions.
Page 4 of the report reads, “We estimated that the department and agency collectively spent more than $18 million in the 2020-21 fiscal year on targeted outreach activities.”
In your opinion, did the taxpayers get good value for their money?
5:15 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
I think our report highlights that the department is unable to tell us if good value for money was achieved. They couldn't demonstrate that their initiatives resulted in an increase in uptake and those hard-to-reach people accessing benefits.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
Michael Kram Conservative Regina—Wascana, SK
That's pretty much what it says on page 11, a bit further on: “The agency and department did not know whether most of their targeted outreach activities had helped to increase benefit take-up rates for hard-to-reach populations.”
Why does there seem to be this lack of measurement or lack of initiative to measure their activities from the beginning of the program?
5:15 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
I think that's a great question to ask the departments you have here.
I think we've heard some reasons, some of the privacy concerns and some of the difficulty of knowing, when it's a third party that is the referral source, whether or not the outcome of a tax return filed and a benefit sent is there.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
Michael Kram Conservative Regina—Wascana, SK
Okay, so maybe I will pose the same question to the representatives from the departments.
Why does there seem to be this lack of measurement from the beginning, and why does it seem to be an afterthought or not done at all?
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
5:15 p.m.
Bob Hamilton
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I think we've talked about some of the challenges there in terms of privacy and confidentiality, where we can target a specific initiative to a particular individual. However, it goes too far, I think, to say that we don't have any sense of the success we're having with these outreach activities.
I will go back to a point that we talked about earlier—trust, which can sometimes take a bit of time to build. As we do outreach into the communities, whether that's through the community volunteer program or our own officers, we can see the tangible benefits of what we're providing to the people.
Can we document that it actually means somebody filed their return and got their benefit? We know that in some cases it does, but we don't have the good aggregate statistics. That's something we're trying to work on. However, it does bump up against privacy concerns, and I think that's just a challenge we are going to have.
I think it goes too far to say that we don't have any idea that these aren't doing good. My prescription would not be to stop doing them because we can't measure them accurately, but to try to find ways to better measure them within the constraints we have.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
To Employment and Social Development, do you have any answer to Mr. Kram's question?
5:15 p.m.
Senior Associate Deputy Minister, Employment and Social Development and Chief Operating Officer for Service Canada, Department of Employment and Social Development
Thanks so much.
I will just build on Bob's response. All of the issues he identified that we struggle with in terms of barriers we have in terms of tracking are true. At the same time, one thing that the Auditor General identified, and that we all agree with, is that we need to work more collectively in terms of tracking the same information, and sharing that information and measuring it the same way. One of the obstacles we have is that we measure and track differently.
Our focus has been on the actual outreach portion of it, to get out there and find those people and figure out how we get in touch with them in non-traditional ways. That has been our focus. This conversation and the audit help us in terms of what that means with respect to actual outcomes.
I agree with Bob. We do have outcomes. We have some very good examples of where we see the impact, whether that's providing virtual services and virtual clinics online or an increase in uptake in the child care benefit. The fact that it can't be exactly attributed to that outreach initiative is something we need to work on. However, overall, we're seeing positive results in terms of reaching those hard-to-reach populations, and we will continue to evolve our methodologies over the course of the coming months.