Public Accounts committee  It has not to my knowledge, but I would have to take it away, just as the deputy suggested, simply because the application of the program may or may not apply to procurement, so I don't know. I'm sorry.

Human Resources committee  Thank you.

Human Resources committee  I can start, and then perhaps Michael can come in. l would say, first, that the department responded extraordinarily quickly. We had a few hundred people who could work remotely in the first week of the pandemic. Within about six weeks, we had 28,000 online, working from home. I

Human Resources committee  Part of the modernization program is the response to the change in business continuity issues. I would say that part of what we are doing today, obviously, is imagining a different future with better systems and newer systems. Last year when we were dealing with CERB and the req

Human Resources committee  Yes, it would.

Human Resources committee  It will be on a benefit-by-benefit basis. Part of the reason for this is that other countries have tried different methods such as postal codes, geographic areas or groups of people. In our case, EI in particular is made up of seven core benefits, and we have to go one benefit at

Human Resources committee  That's a more complicated question. Obviously, more funding has added capacity, and it has helped us in being able to deal with some of the surge issues, but there's no question that these are historic levels of claims and recipients. I think we should expect it to be many months

Human Resources committee  The technology itself has been updated over the last 50 years quite a number of times. I would say that if you were an archaeologist, you would see that every 10 years or so a new investment has been made, but it has made it so complex and difficult that now we're at a point wher

Human Resources committee  I was going to start by asking if Mike wanted to contribute. Mike has been a long-time manager of capacity in the call centres, so he would know a lot. The government did make significant investments in the technology as well as the workloads and supports to improve that situati

Human Resources committee  It is.

Human Resources committee  No. Part of my presentation was to explain where we are on the modernization program. It has proceeded. Of course, we had to divert 25% of our resources to deal with the emerging emergencies, but we were able to deploy a new system even if temporarily. It dealt with two new benef

Human Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Long. I'll pass the question over to our policy colleague as well.

Human Resources committee  I'll defer the question to Andrew Brown, if that's possible. He is our lead in policy.

Human Resources committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. The Government of Canada's legacy systems that support the delivery of our key income support programs are among the oldest IT systems in Canada still in use today. The EI system is nearly 50 years old. The CPP one is 20, and the OAS system is ne