HUMA Committee Meeting

37th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION

Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Thursday, February 20, 2003

¹

1530

The Chair (Mrs. Judi Longfield (Whitby—Ajax, Lib.))

Mr. Hy Braiter (Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Service Delivery, Department of Human Resources Development)

¹

1540

¹

1545

The Chair

Mr. Monte Solberg (Medicine Hat, Canadian Alliance)

Mr. Hy Braiter

Mr. Monte Solberg

Mr. Hy Braiter

¹

1550

Mr. Monte Solberg

Mr. Hy Braiter

Mr. Monte Solberg

Mr. Hy Braiter

Mr. Monte Solberg

Ms. Liliane Binette (Director General, Insurances Services, Department of Human Resources Development)

The Chair

Ms. Diane St-Jacques (Shefford, Lib.)

Mr. Charles Nixon (Acting Assistant Deputy Minister, Insurance, Department of Human Resources Development)

¹

1555

Ms. Diane St-Jacques

Mr. Hy Braiter

Ms. Diane St-Jacques

Mr. Hy Braiter

Mr. Doug Matheson (Director General, Service Delivery, Department of Human Resources Development)

º

1600

Ms. Diane St-Jacques

The Chair

Mr. Odina Desrochers (Lotbinière—L'Érable, BQ)

Mr. Hy Braiter

Mr. Odina Desrochers

Mr. Hy Braiter

º

1605

Mr. Odina Desrochers

Mr. Hy Braiter

The Chair

Mr. Gurbax Malhi (Bramalea—Gore—Malton—Springdale, Lib.)

Mr. Charles Nixon

º

1610

Mr. Gurbax Malhi

Ms. Liliane Binette

Mr. Gurbax Malhi

Ms. Liliane Binette

Mr. Gurbax Malhi

Mr. Doug Matheson

º

1615

Mr. Gurbax Malhi

The Chair

Ms. Libby Davies (Vancouver East, NDP)

Mr. Hy Braiter

Ms. Libby Davies

Mr. Hy Braiter

Ms. Libby Davies

Mr. Hy Braiter

º

1620

Ms. Libby Davies

Mr. Hy Braiter

Ms. Libby Davies

Mr. Hy Braiter

The Chair

Ms. Libby Davies

Mr. Hy Braiter

º

1625

Ms. Libby Davies

Mr. Hy Braiter

Ms. Libby Davies

Mr. Doug Matheson

Ms. Libby Davies

The Chair

Mr. John Finlay (Oxford, Lib.)

Mr. Doug Matheson

Mr. John Finlay

Mr. Hy Braiter

º

1630

Mr. John Finlay

Mr. Hy Braiter

Mr. John Finlay

The Chair

Mr. Odina Desrochers

Mr. Doug Matheson

º

1635

Mr. Odina Desrochers

Mr. Doug Matheson

Mr. Odina Desrochers

Mr. Doug Matheson

Mr. Odina Desrochers

The Chair

º

1640

Ms. Libby Davies

Mr. Hy Braiter

Ms. Liliane Binette

Ms. Libby Davies

Ms. Libby Davies

Mr. Hy Braiter

Ms. Libby Davies

Mr. Hy Braiter

Ms. Libby Davies

Mr. Hy Braiter

º

1645

Ms. Libby Davies

Mr. Hy Braiter

Ms. Liliane Binette

Ms. Libby Davies

Mr. Hy Braiter

The Chair

Mr. John Finlay

The Chair

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CANADA

Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities

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NUMBER 014

l

2nd SESSION

l

37th PARLIAMENT

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EVIDENCE

Thursday, February 20, 2003

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

¹  (1530)  

[English]

    The Chair (Mrs. Judi Longfield (Whitby—Ajax, Lib.)): Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I now see a quorum, and I want to thank you all. This is the 14th meeting of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development.

    Today, we have witnesses from the Department of Human Resources Development with us. The topic we're discussing is service delivery.

    Hy, perhaps you could introduce the members of your committee, and then you can start. Thank you.

    Mr. Hy Braiter (Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Service Delivery, Department of Human Resources Development): Thank you.

    I'm Hy Braiter. I'm the senior assistant deputy minister for service delivery in the department. With me are Doug Matheson, the director general of service delivery; Charles Nixon, the acting assistant deputy minister of the insurance program; and Liliane Binette, the director general of insurance services.

[Translation]

    Thank you for providing me with this opportunity to talk to you about HRDC's employment insurance service delivery.

[English]

    Canadians have told us, through surveys and focus groups, that what they want is to be able to get their service through multiple channels. They want to be able to come in on the telephone, in person, through the Internet, or by mail, and they want their service to be seamless. Sometimes they'd like to do business with us on the phone, sometimes they want to come in, and sometimes they even want to do things over the Internet.

    Our goal with our service delivery policy and our service delivery approach is to provide our clients with a choice. We know we have different kinds of clients at different literacy and education levels, and we can't ask them all to go on the Internet or to do self-service. Our objective is to give them the choice and to be there with excellent service, whether it's over the telephone, in person, on the Internet, or through the mail. So we have all those channels available.

    Specifically on our EI program services,

[Translation]

    Let me begin by giving you a brief overview of the EI program's service delivery. We process close to three million initial and renewal claims a year.

[English]

As you probably are aware, we issue approximately $13 billion in part I benefits. On top of that, we do have administrative costs and part II benefits. Our network is quite extensive. We reach into virtually every community across the country. We have 320 human resource centres, 8,000 employees, 4 information technology centres or computer centres out of which all of our cheques are issued—we call them warrants—and we have 11 call centres or telephone centres, through which all the people's calls are funnelled.

    We have a business that goes in peaks and valleys. It's not a steady level of business or workload. We really have two peaks during the year. One peak starts in July, and one peak starts in November and goes through the Christmas period. During those peaks, our workload could be more than double that of the other months. We may get 150,000 claims a month during the regular period, but it will all of a sudden double to 300,000 to 350,000 during the peaks. It's quite a challenge in adjusting our people to the workloads.

    Also, we're getting peaks now with the kinds of channels people are using. It's becoming quite tricky now that we've opened up to people being able to get service through all of these channels, like the telephone, in person, or via the Internet. There's quite an unpredictable movement in terms of how many people take us up on the Internet and how many people are going to prefer to do telephone service. Sometimes, we're really victims of our own success. Right now, we're a bit of a victim on the telephone service side, as some of you know.

    For example, we used to ask claimants to mail in a biweekly claimant report card on which they told us how much they earned, if they found work, if they were on training, if they were sick, and so on. This came in on paper every week. Every week, we would get something like 400,000 claimant reports. We'd have to open the mail, open the envelopes, check what they said, input the data, and all the rest of it. That would delay their payment for two or three or four days after we received it.

    Recently, we allowed them to use a Touch-Tone telephone to automatically answer the questions on their claimant reports. In the last while, we've made some improvements, and it has become such a good feature that, out of 25 million claimant reports a year, 20 million are being done over Touch-Tone telephones. On a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, people key in on their Touch-Tone phones what they've earned in the last two weeks. We can have 300,000 or 400,000 of these coming in on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and that's great. They come in to the telephone centre system. But some people who have some problems answering the questions on the weekend call us first thing Monday. We've therefore created a huge, peak Monday workload. Out of the 20 million that I've mentioned, 19 million don't have any questions, but 1 million want to ask us something on Monday morning on how they did in keying it in.

    We have to adjust to these new technologies and take-up rates. That one is a success story because when they key in their information on Friday or Saturday, it's processed Sunday night. It's there, it's in electronically, and their cheques are mailed Monday. On the other hand, a huge workload that we used to have for people in our computer centres has been added to our telephone centres.

    We monitor these impacts very carefully, and we do have to make adjustments when we get these types of peak-load surprises. Sometimes the surprises are local. If one company in a small community closes up, that's a huge workload that appears and was not predicted. We have to adjust our staff to that special situation.

    We manage based on key performance indicators. I think we're one of the main departments that uses performance indicators, including speed-of-service performance, quality of performance, error rates, and accuracy. We know all that information. We know it by region, we know it by local office, and we know it by telephone centre. We do report it to Parliament through our report on plans and priorities. This is something our staff and management are very keenly aware of, and their evaluations are often based on how well they do on these performance measures, which really are measuring service to clients.

    In addition, we do measure client satisfaction. We have implemented what the Treasury Board has developed as a common measuring tool, as they call it. This is a common methodology for doing surveys on service delivery, and all departments are to use it. We have done this through a professional survey company, an independent third party.

    Using this survey instrument developed by Treasury Board, we have asked clients how satisfied they are with our in-person service and telephone service, by region and by program. All in all, 77% of our surveyed clients said they were either satisfied or very satisfied. In other words, they gave us a 4 out of 5 or a 5 out of 5. Of that 77%, more than half gave us a 5 out of 5.

    For in-person, 86% were either satisfied or very satisfied. For telephone—and this could be a bit of a surprise, because we've had some problems lately—82% said they were satisfied or very satisfied. On the other end of the scale, when we asked who wasn't satisfied, 7% said they were not satisfied. The key reason for why they weren't satisfied was the waiting times. That's not a surprise, but it confirms to us that although they're extremely satisfied when they get our service, they do not like waiting on the telephone or in line when they come in person. Mostly, though, I think it was for the telephone.

    Based on this survey, which was done independently, we're focusing on those who were not satisfied—although from the standpoint of a world class survey, getting 80% to 90% satisfaction is almost unheard of. We are really working hard on the waiting times now. The survey has shown us where our problems are, and we have made a commitment. Treasury Board has asked all departments to do this baseline survey and to improve by 10% over five years. Our focus is going to be on the waiting times while keeping the rest of the quality going.

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[Translation]

    Satisfying as the survey results are, to better these results, we recognize that improvement is required so that we can continue to meet the expectations of Canadians.

[English]

    We have an initiative called “modernization”. It's designed to redo fundamentally how we do business. It's a transformational project led by our associate deputy minister. It is, of course, building on Government On-Line a lot, and on technology quite a bit. For the EI program, for example, we have recently allowed claimants to file their claims over the Internet, from their homes, from libraries, from schools, employers, community access program sites—there are 8,000 Industry Canada CAP sites with public access to the Internet—and from our offices. So if they want, they can now file their claims over the Internet.

    Very soon, we're going to incorporate lots more information and questions—which we call “fact-finding”—so that our agents don't have to go back to ask any more questions. On paper, there's a limit to how many pages you can have in an application. On the Internet, there is no limit to how you can interact, and you can ask them all the questions you need answered in order to process that claim right away.

    We're also going to automate what we call straightforward claims—straight into the Internet, straight into the computer, and straight out with claimants' reports. A lot of claims are straightforward. We know there has been a mass layoff and that they've never claimed before, so let's just get their claims in and try to.... So we're transforming how we do business.

    Another area is these claimants' reports over Touch-Tone phones, as I've mentioned. We're going to give them the choice to also do it over the Internet.

    In terms of direct deposit, it has always been difficult to do direct deposit because our claimants turn over. They lose a job, they find a job. I'm not sure of the percentage, but I think we're getting up there, with 71% now on direct deposit. If their cheque varies from week to week because of earnings and so on, they're going to be able to call us and the computer will automatically tell them why there are deductions.

    As an aside, we answer 60% of our calls automatically by computer. That's for routine calls like where someone's cheque is, how much it's for, or what the deductions are.

    We're also working on allowing employers to file their records of employment with us over the Internet—and we have pilots goings, so it's not just a pipe dream. Most large employers are going to take this up immediately. Many small employers' payrolls are done by payroll companies, and they're also going to be feeding the records of employment in through the Internet. When a claimant comes in to file a claim or does it through the Internet, we're then going to have his record of employment and can move forward. This will cut the paper burden on employers and will speed up claims.

    These are just examples, but we're doing many more things in this modernization initiative. As I said, a lot of the modernization is built on Government On-Line, but we know our clients aren't all going to be online. At the same time, then, we're working on improving the traditional ways for some of our clients, like the telephone, like in-person. We're giving the clients the choice, we're not dropping the other services.

    On call centres, we know we need to make improvements. We've put a lot of work into the call centres. We used to use call centres for enquiries, but now we use them for filing claimants' reports. People can actually file a renewal claim over the telephone. If they've had a claim and have gone back to work but they've still not used all of their benefits, they can just call us and explain why they're unemployed again, and we renew them over the telephone.

    We have old technologies that we found out were popular, like kiosks. We installed those in 1995 or so, and we were quite a hit with our kiosks. What we're finding is that the external kiosks, which are located in pharmacies, shopping centres, and so on, don't have everything that's on the Internet. We've put everything that's on those external kiosks onto the Internet, we've put applications onto the Internet, and we're going to put a lot more there. We would therefore like to phase out these external kiosks while making sure clients can get through the Internet what they get on the external kiosks, either from their homes, from our offices, or from very close by in terms of public access sites.

    We're not just ripping them out. We're consulting with the community and with the MPs. If there's any hesitation, if a community or MP says they don't believe we have good public access to the Internet yet, we're going to keep working until they're satisfied. We've gone back to our managers and have told them the rules of the ball game. They have to get community approval, explain why they're doing it, explain how the service is going to be done, and explain where the closest public access is, like the 8,000 CAP sites or libraries. If the MP and the community leaders are happy, then they can close these kiosks.

    Eventually, we're going to have to close the kiosks. They're not Internet-based. They're old-fashioned technology. They only have our Job Bank, they don't have all of the other job banks from all the employers across the country, like jobsearch.com and all that stuff. If you go on the Internet or to our office, though, you have everything. You're able to write your curriculum vitae. You're able to do all kinds of searches.

    In conclusion, service delivery is our top priority. We're going to continue to work on today's services and fix up where we're going wrong—what our performance measures show us, and what many of you tell us quite quickly if something is going wrong. We're going to work on modernization, and we hope to continue to offer good service to the public.

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[Translation]

    Thank you. My colleagues and I will be pleased to answer any questions you may have.

[English]

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Mr. Solberg, you get the first question.

    Mr. Monte Solberg (Medicine Hat, Canadian Alliance): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I'd like to thank our witnesses for agreeing to come to speak to us today.

    First of all, I have to tell you that mostly I applaud the initiative that you're taking. I think you're going in the right direction. You can do a lot with technology these days, with so many people being computer literate and with more and more becoming so all the time. However, some people still rely and will always rely, I suppose, on hard copies of documents and on actual visits to get some of these things handled. But by and large, I applaud what you're doing. I'm glad to see satisfaction rates are pretty high.

    Having said that, percentages can be deceiving, too. If you have 82% satisfaction on telephone calls to your call centres, for instance, then you probably have many thousands of people who are not satisfied. Would it be correct to say that for some of the ones who aren't satisfied, their cases are more difficult? Are they sometimes interpretations of rules? What is the nature of the concerns that people have or the problems that rise up?

    Mr. Hy Braiter: Those are excellent questions. If 80% are satisfied, 20% aren't necessarily dissatisfied. It was a 1-to-5 scale, so a 3 was like no opinion. For example, on telephones, 82% were satisfied or very satisfied and 5% were unsatisfied. The mathematical difference of 13% was people just putting a 3 down and saying “no comment”, meaning they were neither satisfied nor unsatisfied. In other words, they're neutral.

    Nevertheless, even 5% of 3 million people is a lot of people. If they're not satisfied, that means they're going to call somebody. They're going to try to get through on the phone, and they'll become even more dissatisfied if they can't get through. They're going to call their MPs, they're going to write us letters, and 5% of a lot still turns out to be a lot of letters, so you hear from the 5%. They're the people we have to focus on.

    From what they told us, the majority said they're not satisfied because they didn't get through or they had to wait. Once they got to a person, they were pretty satisfied. Some of them were not satisfied because they may have found contradictions in our written literature, in our information on the Internet, or in what some of our people said. That figure was very minor. Maybe 1% said they found our literature and our pamphlets confusing.

    I'll give you an example of the dissatisfied, because it's easy to talk about the satisfied. On waiting times, 66% were satisfied, but 14% were unsatisfied. Now, 14% of 3 million people filing claims is a lot of people. We had 400,000 people who didn't like the waits. On the other hand, on courtesy of staff, only 3% were unsatisfied. The figure was 3% on fairness, 2% on competency, and 4% on ease of access. These are what Treasury Board calls the drivers of satisfaction, so we also measured based on drivers of satisfaction. As a result, we know where to zero in.

    That's the kind of thing we did by region, by program, and by access channel. It's our benchmark, and we have to work on it. But I'm not trying to belittle 5% of a big number. It causes a lot of noise.

    Mr. Monte Solberg: Did you do other surveys previously? How do these compare to previous ones?

    Mr. Hy Braiter: We've done previous surveys at the local level. We did an Ekos survey many years ago that came out pretty good.

    At the local level, local offices continue to do surveys asking clients about their satisfaction. We do have posters in all our offices saying that if you're not satisfied, you should call the manager and so on and so forth, to let us know.

    But this survey is professional. It's statistically valid and it doesn't mince words. It was developed by Treasury Board, in consultation with real, professional survey companies. We can't stray from at least the core questions. We can't just do stuff that will buy us the results. This is the first of its kind. And by the way, to my knowledge, all departments are supposed to do it. There were five lead departments, and we were one of them. To my knowledge, though, we're the only department that has done it so far.

¹  (1550)  

    Mr. Monte Solberg: How many call centres do you have? I'll just focus on call centres for now.

    Mr. Hy Braiter: We have eleven call centres across the country.

    Mr. Monte Solberg: Are the levels of service and satisfaction pretty much the same, or are they different?

    Mr. Hy Braiter: We have different levels of service. As I said, we do measure access and speed of service. There is one performance measure that we're using currently and that we have been using for the past while. We would like 90% or more of the callers to be able to get to a real person within 180 seconds, which is 3 minutes. That's our standard. Nationally, in the year to date, only 70% of our callers have been able to get to a real person within 3 minutes. Recently, with some of the improvements, I think we've gotten up to 80% or 85% in the last few months.

    We saw that dip happening because we loaded a lot of work into the call centres, but now we're adjusting how we do the work. That doesn't mean every call centre in Canada is there. Some are much better than others, but we're working with all of them.

    Incidentally, I mentioned that 60% of our calls get through 100% of the time. Those are the calls that are satisfied with using the automated features of our call system. They don't have to wait 3 minutes, and 100% of them can get their answer to where their cheque is, how much it's for, and when it's coming. But for those who want a real person, those who press 0 are waiting more than 3 minutes 30% of the time. That's where we are.

    Mr. Monte Solberg: Where are the problems? What call centres are the problems? And maybe you can also identify why those particular call centres are having more problems than the others.

    Ms. Liliane Binette (Director General, Insurances Services, Department of Human Resources Development): The call centres in the metropolitan areas are having more difficulties, and those difficulties are related to the fact that we have added a very high level of transactions to the call centres. More specifically, those areas are Toronto and Montreal.

    The problems are related to the fact that we went from 8 million TELEDEC transactions across the country to 20 million in a very short period of time. They get through 95% of the time, but there are a lot more calls. Because they get the bulk of the calls, they are the ones really having a very hard impact. However, we have done a study, and we are maximizing the use of the automated system.

    The Chair: We'll come back to you in the second round, Mr. Solberg.

    Madame St-Jacques.

[Translation]

    Ms. Diane St-Jacques (Shefford, Lib.): Thank you, Madam Chair.

    Let me thank you for having come today. I think that the client satisfaction you reported here does exist because in the six years since I was elected, I have noticed a difference in the calls and requests we receive in our riding offices who help people with problems like excessive delays or problems with the service. So the improvement in service is all to your credit.

    I have questions about delays. I do not know how many weeks someone currently has to wait, on average, before receiving the initial cheque in response to a first application. The waiting time is certainly shorter now, but I would like to know how many weeks it takes.

    You also mentioned in your presentation, Mr. Braiter, that there are more applications in July and November. What is being done at those times to improve the service?

[English]

    Mr. Charles Nixon (Acting Assistant Deputy Minister, Insurance, Department of Human Resources Development): Madam Chair, we do have peak periods of demand that need to be addressed, and we handle those in a number of ways. Certainly, in the short term, we have contingency planning in place in each region to allow the offices to move work around and to move staff around, in order to try to address the peak claim loads so that they can be put into pay as quickly as possible.

    When a region has an extremely large influx of claims, there is a process in place whereby workload can be shared with another region. We have had a couple of examples of that more recently. After September 11, Ontario in particular was hit with an increasing claims load. Alberta helped out with that. Last year, with the drought in Alberta, there was an increase in claims load there and Ontario helped out in return. That kind of sharing of workload goes on in order to try to put claims into pay as quickly as possible.

    As well, as Mr. Braiter has mentioned, use of the electronic tools that we have developed also helps us to process claims more quickly. While these peaks will continue—they probably always will be there—we hope that when we have information electronically, we will be able to process things faster, more easily, and more accurately. That will help us to try to smooth out the peaks so that they're not quite as abrupt as they are now.

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[Translation]

    Ms. Diane St-Jacques: Have you any figures giving the average waiting time before receiving a cheque after the two weeks of qualifying time?

[English]

    Mr. Hy Braiter: I can address that.

    One of our key performance measures is the speed-of-service measure. One of our objectives is to pay people at the earliest legally possible date. There's a two-week waiting period, and they mail or call the report for the third week, which is a payable week. We get that at the end of the third week, and we would like to put people into pay in the fourth week. That's perfect performance in most cases, because it's the earliest legally possible date to pay a person after the waiting period and after they tell us what they've done for week three. Right now, we are operating with over 95% of our claimants receiving that level of service. That's what we use, basically.

    We have a report by region and by local office. In fact, we supply our minister with a weekly report on the backlogs, the speed of service, and those places that have more four-week-plus delays. We work on those areas and we move staff into those areas. So our objective of 95% within 28 days is being met right now.

[Translation]

    Ms. Diane St-Jacques: May I put one brief final question? It is about the kiosks which you will be phasing out. You mentioned in your document that you consult with Members of Parliament and communities. Do you have a plan for communicating with communities to inform people that henceforth, the service will be offered on Internet or by telephone only?

    Mr. Hy Braiter: Let me ask Mr. Matheson to give you the answer.

[English]

    Mr. Doug Matheson (Director General, Service Delivery, Department of Human Resources Development): In terms of the communication that we've had on this, first of all, internally, we have communicated with the directors of our local offices. We've been quite clear with them about the necessity to communicate with communities and to consult. The starting point of that consultation has to be members of Parliament as representatives of their communities, as representatives of their constituencies.

    Some 246 members of Parliament have kiosks in their constituencies. To date, we've spoken to more than 200 of these members, and some of the members have raised some concerns. Most of the members have taken the time to understand the situation, and they have agreed with us that this would be the best course of action.

    For those members who have raised concerns, sometimes their concerns were quite blunt: “I don't like this idea, and I don't think you should do it. My community isn't well served if you do this.” Other concerns were more in the nature of, “Could you explain this better? Could you bring me more information? I'd like to consult with some of my constituents.”

    Beyond that, there has to be a consultation with those people who host the current kiosks and those people who host public access points to the Internet, because those are the people who would be impacted to some extent by the decision. And sometimes people in the community may also have some views, and they may make them known as we consult.

    So we've been going through this process, and one of the reasons why it comes to light to all of you so easily is that the starting point is to come to you in order to talk to you and to your offices about what the plan is and about where we're going. We've been following that consultation process, and we've been taking note of your concerns. In many of the cases in which you've had concerns, we've said we're not going to touch those kiosks for now and that we'll continue to work with you on a better solution than the one we have in mind.

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[Translation]

    Ms. Diane St-Jacques: Thank you very much.

    The Chair: Mr. Desrochers.

    Mr. Odina Desrochers (Lotbinière—L'Érable, BQ): Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

    Mr. Braiter, Mr. Nixon, Ms. Binette, Mr. Matheson, I bid you welcome and I thank you for meeting with us and telling us about the improvements.

    I am looking at the first page of your text, Mr. Braiter. You say that you have a network of more than 8,000 employees. As far as I know, the Department of Human Resources Development, like any other department, had to undergo sizeable cuts in the early 1990s, and you tried to deliver services with the personnel you already had.

    Now that you have more available funds, have you recovered the employees you had, or did you replace the employees who were laid off with telephone services, kiosks, etc.?

[English]

    Mr. Hy Braiter: We are resourced by a Treasury Board formula. Treasury Board treats the operating resources the same, whether they're paid out of the EI account, out of the consolidated revenue fund, or whatever. The resource is based on a formula that was established quite a number of years ago, and it's based on the number of claims we receive in a year and on the projections of number of claims. It's technical, but they will not increase our resources unless our claims go over 3.1 million. As long as the claims stay below 3.1 million, our resources are flat.

    Yes, during program review between 1995 and 1998, we had to do quite a bit to consolidate offices and to consolidate staff. That was part of the reduction of 45,000 public servants in the Government of Canada. We had to introduce a lot of technology. The kiosks were introduced in those days in order to be able to help with the processing while resources went down.

    Our resources have pretty well stayed more or less stable for EI over the past years. Our claims have become more complicated, what with the legislation on parental leave, the legislation of four or five years ago, small weeks, and so on. As the legislation becomes more and more complicated, the challenge for our staff becomes complicated. The solution is to be innovative and to continuously improve service and to use technology, like TELEDEC for claimants' reports and so on, to free up resources that can be put into the areas that need human, face-to-face service.

    That has been our approach. Our strategy has been to automate the backroom transaction processing as much as possible and to free resources to give better service, face-to-face, when it's needed. But our resources have not increased.

[Translation]

    Mr. Odina Desrochers: I understand you very well, Mr. Braiter. You explained that by streamlining personnel and by reorganizing things, you were able to improve service delivery.

    Besides, Treasury Board's internal survey does not answer my question. You had hired a certain number of persons and you told us that 45,000 employees were laid off. As far as I know, if there is a department that should keep its personnel, it is certainly the one which is called the Department for Human Resources Development. I would like to know whether the employees of your department whose positions were cut have been rehired and whether you have kept employment at the same level.

    You mentioned Internet. In some places, only 20 or 30 per cent of the people are connected. In my own riding, there are still people who have to share party lines with four or five others. When You talk about client satisfaction, you mention telephone services as well as regional offices of Human Resources Development, but I think that all my colleagues in this room can tell you that the MP's office also works on processing employment insurance cases.

    All that is due to the fact that personnel has been cut somewhere. Now, in 2003, I would expect the government to get back on the right track and invest the needed resources. Some people will never get use to a Touch-Tone or to a kiosk. When someone loses his job, he wants to know whether he will get his cheque. When someone applies for a job, he wants to know whether he will get the job. This takes human resources.

[English]

    Mr. Hy Braiter: I totally agree with you. I don't think our challenge is getting more resources. We discuss this with Treasury Board regularly. Our challenge is to quickly adjust resources to the levels of workload that are happening. The formula gives us the right amount of resources overall. As managers, we have to make the adjustments.

    Personally, I don't think there is going to be any more flexibility on the operation side. Like I said, our strategy is to move resources, to automate the backroom processes, to free up our resources in order to give the service that you're talking about. It's a management challenge.

    We feel we are resourced at the appropriate levels right now by the formula that we've agreed to. We monitor the performance standards and we are undertaking creative, innovative initiatives to make the adjustments that are necessary. But it would always be nice to get more resources.

º  (1605)  

[Translation]

    Mr. Odina Desrochers: I also understand very well, Mr. Braiter, that you respect the mechanism and you fill our your forms, but are you making any further requests for more personnel? Are you justifying these requests?

    I understand that in the early 1990s, big cuts were made, but it is now 2003, we have a budget surplus and we are trying to improve the services delivered by the Department of Human Resources Development. You are telling us that you are making tremendous efforts. You have not convinced us. We are regularly in touch with your officials and regional directors and we know that they lack personnel. This is not complicated. You are also telling us that you are working with the Treasury Board forms. The need exists. Have you already made an evaluation? Maybe we could apply some pressure on your behalf. How many more people do you need? Please specify your needs.

[English]

    Mr. Hy Braiter: Yes, we do go to Treasury Board when there are new initiatives like the legislative changes on parental leave. They adjust our resource levels to deal with those extra claims. We heard in the budget speech that we were going to have a new kind of program on compassionate leave and that it would be administered through the insurance program. We are now preparing for Treasury Board the types of resources that we'll need to address that extra workload.

    But the approach is always about service and not resources. I think it has been accepted that you have to give the service in the most modern way and resource fairly. But we are focusing on performance measures, satisfaction, and service. We do have some locations that we need to address. If one location has too much work and another location doesn't, then we are now moving the work around. Being online, it will be much easier to move a claim from New Brunswick to B.C. if we have to, in order to move the work to where the people are.

    Our resource level is correct across the country, but sometimes the workload changes very rapidly. That's the challenge that we have in managing the program.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Mr. Malhi, please.

    Mr. Gurbax Malhi (Bramalea—Gore—Malton—Springdale, Lib.): What are the educative and/or informative programs for employment insurance benefits, as initiated by HRDC, for employees, especially for contractual, part-time jobs? Is it possible for HRDC to launch public movements highlighting its delivery-of-benefits mechanism for the general benefit of the public at large, in order to create community awareness?

    Mr. Charles Nixon: When we have new benefits, we certainly do advertise how they work and so forth. Depending on the initiative, we sometimes do that at the community level, as well as nationally.

    We do work very closely with our claimants, individual by individual, in regard to what kinds of services we offer and how they can be utilized. When they're applying in person or via the web, our staff will help them to understand that they can use TELEDEC; that there is a telephone reporting system; that they can use direct deposit, and how to sign up for it so that they can maximize their use of the program; the speed of service that we can offer them that is convenient for them; and how they go about doing it.

º  (1610)  

    Mr. Gurbax Malhi: You mentioned that you are advertising at the community level. When you advertise at the community level and when you do the surveys, do you have any facts and figures on the majority of the community that lives in an area? Sometimes the majority of the people from one group or two groups live in an area, and they have language problems. Do you have employees who can help them in their language?

    Ms. Liliane Binette: We have employees who are doing the function of what we call public liaison officers. They are working with the specific associations to provide all of the information to the associations, so that the associations can help the specific clients or the public in general to better understand the rules.

    We also provide access if a person has a language difficulty. They can come to the office with a member of their family or a person from one of those associations, and we will take the time to sit with them and to provide the explanations.

    We also work on employer premises as well. Employers will ask our employees—mainly the public liaison officers—to go on-site to provide the information. We also do that based on requests by associations. For example, a group of their members may want to have specific information. We will go there on request, and we will try to understand their needs first. We'll go on the premises of the association to provide the information.

    Mr. Gurbax Malhi: What about disabled people? Are there any special programs for them?

    Ms. Liliane Binette: For disabled people, in any of the new tools that we develop, we also look at how we are going to adapt those new tools for them. For example, for a deaf person to have access to the information over the phone, we do have a tool to deal with them. For something as simple as a person who is left-handed instead of right-handed, when it comes to the Appli-web technology in our local offices, we have a mouse that is for left-handed people. So we do adapt the tools to the needs of disabled people.

    Mr. Gurbax Malhi: Does HRDC plan to initiate anything in the future for the complaint redress system with respect to things like the delay in answering calls?

    Mr. Doug Matheson: The issue of a complaint mechanism has been raised with us on a number occasions, and I think we have to think about the nature of the complaints. First of all, if there's a complaint—and you mentioned a certain kind of complaint in your question—if a citizen has a concern about our decision and it is a point of legality, we have a formal mechanism for dealing with that, an appeal process.

    If the complaint is one about service, there are a variety of ways of dealing with the complaint. First of all, if the person is dealing with us through an electronic channel like the Internet, there's a “Contact Us” button on every page, and a way in which the citizen can forward a complaint directly to us. If the citizen has come to our office and has a problem with our service, then a set of principles of service that we try to deliver on is posted on the wall of every office. If the citizen has a problem with the service, they can speak with the management of the office directly about the service they've received.

º  (1615)  

    Mr. Gurbax Malhi: Thank you.

    The Chair: Ms. Davies.

    Ms. Libby Davies (Vancouver East, NDP): Thank you very much, Madame Chair. I'd like to thank the witnesses for coming today.

    It was interesting to hear you say 95% of claimants are receiving what you characterize as a perfect level of service, in that they're getting their cheque by the fourth week. I must have the other 5%. I wish you guys could be anonymous for awhile, head out to a local office, go through the system, and see what happens.

    Within the last year, I actually did a householder in which I asked people EI and unemployment questions and so on. I got lots of responses, but one here says, “EI is meant to punish those who lose their jobs and force others to stay in oppressive situations”. That may have more to do with eligibility, but I have another one from another constituent who said, “Claiming EI is suicidal. Lining up with only two staff when one is on a break, there has to be someone to come in to relieve. It sucks.”

    Just the other night, actually, I talked to a constituent who has a very routine claim and is eligible, but he was told that, on top of the two-week waiting period, he would have to wait an additional eight weeks, so we're now talking about ten weeks here. This is in east Vancouver, so this would actually be the Burnaby office. I checked with my office, because I thought this might just be something unusual. What my staff has told me is that, based on the calls that we get, that's not unusual.

    So I'm very curious to know how you're hitting this 95%, because it seems to me that what we're hearing is that if you get the service, people may be fairly satisfied, but in trying to get that service, in trying to get something processed, I just feel like I have a totally different story about what's happening.

    One of the matters that has been raised with me by some people—and once again, I don't know if this is just relevant to Vancouver or whether it occurs elsewhere—is that there have been layoffs as well in terms of direct service. Maybe they have to do with switching more to electronic services. Anyway, I'd really appreciate your comments on that. What does somebody do when they're told they're going to be waiting for, in effect, ten weeks, including the two-week waiting period? If you go to get emergency assistance, at least in B.C., you're pretty well dead in the water there as well, because it's now quite difficult to get social assistance in terms of a waiting period. I just don't know what people do.

    Mr. Hy Braiter: Those are really serious problems, but when we measure service or satisfaction, we're talking about people who come to us for a service and whether or not they were satisfied with the service we gave them. We are not asking them if they're satisfied with the legislation, the policies, or the regulations of the EI Program. We are administering those.

    It is true that some people won't get a cheque before the tenth week or the eighth week, but—

    Ms. Libby Davies: But why is that?

    Mr. Hy Braiter: They have to wait through the two-week waiting period, and if they get vacation pay or separation pay, that has the effect of delaying their claim by the amount of their vacation pay, averaged out. If they get ten weeks' worth of vacation pay after working for a company for so many years, or if they get separation pay, then according to the law, that has the effect of delaying the beginning of their claim by that amount.

    Ms. Libby Davies: If I can show you a case in which that was not the case, would you be surprised?

    Mr. Hy Braiter: No, and I would certainly look into it right away.

    I was just looking at the Burnaby numbers. In total, as of the week of February 10 to February 14, 217 claimants are waiting for times over the four-week period. Those are the ones we would be concentrating on.

    So we monitor office by office—and I don't have the percentage, but I can get it to you—and Burnaby is likely hitting the 95%. But there's always that 5%, and 5% of a big number is a big number. You're getting the 5% calls, the 5 or 10 calls a week.

    But when I say they get paid in the fourth week, that's if they have no vacation pay, no separation pay, no disqualifications, and no disentitlements; if the employer didn't say this person quit voluntarily; or if there's no legal issue around the claim. If you quit voluntarily, you're not entitled at all. So there are many factors. If you've abused us in the past, we deduct—

º  (1620)  

    Ms. Libby Davies: No, this is a straight claim.

    Mr. Hy Braiter: This is a straight claim? Then I would appreciate it if you would send it to us, so that we can...and I'm sure you do call the local office manager on a regular basis. I hope you do have a relationship with the local office manager and that you do get service when people come to you like that.

    Ms. Libby Davies: We try to do that.

    Mr. Hy Braiter: I started in the Unemployment Insurance Commission in 1969, and we are very sensitive to people who are at home through no fault of their own and who need that money to pay their rent and feed their kids. I've been in offices in which people have deposited their kids on Friday night, saying, “I didn't get my cheque, so you can you take care of my kids.” So we are very sensitive to that aspect and we react quickly, and I hope you're getting the service you deserve in your community.

    The Chair: You have one minute left.

    Ms. Libby Davies: Just to come back to the kiosk issue, I know some of my colleagues have raised that. We have expressed concern about these kiosks coming out, particularly on the basis that lots of people still don't have access to the Internet. You say not all the services are available on the kiosks but they will be on the Internet, so you'll put more emphasis on the Internet. That's great, but you are going to be leaving people behind. I don't know how you deal with that, but it seems to me that one of the most important principles is accessibility of service. You say you're hitting 80%, but this is a program based on insurance and entitlement, right? If you're entitled, then you should be guaranteed accessible service. I think it has to be 100%, not 80% or 70% or whatever.

    Mr. Hy Braiter: Here's an example of obsolete technology and how you get away from it because you know it's not maintainable. But it's also an example of how you have to focus on service.

    We tried to do two things. First of all, we're talking about the kiosks that aren't located in our offices. The kiosks located in our offices are being converted to an Internet platform without the clients even knowing it. With the kiosks located in the shopping centres and so on, we can't do it because the boxes and the technology are outdated. The only thing on those is Job Bank. Right now, only 5% of access to Job Bank is done through external kiosks. The other 95% is done either through our offices or through the home. In fact, I don't have the numbers—you may, Doug—on how much Job Bank is accessed from home, but it is the most popular website in the Government of Canada.

    When you go on Job Bank, you can also connect to all of the private-sector job banks and all of the curriculum vitae depositories, you can file a claim, you can get all of the information on the services to which you are entitled, what the rules are for maternity benefits, and so on. When you go on a kiosk in the middle of a shopping centre, all you're doing is looking at Job Bank while standing up at a kiosk. It was great for the past, but now we have this dilemma. It's all on the Internet. How do you move from the kiosk to the Internet?

    We tried to solve the dilemma by, first of all, analyzing every kiosk to see where the closest public Internet access site is. I'm throwing some percentages out and may be wrong by 5%, but we found that in about 70% or 80% of cases, there was a public site right in the same building—either at our office in the same building or the same shopping centre, or at a CAP site. Industry Canada has set up 8,000 CAP sites. And then there are libraries, our offices, municipal governments, and the federal government.

    So when we close down the kiosk, we first convince the MP that there is good access for people who don't have computers. We then put notices on the kiosks to tell people where they can go for that service and many more services. Where the distance is too far, we do not recommend touch-and-goes until we develop, with a partner, some public access. So the majority of them are right in the same building or within a block or two, and we're working with MPs to show them where the....

    We're not just saying there's public access. We're giving locations and addresses, and we're directing our clients to those locations. That's why Mr. Matheson said we have to tell those locations that we're going to be sending them some extra clients, if the location is a municipality or a library. So the kiosks are a tricky business, but they're just not sustainable. The Internet is real.

º  (1625)  

    Ms. Libby Davies: When will most of the kiosks be phased out, other than the ones you're saying you won't phase out because there isn't anything else close by?

    Mr. Hy Braiter: We won't until we put in something better, that being the Internet. We will put that in if it isn't there.

    Ms. Libby Davies: But where you think there is something there, are they all going to be gone within the year?

    Mr. Doug Matheson: For the sites about which we've spoken with MPs and the community, for those around which there is some agreement and for which alternate access exists, those will be removed immediately, meaning that we're doing the consultations now. So far, a few have been removed. I think the number is around 65 out of 1,070. For approximately 150 of the 1,070 some objections or some concerns have been raised. They will be left. For the balance, which we'll say is approximately 900 or so, we expect to see them removed over the next two or three months. For the other 150 or so, they will remain until we can find a suitable solution.

    Ms. Libby Davies: Thank you.

    The Chair: Mr. Finlay.

    Mr. John Finlay (Oxford, Lib.): I have a follow-up, Madam Chair, and then I have a couple of main questions.

    Sir, have you communicated with all MPs on this matter? I'm one who likes to keep up to date, and—

    Mr. Doug Matheson: There are 246 members who have kiosks in their constituency, and a few members who don't. Of the 246 who have kiosks, we've had a discussion with more than 200 MPs or with their offices.

    Mr. John Finlay: All right, that's fine, as long as you get to call my offices. They handle the problems, and we have no complaint. Sometimes the decision for paying or not paying needs some massaging and we have to deal with that, but the service has been great. We had 24 CAP sites in my riding back in 1994. The Minister of Industry came down and opened one in Otterville, a place he was not even aware existed before he came down. We have a very special interconnected network in the county, so it's good to know about these things.

    Madam, Chair, I want to ask the witnesses if they can tell me one or two ways that they have managed to move staff and so on to meet these peaks and valleys that they've talked about. It seems to me that there must be a number of part-time workers, which is something we maybe don't always like. If there are such extremes, I wonder how they juggle the people.

    Mr. Hy Braiter: We do have a mixture of indeterminate employees—those are permanent—and term employees. In any business in which you have peaks and valleys, you have to have term employees. We're the same as the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency. And we have to have part-time employees, too. We use them in telephone centres, as well as in local offices.

    At certain times of the year, you will see a reduction in term employees. That often causes some noise, but they were hired as terms. They were told we need them until March 31 because that's when we have the workload, and that we won't need them for a while but will call them back as soon as we need them again.

    Sometimes the workload in an area stays high for a year or two, based on the business cycle or the particular economic conditions. These term employees come to feel like they're permanent, but suddenly the situation changes. We remind them and give them the appropriate notice. We try to find them other jobs where they might be needed in other offices or in other functions with the Canada Pension Plan or old age security, but sometimes there just isn't anything.

    Our managers are compassionate. We invest in these people, in training them. We don't want to lose them. Our managers in particular don't want complaints and don't want to lose these people, but if the workload isn't there, we have to let them go. That's the kind of business it is. When the workload comes, though, we rehire them.

    I'm sure many of you have heard some noise around people being released or laid off. Well, they're not laid off. Their contracts end and we don't need to renew them. We do renew them in the fall if they are still available—and we hope they are, because otherwise we have to train other people. So that's one way.

    In the shorter term, if it's a temporary thing, such as a company closing down, thus creating a huge lay-off situation, we put a team together and put them on the company's premises. The local office could be a small office that isn't used to having a huge company laying off thousands. If so, then we'll send in people from other areas temporarily. We'll even put them up in hotels and so on, and they'll blitz it and handle it for us. More typically, though, when it's not that kind of an emergency situation, we will move the work. Within a region, within B.C. or wherever, we will take the claims and move them from Burnaby to another office that isn't that busy, and we'll handle them there. We have even moved claims between provinces.

    Ontario helped out when Alberta was in trouble. Alberta and many regions helped out Ontario after September 11. There was quite a lot of trouble in Ontario, at a lot of companies, like the airlines and so on. Many areas of the country suddenly found themselves in a different economic situation. We had high workloads in compressed periods of time. We just couldn't train staff. Our performance measures were going out of hand and people were waiting, so we moved the work. We took the work in a controlled way, and moved it to another region or another office.

    So we're trying to say we have a certain capacity for all of Canada. Ideally, we should move the work to where the people are, as opposed to moving the people to where the work is. It's not easy to move a person, their family, and so on, so that's what we're trying to do. As I mentioned, the more we go into online, the easier doing that will be, because we can zap the claims to another location.

    And it's the same with telephone centres. We are working on being able to move enquiries from one centre to another, so that we can give service between the time zones for quite an extended period of time. That takes some technology, but we're working on it.

º  (1630)  

    Mr. John Finlay: I suspected you'd tell me that, but it's good to know the technology can be moved, too.

    I have another question. What special measures will you be taking to ensure that, in the modernization of the service delivery, you'll address what is sometimes called the digital divide? It's a similar question to the one Ms. Davies asked, but it is a....

    Mr. Hy Braiter: That's an excellent question, because we have a certain type of clientele that is probably subject to the digital divide. We do have people who find themselves unemployed, and in other parts of our business we have seniors and so on. That's why I said that no matter how we modernize, the choice has to be the clients' choice. If they want telephone service, we have to be there with good service. If they want to come in, we have to be there in the community. If they can use the Internet, we would like to encourage them, because, frankly, it costs us a lot less if a person uses the Internet or a kiosk in our office and if they do their own thing or key in their own claimant report, than it does if we have to sit down with them. But we are not going to eliminate a service. We are not a bank, we are not a private-sector company that says we will have no more offices and you have to do it on the Internet or nothing.

    With employers, we can be a little bit more demanding in terms of wanting them to get on board and in terms of having them send us the stuff over the Internet, especially with the big employers. But with our type of clientele, we always have to be there with the kind of service that people need, based on their choice. Otherwise, there will be complaints, typically to the MPs first. We're aware of that.

    Mr. John Finlay: Thank you very much.

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Finlay.

    Mr. Desrochers, I promised you a little extra time at the end.

[Translation]

    Mr. Odina Desrochers: Thank you, Madam Chair.

    Let me come back to the matter concerning the MPs whom you consulted. You said that you consulted MPs wherever there were kiosks and regional offices. How did you go about this?

[English]

    Mr. Doug Matheson: I'm not sure I understand exactly what you're driving at, but the members have been consulted at the local level. That consultation was carried out by the directors of our offices. In the discussions with the members, if the members were available and if the members had an interest in talking about it, then of course we preferred to speak with the members themselves. When that wasn't possible, the discussion would take place with the office of the member. It was always carried out by the director at the local level. Our regional office was not involved at all in that consultation.

    I'm not sure I understood exactly the point you were driving at in your question, though, sir.

º  (1635)  

[Translation]

    Mr. Odina Desrochers: I will let you know, sir. This is because in my riding, there are three regional offices: the one in Drummondville is served by Victoriaville, and there is another in Thetford Mines and another Saint-Romuald. I have a population of 70,000, but there is not one HRDC official in my riding. I asked you this question, because as you explained just now, I gathered that only MPs from places with offices or services had been consulted. I therefore did not think that I was involved in this.

[English]

    Mr. Doug Matheson: I think we should come back to you outside of the meeting, because I don't actually have the list of kiosks available in my binder. I think this question deserves a specific response on the kiosks in your constituency—if there are any—and what exactly their locations are. Let us come back to you outside the committee, within the next day or two and with a very specific response to you.

[Translation]

    Mr. Odina Desrochers: I understand your answer very well. There are no kiosks or officials in my riding. I have to go outside to deal with three regional offices. This is absolutely crystal clear.

    Now with regard to kiosks, have you any idea where you are going to cut them? Do you have a plan for this so that we can prepare our clients? I just told you that when there is a change in HRDC, our constituents' first reaction is to call the MP's office. There are 35 Bloc Québécois MPs. The same thing applies to my colleagues in the NDP and in the Liberal Party. If you tell us where you intend to make changes, we will prepare the ground. But we must be informed.

    Is there any plan for communicating, especially with outlying regions? I need to know whether in your action plan you looked at the entire map, in my case the map of Quebec, when you decided what to cut, what not to cut, what to keep, what to change and what to modernize.

[English]

    Mr. Doug Matheson: The members in Quebec have raised a number of issues, and many of those issues have been raised not by Liberals, but by Bloc Québécois members. We didn't differentiate, of course. As bureaucrats, we don't differentiate between the parties in our discussions with MPs, but in the case of Quebec, I do know a number of issues have been raised by a variety of members from both parties, and those issues are being taken very seriously by us. Where a member has indicated that they had some difficulty, the kiosk hasn't been touched.

    In terms of the specifics, we're glad to share the specifics of all the kiosks in Quebec: where they are located now; the ones on which we have an agreement about removal; which ones still are not agreed to; what the usage is of the various kiosks; where they're located; what the alternate sites are; and so on and so forth. We have no problem in sharing that information if the member wishes it.

[Translation]

    Mr. Odina Desrochers: I am not asking you this question only for myself but on behalf of all MPs. There must always be lines of communication between your department and the MPs. I am not questioning your objectivity in any way. And I did not mean to be partisan when I mentioned the 35 Bloc Québécois MPs. I said that we, the 35 Bloc Québécois MPs, were concerned with the outlying regions and that we wanted to know whether you have prepared a plan for streamlining and phasing out the kiosks. You answered that you had already begun to study the matter and that if some MPs were not happy with the elimination of a kiosk, agreements could be reached between the MPs and your department. This is all I wanted to know.

    I have finished my intervention. Thank you, Madam Chair.

[English]

    The Chair: I think you certainly have an undertaking from Mr. Matheson, Mr. Braiter, Mr. Nixon, and Ms. Binette, that they will get as much information to you on those specifics as they can.

    No one on the other side has any follow-up questions, Ms. Davies, so you will be the final questioner.

º  (1640)  

    Ms. Libby Davies: I have a couple of things.

    I don't know if you can answer this one. It's actually from one of my colleagues who has been dealing with a number of people who received overpayments through no fault of their own. It was basically an error, and then they got stuck with it. In fact, one of the constituents actually went to an umpire, and the umpire has urged the commission to consider the possibility of writing off the overpayment, but apparently this is not to be.

    How often does this happen? Are you considering, at any point, that this will be something you will look at? It seems pretty rotten to stick someone with this. In this case, it was under $800, but for someone who's going through pretty hard times, it becomes a very difficult situation.

    Mr. Hy Braiter: First of all, how often does it happen? Very rarely—and I'm not being glib about it. This error was caused by CCRA giving us a computer file on people who are entitled to a higher benefit because of their low earnings.

    We have a feature in the EI program whereby people who are at the low income levels are allowed to collect up to 80%. Instead of 55% of their average earnings, they collect 80% if they're at a low income. We judge low income based on the information that CCRA gives us monthly on who the low-income earners are. They made a computer mistake on their file, and they gave us a list of these low-income people who weren't really low-income people in some cases. We went ahead and established their benefit rate as if they were low-income people, and we made these overpayments. CCRA then came back and said they had a bug in their system and gave us a file that included some people who weren't low-income. We had already paid them at this 80% benefit level.

    We had a dilemma. It was a legal dilemma and it was a moral dilemma. The legal dilemma was that we must set up the overpayment. We can write it off. The commissioners can write it off if there's hardship. We immediately said we were not going to grab these people and start collecting. We had quite a few discussions with our minister. Liliane was involved in these discussions, so perhaps I'll let Liliane finish up on what the current situation is.

    Ms. Liliane Binette: First of all, that happened just before the Christmas period, so we expanded the period. Usually when we create an overpayment, there is what we call a 21-day grace, so that the person can call us. We inform the person that there is an overpayment, and we give the person the possibility to call our recovery agents in order to be able to negotiate a rate of reimbursement that they can afford. When you are unemployed, we know unemployment insurance benefits are an income support that is lower than what you get when you are working. We extended the grace period to January 15, and we invited any person to contact our recovery agents if they had any financial hardship or any difficulty in paying back the overpayment .

    In the case of financial hardship, we make an individual assessment that is based on the financial situation of the person. In the case of reimbursement, we establish with the person what they can give to us with every payment that they receive. We handled each and every one of the cases that way.

    Ms. Libby Davies: Are you saying the errors that were made were only in that situation?

    A witness: No.

    Ms. Libby Davies: No? Okay, because this one that came from one of my colleagues actually goes back to March and April, which was before the period you're talking about. And there must be others.

    Mr. Hy Braiter: Yes, there are other situations in which errors could be made. Employers sometimes give us the wrong record-of-employment information or we find out later that it's the right one. The employee doesn't tell us about some earnings because they didn't think those were earnings when they actually were earnings. We do go back and set up an administrative overpayment in those situations.

    Ms. Libby Davies: Just to clarify, then, in those situations—this isn't the one dealing with the CCRA—

    Mr. Hy Braiter: That's special.

    Ms. Libby Davies: —do you still do it on a case-by-case basis based on hardship? Someone can go—

    Mr. Hy Braiter: If they're still on a claim, the first thing we do is try to come to an agreed deduction from the next benefit. If they say they'll pay back so much, we recoup it from the next benefit entitlements over a period of time. If they're not on a claim, we try to come to an agreement with them based on how much they can afford to pay back slowly over a period of three years. If they have hardship, we do have a form for them to fill out and we can write it off.

º  (1645)  

    Ms. Libby Davies: You can do that.

    Mr. Hy Braiter: We can do it under hardship cases. It has to be done by the commission.

    Ms. Liliane Binette: It's done for a group when there is a major error. On an individual basis, it is being done by our recovery officers.

    Ms. Libby Davies: But on an individual basis, it cannot be written off?

    Mr. Hy Braiter: Under hardship situations, yes. If this is a hardship case....

    The Chair: I know I said you were the last questioner, Ms. Davies, but I see Mr. Finlay lifting his hand.

    Mr. John Finlay: Madam Chair, I try not to bring up individual cases when we're dealing with witnesses who are responsible for a big area, but I'm interested in the answer. I thought that's what they would say.

    I have a case that I gave to the Minister of National Revenue a couple of weeks back. I don't know whether it involved EI or not, but it involved an overpayment or that sort of thing. The lady reported that her husband had reduced her support payments by $50 a month. This went on for three years, and she got a court order saying the money had to be paid back.

    In the meantime, CCRA had taken her income tax for two and a half years at the previous rate of payment, and it was low. At the end of it, when she did get the payment because of a court action, she got $3,000 over the past three years. The CCRA then charged her tax on the $3,000 coming in as income in one year that should have come over three years. This is not yours, I guess, but she has put that in. I don't know how you would solve that, but there should be a way to solve it somehow. The permutations are just endless.

    The Chair: I want to thank you all on behalf of the members of the committee, Mr. Braiter, Mr. Matheson, Mr. Nixon, and Ms. Binette. You certainly have answered our questions very thoroughly, and you have endeavoured to get back to members of the committee with specific information when they've requested it.

    The meeting is adjourned.