Mr. Speaker, I agree with the minister-my mistake, the member-that this situation is totally unacceptable. We have had bad experiences over the past two months with the delivery of certain programs. There have been flaws in the system which I find utterly deplorable.
You will understand that our department serves hundreds of thousands of people. These people are among the most vulnerable in our society. It is totally unacceptable to cause them concern because of this kind of problem.
I can assure my colleague that I did all that could be done, considering the technology involved which makes these things very complex, to try to prevent this type of situation from occurring again in the future. In the meantime, we took immediate action by calling these people to explain to them what the problem was and to assure them that they would receive their cheques as soon as possible.
I sincerely apologize to these people who did not get good service from my department.