Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to respond to the member for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles on the subject of employment insurance.
During the economic downturn, our government geared up quickly to meet the increased demand for EI benefits by adding temporary employees.
Although jobs were created, the economic future remains uncertain.
We have been given a clear mandate to eliminate the deficit and return to balanced budgets, with the additional challenge of making our services more effective and efficient, exactly what my constituents in Simcoe—Grey want.
As announced on August 19, 2011, Service Canada will continue to modernize employment insurance by increasing the automation of EI claims from 44% fully or partially automated at the beginning of 2010-11 to 70% fully or partially automated by the end of 2012-13.
With continuous improvements to our business model, such as increased automation, improved e-services, national workload management, and document imaging, Service Canada is positioned to manage its workload in a more cost-efficient way.
Service Canada employees work very hard to ensure that Canadians who rely on employment insurance get the benefits that they deserve.
In 2007 and 2008, we began to consolidate our EI processing sites for greater efficiency. Over the next three years, EI processing will be consolidated into 22 large regional centres and we will ease the transition to a smaller workforce through attrition, reassignment and retraining. Affected employees will be considered for other available positions.
Ultimately, modernizing our services will allow for better, faster and more cost-efficient services for Canadians and it will help us build a better delivery system for employment insurance for today and for generations to come.