Mr. Speaker, allow me to inform the member for Acadie—Bathurst that it is not because people live in his region that they have fewer services. The government's goal is always to provide the best possible services to clients at the offices of Human Resources Development Canada wherever they are, whatever their situation or level of literacy. We want to offer a uniform service that meets their expectations and provides them with a choice.
We process roughly 3 million requests a year. On average, we pay out $13 billion in benefits a year.
To meet these needs for services, we rely on a network of more than 8,000 employees, 320 human resources centres, four information technology centres, six insurance payment operations centres and 11 employment insurance call centres.
I should add that each year the workload fluctuates—as the member knows—generally in July and November, which has an affect on the speed with which we can process requests. Also, we notice changes in the method of service delivery that our clients want and this choice can have direct repercussions on our other service methods. Our call centres have to respond to a higher volume of requests each week. We have identified these repercussions and implemented plans to manage our clients' requests and follow their progress.
I can assure the House that Human Resources Development Canada is committed to continually improving the quality of services to Canadians. This is why, in order to determine the degree of satisfaction of those who use our main services, surveys were conducted in 2001. The results are as follows: 77% of the respondents were satisfied with the general quality of the service, and close to half were very satisfied; 86% of the clients who visited a Human Resources Development Canada office were satisfied with the quality of the service received in person, and more than half of these people said they were very satisfied; 82% of the clients were satisfied with the service received by telephone; and over 80% of the respondents told us that the explanations provided by the staff were easy to understand, that the information was accurate, that the service was excellent and that the answers were complete.
We know that we can always improve on these results, and this is what we are trying to do.
As regards employment insurance, the modernization initiative will help us improve the technological tools that we already provide to our clients.
These tools are Appliweb, which allows claimants to submit their claims on line, thus accelerating the process, and Teledec, which allows claimants to submit their reports by telephone, instead of by mail. There is also the direct deposit, whereby payments made to claimants are deposited directly in their bank account.
We are working on improvements that will reduce the burden of call centres. For example, our clients will have the option of submitting biweekly reports on line. This will reduce the number of calls received by our offices.
I would like to reiterate to the hon. member for Acadie—Bathurst that service to Canadians is our priority. Throughout the initiative to modernize our service to Canadians, we will continue to improve the way services are provided.