Mr. Speaker, I am happy to reply to the hon. member for Nanaimo—Cowichan on the subject of Service Canada's modernization of employment insurance services.
While Canada leads the G8 in job recovery and growth, we still face the reality of a fragile economic time. Despite creating over 610,000 net new jobs, EI claims were higher than expected.
To address this increase in claims, we have added and redeployed over 400 staff resources within Service Canada to assist in processing. We are shifting part-time employees to full-time status to provide additional support. We are also taking steps to reassign staff to assist with claims processing during peak periods.
In time, we are optimistic that we can improve services to Canadians with our 13-year modernization exercise.
We are taking action to ensure those Canadians in need of EI receive the benefits to which they are entitled, and we are doing this through our three year EI modernization initiative.
Automation is speeding up the processing of EI claims. Our goal is to increase the automation level from 44% to 70% over the next three years. We still have work to do, but we are making significant progress.
In the meantime, we have taken measures to assist with current high volumes of EI claims. We are working hard on behalf of Canadians to improve the services we deliver. This is government worker smarter.