Thank you for what you said.
I should have said from the get-go that I want to thank all the civil service people who work at the agency, particularly those in Shawinigan, as you would expect. That is where my heart is. I want to say thank you to them. I know many of them, and as you said, they're good people. They're trying to do their best with an outdated system.
To go back to what Mr. Deltell was asking, if I were to zero in, I would say it's the use of technology, because this is about improving services. I spent half a day side by side with an agent. Obviously, I could not answer the calls myself, but I could listen to the calls. When I realized it may take half an hour to identify a person, I started to understand why we have so many delays. It's because of some of the technology. I witnessed it. I was next to them. When you call a bank, there are other ways for you to be identified so that when you get to a human, they can deal with complex situations.
I'll give you an example. There were 300,000 phone calls from people who were calling the agency because they lost their password. They were locked out. Just think about that—300,000 people. We have dedicated professionals serving Canadians. You and I would agree—and I think members of the committee would too, since I see them nodding and smiling—that there's a better way to do that. When you lose your password to access your bank account, most people just go online, and the bank texts them a number or they email a new one, and then they have access again. That would allow professionals to be dedicated to serving Canadians better.
What I saw was accelerating technology. As you know, we are moving from the IBM contract service, which was the legacy system, to a Bell Canada service. We'll have a best-in-class call centre with AI-enabled functions to help our people do the best they can.
What I witnessed is that you can ask these people to handle calls in less time, but it really depends on the system, the complexity and the nature of the question. That's why I said that you have to approach it with humility. That's why I hope that members of the committee will go to one of these call centres to see this for themselves.
You also have to accept that the agency has been delivering a number of benefits. Some are new, like the disability tax credit, for example. It's normal for people to have questions with respect to that and on a number of things that we did during the pandemic.
We've really focused on how we can answer more calls and how we can have self-service options. If you go to the website, you'll see there are more ways for people to deal online with the situations that concern them. We're looking at the root causes and how we can simplify the process.
I must say that Madame Serjak has been great at finding ways to simplify the process. I'll say that to Mr. Stevenson. We consulted a number of people and said, “What is your experience? How can we work with CPAs and accounting firms in the country? What are the pain points? What can we do?” I would say it's kind of a modernization.
We have invested in the agency, and I'm very conscious, as Monsieur Deltell was saying, that the same people who write to him would stop me on the street to talk to me about that. I'm very conscious of their concerns.
I can tell you that every time someone has stopped me, I've made sure that I call the commissioner. He's on speed-dial. Every time someone stops me in the street to tell me about something that doesn't work with the agency, I call the commissioner, because it's good for him to know. People tend to recognize me and they may know him less, but trust me: You can rest assured that every time someone.... You can see Madame Serjak smiling, because they receive a number of phone calls from me. Every time someone stops me to talk, I refer it back to the agency and say, “What can we do? How can we address the situation?”
I would say to this committee that a lot of the root cause is around technology. I want to thank all the people at the agency, because they have embraced the challenge like never before, but if you want to free up agents and reduce the time to answer calls, you have to leave the kinds of services that used to be provided by an agent to technology. There's My Account, for example, where people can manage their payments. A lot of those types of things are being done online, and the numbers speak for themselves.
As I said, it's a work in progress. I'm not here to say to Canadians that everything has been done, but I can tell you that the person who was next to me and all the 50,000-plus agents we have at the agency are really doing their best to serve Canadians.
