Mr. Speaker, it is no surprise that I once again raise issues around cuts to Service Canada.
When I last raised this issue in the House, the minister's response was that the government was automating service so Canadians could get better service and get it faster. I want to bring to the minister's attention some statistics that point to exactly the opposite.
The government's call centre data shows that in the last five years the number of Canadians able to reach service agents on the phone to discuss their EI claims fell from 58% to 32% and call-back timelines had been increased from two days to five days because staff were so busy, and even those goals are very hard to reach.
Call centre staff were told not to give out the toll-free number for a complaint centre set up to help with overdue claims unless clients specifically asked for it by name. Many people simply do not know about the client satisfaction number.
The so-called modernization is not working for seniors either. In the last week of September alone, half of the people calling about the Canada pension plan or old age security simply got a busy signal.
In last Monday's La Presse, an article talked about the fact that there was 80,000 EI requests that were still facing serious delays. At the end of December, more than 20,000 recent unemployed workers were waiting 40 days to receive their government cheque, while government standards for new employment insurance claims were supposed to be dealt with within 28 days.
The delays are even worse for the unemployed who are requesting adjustments to their employment insurance benefits. In December 22,250 requests had a waiting period of 123 days, while normally this kind of a request took 21 days to be treated.
Another group of unemployed workers who were waiting for an extension on their employment insurance benefits had to wait more than 128 days.
Twelve thousand three hundred and eighteen people who committed an error on their EI request or who were being investigated for other reasons had been waiting 424 days until the end of the investigation.
Another article in La Presse said that 20,000 of the 75,000 new employment insurance claims that were to be processed were not being responded to in the normal time of 28 days. This represented more than a quarter of employment insurance claims.
In case people wonder what the impact of that is, it means that people have a tough time paying their rent, or meeting their mortgage payments, or buying their groceries or paying for their child care. It is not a minor detail that people are waiting excessive periods of time just to collect the money they have actually paid into the fund.
I remind Canadians that employment insurance is a fund that has been paid into by workers and employers. That fund should be available to workers when they lose their employment through no fault of their own in a timely way.
Once again, I have to come back to the government and ask this. What is it going to do about not cutting those services to employment insurance and to Service Canada so workers can access those benefits in a timely manner?
I know many of our offices have been hearing from Canadians from coast to coast to coast about the fact that they simply cannot get through. They cannot access those services. Once again, I call on the government, asking for its plan to help ensure these claims are processed in a timely way.