[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, June 15, 1995

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[English]

The Chairman: Good afternoon, and welcome to the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development.

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This afternoon, following a decision by the steering committee last week, we have before us officials from the Department of Human Resources Development to discuss the study of technology and delivery of services in the Department of Human Resources Development. This is part of the whole process of changes in the way in which the delivery of employment and income security services as well as unemployment insurance services will be done following the changes being discussed within the department at the present time.

We have as witnesses this afternoon Mr. David McNaughton, Assistant Deputy Minister, Systems; Mr. Doug Matheson, Director General, Insurance Services; and Mr. Dennis Kealey, Manager, Income Security Program Redesign. They will talk to us about the various components of service delivery within the Department of Human Resources Development and answer our questions.

I imagine you have opening statements to give to us, and that will trigger some questions, I'm sure. Mr. McNaughton, perhaps you could begin.

Mr. David McNaughton (Assistant Deputy Minister, Systems, Department of Human Resources Development): Thank you very much. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to introduce my colleagues in the flavour of which we're going to speak, and then Doug Matheson will speak.

Doug, being director of insurance, will speak to the evolution we see in our delivery structure on the insurance side in the department.

I, being the person responsible for technology in the department, will speak a bit to how we're going to support that with technology. I hope you find that interesting. I promise not to bore you to death with technology, but rather what it means to citizens of Canada.

Dennis is Doug and I wrapped together and is quite capable of speaking to both the program side and the technology side in income security, as Dennis is leading that project. I would remind you that the project in income security actually was born in the Department of Health, and moved over when the Department of Human Resources Development was formed.

Mr. Doug Matheson (Director General, Insurance Services, Department of Human Resources Development): I'll try to outline briefly the direction we're taking in response to the budget. I think some members may already be familiar with it, so I won't go through all the details.

Essentially, the budget that was brought down by Minister Martin had the effect of causing us to reduce our complement of staff by some 5,000, and that's roughly 20% or so of the overall complement of staff the department has. In that reduction, we've conducted a fairly detailed study of what we might do to achieve those savings. We're going to bring forward that particular study to the government. The minister will be presenting it to his cabinet colleagues in July. What I'll do is outline to you the contents of the proposal as it stands right now.

The focus on the reductions has been to try to remove overhead as much as possible. But keeping in mind that the delivery arm of the department is very large, it can't be restricted solely to the NHQ and regional operations. We have had to actually examine our local offices as well. We had to examine them in a way to try to keep the impact on service delivery to the public as constrained as possible to maintain an appropriate level of service.

The way we went about this was that in examining the local office structure, we set some principles down that related to the maintenance of that service, and we asked our local management to develop plans at the local level that reflected the priorities we had set. They came forward with a plan that we have since taken to the minister.

The plan itself was based on a few simple points. First of all, there are certain processing operations and certain managerial and technical support functions that go on in our offices that are overhead in and of themselves and that are quite expensive to perform. The public doesn't see those activities.

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If I can use an example, where you have an insurance operation where we process UI claims there has to be a supervisor, a claimant services officer, an ISA, and a number of other technical specialists. Also, we normally would have some financial specialists and some human resource specialists and so on. These particular people don't actually process the claims. They're purely overhead, and it's very expensive to carry those people.

The proposal we worked on first of all was to centralize that activity as much as possible in order to reduce that overhead. At the same time, we recognize the need for a face-to-face service to the public; our department delivers certain kinds of services that absolutely can only be delivered in a personal mode. Those services would include, for employable adults, things like counselling, discretionary interventions, and responding to various kinds of problems the public might have.

So we wanted to maintain a flexible and highly decentralized operation that was accessible to Canadians. We asked our staff to prepare a plan that would allow 90% of the Canadians in each province to have a half hour or less commute to reach our offices. The final plan came back with a total of some 90 of those main offices with the centralized processing and all of the managerial overheads associated with them, and in addition another 200 of the local type of offices. Our current complement of offices is approximately 450 different offices, so in fact there is a net reduction out of which significant savings can be achieved.

At the same time, recognizing that this reduction in offices could cause some difficulties for some members of the public, we've also looked at the provision of some electronic services to Canadians. In particular, we're looking at two types. First, there is expansion of the services available from home on the telephone; we're talking here about an expansion of the inquiries capability. Second, we're looking for the availability of a certain very basic package of services available in a large number of communities - all of the communities that might be affected by the current reduction plus a number of other communities as well.

The package of services we're looking at offering here would be done by making an arrangement with some group that works in the social services field, a government agency or a non-government organization that works in social services. We would provide to them, perhaps on a fee-for-service basis, depending on the arrangement at the local level, a kiosk, an electronic terminal. We would provide a basic service that consists of labour market information, specific job vacancy information, and the ability to file an unemployment insurance claim. In the future we would expand that to include the application for a social insurance number and the application for old age security, but right out of the gate we would do the first three of those activities.

The end result of this kind of plan is the reduction of approximately 3,000 staff in the field, which represents approximately 17% of the delivery at the local level. These reductions are being made in a way that we believe marginally affects the face-to-face delivery of some services in some communities, but at the same time provides some expanded access to some members of the public - particularly for seniors, for example, where a very basic level of inquiry type of service could be made available to them from all our offices in the proposal.

Lastly, in comparison to the regional and national headquarters operations, the reductions proposed there are approximately 30%. So the reductions at the overhead levels are significantly greater than reductions at the local level, and even at the local level reductions have been targeted at the overhead areas.

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Mr. McNaughton: I'd like to tell you a little bit about some of the technology we've been using and some of the technology we're planning to use. When you contemplate the thing Doug spoke about and you have a goal of continuing to maintain, if not improve, service to Canadians, then you want to use everything at your disposal to try to achieve that.

We think from our experience that technology can play a role. What we do not think at the outset is that technology can provide the interface between a client and a counsellor and the kinds of things Canadians will continue to expect. So I don't mean to suggest that at all.

One of our favourite technologies these days is the one that can be found almost anywhere, and that is very simply the phone. We've made use of the phone in what's called an interactive system where we have a computer behind it that gives pre-recorded answers to various questions and so on. We've been operating those in 28 of what we call our telecentres and in 150 of our other offices across the country.

We have a lot of experience under our belt on this. It works. We're satisfying a lot of questions - about 11 million calls a year - on this technology. These are questions on unemployment insurance, on employment, and actually questions on immigration because of our past relationship with Immigration. Moreover, we have a service there that meets some of the needs of the Public Service Commission.

As you're probably familiar from a Revenue Canada point of view, similarly on our system if you have an identifying number and you're a claimant, you can find out the status of your cheque. This is one of the favourite questions people like to ask us. You can also find out about local job vacancies on these services. We'll look to expanding that, but I want to share with you that we've made very extensive use of the telephone to date. If I can call it technology, as we all appreciate, it is by far the most pervasive in our society today.

Stepping up a notch in technology is our job bank kiosks. Doug used this word, and I'm going to use it a fair amount, so I'm communicating that a kiosk is not unlike an ATM machine that a bank has. You have a screen like a TV. It has a keyboard of some kind, and buried under the covers is a computer that's doing its job. We have about 4,000 of these that are used for the job bank purposes right across the country: about 3,500 of them are in our offices and about 500 are in shopping centres, provincial offices, libraries, schools and the like.

The purpose of these is not unlike in our days gone by when we had a large bulletin board with file cards on it. This is the modernization of that exercise. Our clients can put in a request based on various criteria and find out about the jobs that are available.

We've also been doing some of what we call our info centre effort on these devices. That's when we're trying to answer other questions about our department or about other departments of the federal government. We handle about 25 million transactions per year on that technology. We know how to do that and it works. I'm sure if you've been in or near one of our offices, you've seen that technology.

Finally, there is what you might call low-tech, but nonetheless technology, which I want to share with you because the best answers are not always the most sophisticated. We're in the process in many of our offices of putting some computers in place along with software that will assist clients in the simple act of preparing a résumé. A résumé can be the difference between employment and no employment. Some good counselling surely would help, but a well presented résumé can make a difference too. We find this extremely popular with the clients, particularly the younger clients who are in the process of doing that. My point here is to demonstrate that everything doesn't have to be rocket science to be of benefit to Canadians.

Let me talk a little bit about where we're going now, if I may. I'm going to categorize this by parts of our insurance employment business, and of course Dennis will speak to the income security side.

We find ourselves thinking an awful lot of how we can provide self-service to Canadians. What are the things we do that Canadians would be comfortable doing for themselves using a kiosk type of technology or telephone type of technology? What are the things we should not contemplate taking to that kind of solution?

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We have a system we're in the process of implementing now after piloting it for a while. It's worked quite well. We call it Applisys. It is a kiosk or a system that allows people to apply for unemployment insurance benefits. Unlike the job bank solution, this is more modern technology that's in fact easier to use. It's a touch screen, something you may have found yourself using recently. People find this very easy to use and very easy to walk through. It's in colour, it's a bit of fun, it has good information behind it, and people find it's a very productive way to apply for insurance.

Right now we're putting about 500 of those devices in place across the country, and we'll add to that. Not only is this our answer to providing that kind of capability, but when we have this technology or engine in place, we can use it for other things in that delivery mode as well. I'll speak to those in a few minutes.

We continue to work at our telephone-based service that I referred to earlier. We're currently receiving 60% of our telephone calls through that technology instead of calls going to the staff of HRD. We want to achieve about 75%. We think about three-quarters of our calls can be handled by the technology, because we know what the calls to the staff are about just as we know what the other calls are about. Some lend themselves to automation and some don't.

We have two other thrusts that would represent the job bank of the future. We refer to the primary component of this as the electronic labour exchange. The difference is that in the future not only would the clients be able to have the access they've had until now, they'd be able to enter a lot more information about themselves. Employers in Canada would also be able to enter information onto the system, such as the kinds of skills they're looking for and the opportunities they have. The computer would assist the client in finding the right company and assist the company in finding the right client.

It's not going to make decisions. It will only narrow lists and present companies of interest to the clients and clients of interest to the companies. This makes it very easy for companies in Canada to share in this labour market with us. That includes small companies, which are the backbone of the country.

As well, we would mount as much labour market information as we think people can use. It would have a local, regional or national flavour so people know where the opportunities are from both the employee's and the employer's viewpoints. People find that very productive. These are efforts to put the technology in front of the client and to try to serve them well.

Doug was referring to the challenges of overhead and administrative processes and so on. Like many departments and many governments, we find ourselves dealing with older computer systems that can be a bit difficult and challenging for our staff to use. One of the most challenging aspects is the mere act of switching from one computer system to another, which our employees do many, many times per day as they move through various applications to serve a client.

This is one of the things we want to achieve: we want to create something we call the HRDC terminal. I use this simple analogy. Today we have locks on all the doors in our house instead of only on the front door. We want to move the lock to the front door and let people who are allowed and authorized move freely from system to system in the name of serving clients efficiently.

We're working very hard on improving our control system behind UI. This is the system we use to detect abuse. Computers can assist us. Once this system is improved, we believe it will benefit other programs such as those in income security.

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At the same time, we're working on the companion system, our accounts receivable system. There's little point in controlling if you can't do the receivables, so we're trying to make that system effective as well. Once again, we want to share it across the department. This one, in fact, will apply in the income security area to start.

An awful lot of what we do manually in insurance has to do with receiving biweekly reports and turning around and producing cheques. We produce an awful lot of paper cheques that go into a lot of paper envelopes, consuming a lot of stamps, and that's taxpayer money involved there, obviously. We are very interested in the direct deposit of those funds, and we're very interested in a variety of ways that banks and others seem to be leading us, as citizens of the country, in those activities. So we're pursuing those opportunities.

I didn't speak to the companion part of that, but let me tell you about it now. We refer to TELEDEC. This is a pilot currently in Sherbrooke and Calgary where claimants are not filling in the paper cards, not putting them into envelopes. We're not receiving them and doing data entry and all kinds of other manual work. Rather, they're conducting that entire exercise on an ordinary push-button phone. It goes into the computer immediately. Then if you can imagine direct deposit, that's what completes the cycle. This has tremendous impact on our ability to move our staff to places where they can better serve Canadians rather than being engulfed in paper.

I'm pleased to tell you that the TELEDEC pilots are going well; the popularity of them grows regularly. We have confidence in the system we're running now, so we're actually promoting it aggressively in those communities and we will build a plan to do this on a national basis.

Moving further back in our offices, there's still a lot of other paper to be found. To qualify for UI it's necessary to present a variety of documents, and these documents find their way into our file cabinets. If you come to tour the offices - as I've done, so I understand - there's always one very large file cabinet in the middle of the office, which the staff can readily walk over to and access paper. They go back and forth all day long. The technology here is one that many financial institutions use; it's called document imaging. It simply takes a picture of the document, returns the precious original to the owner, and our staff in the back room, who are working on a computer terminal anyway, are able to not only do the work they're doing but to see this document in front of them without taking one step. We want to do things like that.

Something you might think we've already done or you might think is modest is that we want to get into more automated letter writing. The letters we're writing now are actually original each and every time, and yet you can be sure that the third paragraph always says the same thing. Computers can help us in that regard.

Finally, I want to tell you a bit about the employment side. There are still discussions to be had in this country about employment and human resource investment funds. As the systems person, I'm less than clear at this stage on exactly what needs to be done in general, but what I am clear on, once again, is where we can make a good start at this. It starts with self-service.

When a client moves from the insurance side of our department to the employment side, we need to know a lot about that person as they present themselves to an employment counsellor. We need to know what they think they need and give them some professional judgment on that. We are building kiosks - again, using the technology I referred to earlier - that will allow our clients to automatically use this and determine their needs to a degree. This is like a preview to seeing counsellors, in that when you sit down with a counsellor, the counsellor has available a fair amount of information on you. To the degree computers are able to do it - and they're only computers - there has been some preselection and screening based on what you express as your interests, your education, experience, and so on.

The other major activity in the employment area is to build what's called a single client file. Banks would call this a customer information file. The idea is that when a client presents himself or herself in our department or any other department or in business, quite frankly, it's beneficial to know as much as you can and as much as you're allowed to know about that person when they sit down to aid them expeditiously. This is a question of keeping computer records of the interactions and interventions that occurred between that client and ourselves. We don't have that kind of thing today or it's bound in paper files, so we want to get that kind of activity going as well.

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I'll stop by saying that what I'm trying to share is a whole variety of initiatives, all aimed at finding the right balance between the staff at HRDC and the use of technology. The goal is clear - serving Canadians.

If appropriate, we could now have Dennis go to the income security side. Or if you prefer, we can stay on the insurance side for a while.

The Chairman: I think it would be well if we heard from Mr. Kealey on the income security side.

Mr. Dennis Kealey (Manager, Income Security Program Redesign, Department of Human Resources Development): With old age security and the Canada pension plan, we have3.5 million seniors who are the clients of those two programs. We began a project back in 1988, when we were with Health and Welfare. It's a twelve-year project and we've carried it over to the Department of Human Resources Development.

The improvements we're trying to bring about we'll start to realize in about 1997. It's a long time. It's a big investment. What we're doing is a complete re-engineering of the way we deliver both of those programs, OAS and CPP. Technology is playing a very large role in it.

It might be best to clarify why we're doing it. First, we're experiencing a lot of service problems in trying to help our clients. We have large numbers of clients who can't get through on the telephones. We have problems with the telephone system. Clients who do get through on the telephone may spend a lot of time in a telephone queue.

If they go into our walk-in centres, the seniors may spend a lot of time in the waiting rooms, which we don't think is appropriate. When a senior finally gets through to a front-line staff member to get assistance, that staff member is usually only in a position to gather information and promise the client they'll get back in due course. Right now, with the way the delivery is set up, our front-line staff can't get at and manipulate the information in the systems. We also have a lot of backlogs, both in processing applications for pensions and in processing appeals.

Suffice it to say we're barely managing with those kinds of client service problems. But what we're really focused on is that over the next fifteen years our client group is going to increase by some 41%. We would never be able to manage and deliver any kind of service to our clients if we didn't do something dramatic, as we are doing.

The kinds of things we're doing...we're putting in a completely new computer system that will enable all front-line staff to have direct access to each client's file and to make benefit decisions on the spot. Right now, for example, a client comes in and if it's a matter of an OAS benefit, it might take eight days minimum before it's processed. What we're putting in place will enable the front-line staff to process the benefit right on the spot and hand over a letter indicating what that pensioner is entitled to. The pensioners can walk away with the decisions in their hands. That's a very substantial improvement from what we have today.

In addition, we're doing a lot of work on our telephones. We're going to be putting in a very modern interconnected kind of telephone system, where we can take advantage of workload flows from one region to another. Usually your peak telephone workload is between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. In different time zones you can move that work around, and we'll have the capability to do that.

We're going to make some use, as on the insurance side, of IVR, interactive voice response system. But with seniors we feel it probably will apply to only about 15% of the business they want to do. We're not planning on much more, although our early pilots in this area indicate that seniors are taking up on this part of the telephone system at a rate of 15% to 20%. It may prove to be more advantageous to our clients than we had planned.

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Another thing we're doing is putting in what we call presumptive applications. Of course people who have been in the workforce make contributions to the Canada pension plan; this is reported to Revenue Canada and these are accumulated over time. This information is transferred to our department. We know from our files when people are reaching the age of 64 1/2, and our intention is to send out the application with the information on it that we have on file for the prospective pensioner to sign. They can send it back to us and we can have it processed. That client will never have to contact us, and when they reach age 65 they'll start to receive their benefit.

That's going to take a lot of the workload off our walk-in centres right now, because the client won't have to come in the first place. As well, it will take a lot of the pressure off the telephones, caused by clients calling to find out what to do.

Actually, I think many constituency offices are an extension of our offices.

Very similar to the presumptive application is something we call a directed application. When a client calls on the telephone and is seeking to know how to apply and get the forms, etc., the operator will now be in a position to take down the information immediately and enter it into the system, and the system will direct a partially completed application to that client. The turn-around time on that is going to be substantially improved over what we have today.

Those are a number of improvements in service that are going to be brought about by taking quite a bit of advantage of the technology available to us.

So in a very broad outline, that's the project. I'll be pleased to respond to any questions you may have on it.

The Chairman: I have just a small point. We're talking of ISP redesign?

Mr. Kealey: Yes.

The Chairman: That's still part of that scheme.

Mr. Kealey: That's the project to re-engineer the delivery of old age security and Canada pension plan.

The Chairman: Thank you.

[Translation]

Mr. Crête (Kamouraska - Rivière-du-Loup): I will start with a brief comment. Listening to your presentation, two things came to my mind. The first had to do with Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. I had the feeling that you were referring to this kind of perfect world that, hopefully will never come about. I was also thinking of McDonald's restaurants.

Do you know why McDonald's sells so many hamburgers? It's because hamburgers are served by human beings. It's not because they make the best hamburgers in the world, but because the customer faces a human being.

Your presentation is based on an idea I find absolutely ludicrous that is having the Department of Human Resources Development replacing staff by machines. This is quite ironic. This is my opening comment.

I know of small employment centres currently experimenting with pilot projects. When a UI claimant walks in for the first time, he completes his card and immediately meets a counsellor who will steer him in the right direction to find employment.

The impact of your new kiosks - and I'm willing to bet on this - will be an increase in the coming years in the number of cases of abuse; many more claimants won't do their follow-up and will join the ranks of the long-term unemployed.

I will now turn to my questions. I don't know when you called your voice mail for the last time. When was the last time either of you called your voice mail and tried to get out of the loop by punching 1, 2, 3 or 4 on the keypad? How do you do that? In any case, seniors are afraid of this system. They are not robots; they are human beings, people who have had very interesting lives.

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As for computer terminals, you mentioned agreements with social groups. There is an opportunity in this area. With the banking system, the machine gives you information on your cheques. You go to an ATM to withdraw money and get the balance on your account. It may be interesting. But when you talk about someone who is trying to find a job, the concept does not really work any more.

It might be interesting to see if the Post office network would not be ideally suited for such terminals so that people could go there to get information, bring in some business and get some first-hand advice from the postmaster.

Have you had discussions with Canada Post along those lines? I know what you normally provide. Your system can be installed somewhere else than in an employment centre, but the user must pay the cost. Would it be possible to install such a network?

Before a decision is made, would it be possible to get a copy of the employment centre's redesigned proposal so that members might be consulted on a project that concerns them? It is their constituents who are going to be affected.

What worries me in this redesign, is that fact that the size of those centres has been defined by the number of employees there will be and not by the type of clientele they will be serving. The expertise of a local centre will not necessarily be fashioned after its client base. In some areas, a high number of seasonal workers would call for a very different make-up. Will there be a direct relationship with the client base and will we have the wording of the proposal before a decision is made?

[English]

Mr. McNaughton: I will try several of those questions and turn to Doug for the last.

The first question about trying our phones, I'll answer for myself and say that no, I have not, but now that I've heard the question, I will. I can assure you that these three people in front of you are all of the sense to try. We could list the things we do try, but that isn't of interest to you. I appreciate fully that you're concerned about a specific service. I would just like to assure you that we do try these things, because that's the only way we learn.

The phones for seniors require improvement. Dennis was clear on that in his commentary, and what he is trying to construct with his able colleagues is intended to improve that. We know that we can make phone services for seniors better, and we will.

We fully appreciate your comments that machines may be good for mathematics but they are not good for things best done between two human beings. I tried to say in my comments - I will repeat it - that we are trying to make that differentiation.

One of the most popular things I believe we will have in the long haul is the use of the simple black telephone to file a biweekly report. It's a low-tech application. It is not a counselling, face-to-face type of exercise; it is merely the reporting of numbers, namely income earned during a period. That works very well and we find that Canadians like using that very much. It is our intent to apply technology to that class of problem.

Yes, I've been in contact with the post office. I and my colleague have been talking a lot. We've been bringing our teams together. I well represent what you're stating, sir, that they probably have the single most extensive network of offices in this country. Now that they have engaged others to help them in that pursuit, they in fact have in excess of 19,000 physical locations in Canada. As we contemplate how to do our job best, I assure you that we are talking to them in their 19,000 locations. The advantage of that is obvious to us, but I thank you for that suggestion.

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As for the report of the work Doug was referring to, maybe Doug can help me a bit there.

Mr. Matheson: The report we prepared for the minister is in his office. From my perspective as an official, the decision as to the consultation with members of the House is with the minister.

Mr. Kealey: A couple of comments were made about the personal service and getting in the loop on the mechanical telephones. I'd like to say we share many of the same concerns you spoke about. Right now about 10% of our business is face to face. This is where the senior needs assistance in filling out the application and making certain options about what benefits to take. At the end of the day we are going to end up with that same 10% continuing to get the face-to-face service. What we will be able to do is provide that service in a better way.

About the telephone, we were very concerned about whether or not the technology of interactive voice response was applicable to seniors. I would say we had a very modest target of trying to serve 15% - I mentioned that - and we're working out to about that 15% or 20%.

But in developing and designing what we are doing here, we are very much consulting with our client groups. That's the point I wanted to make. We are meeting with national seniors' groups and reviewing all of how we're designing these systems with them. We are having focus groups where various parts of the design are being tested with seniors, where the IVR technology.... An example of the kinds of comments they make to us is ``Don't give us too many options. Give us something like one, two, or three options.'' That's the kind of thing we're doing. They are encouraging us to give messages where you speak slowly.

In sum, we're getting a lot of input directly from focus groups. These are being conducted every step of the way as we proceed with our design, to ensure the technology we do put in place is appropriate to our client group. As well, we are conducting client satisfaction surveys periodically through the development of the project to ensure we're getting a good representation of their views on the changes we are making. I wanted to assure the member in that respect.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Crête. We will come back to you later if time permits.

[English]

Mrs. Ablonczy (Calgary North): I have a quick question about the systems that are being upgraded. As the hardware and equipment are phased out for this new technology, what happens to the old equipment?

Mr. McNaughton: That question is often asked with educational interests behind it. I am not sure if that's your interest.

The old equipment in this case, of all the things I was referring to - and we have our fair share of old equipment - would be our oldest equipment in kiosks and job bank devices. If you walk up to them and look at them today, they do not look like other things you and I encounter today. But they are still extremely useful and are being used for only one particular purpose today, namely job bank. I keep staring at them and thinking maybe we can use them for that and a few other things as well. They have a life of a few years left. I have to say in all honesty I have not thought up the answer to what we do with them then. Do you have a suggestion?

Mrs. Ablonczy: You mentioned educational interests. Is that not a feasible possibility?

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Mr. McNaughton: Absolutely. I have spent a fair amount of time in educational circles and I know, despite what we often hear from educators, that the technology that students confront is often more modern than what most of us use in other walks of our life. I also appreciate that there are other areas in the country where there is none. The computers inside a lot of these older kiosks are far from what children are using today. They are far older, but if they can be of use to young people learning, then you have my commitment to do my best to try to do the match.

Mrs. Ablonczy: But you haven't investigated it specifically?

Mr. McNaughton: No, because I think we can use these for another two, three, or four years.

Mrs. Ablonczy: Maybe I'm not understanding. Are these information kiosks physical structures? What is an information kiosk?

Mr. McNaughton: I was one of the last people in my crowd to start getting money out of a machine. I do not mean to embarrass you, therefore, in asking if you regularly withdraw cash from a banking machine with your card. It is a comparable machine; that's the image you should have.

What amazes me about bank machines is that the TV picture, the screen, is still very old-fashioned. You can use that as a vehicle to make information useful, exciting and interesting or very boring. I suspect you would agree with me that our experience with banking machines is relatively boring, but other than that -

Mrs. Ablonczy: It depends on how much money comes out.

Mr. McNaughton: That's true. Normally I get the amount I ask for and pay the piper accordingly.

Our technology tries to make better use of the way information is presented, but other than that it's comparable to a banking machine.

Mrs. Ablonczy: Where are these being put? How many are there?

Mr. McNaughton: Of the 4,000 job bank devices we have at present, 3,500 are located within our offices, CECs; 500 are in malls, provincial government offices, schools, and libraries. Malls are probably among the most popular locations. Typically it would be the same mall you would find one of our offices in, but the mall doors are open a lot longer than our office doors and this is a way of trying to reach out to the client.

We are initially installing the new systems I refer to that can be used for applying for insurance predominantly within our offices. There are only 500 machines at this stage.

When you are using that simple kiosk called the telephone to do biweekly reporting, that's your home or anywhere else. The sooner we can get that to be national, the sooner we can serve Canadians better.

Mrs. Ablonczy: What is the cost of the kiosks?

Mr. McNaughton: The newer kiosks are in the range of $5,000 to $7,000.

Mr. Matheson: The kiosks you see from the banking industry are designed to be stand-alone machines in a relatively hostile environment, if I can use that term. In other words, they're subject to vandalism and things of that nature, so they tend to build a bulletproof one made of steel. It costs from roughly $30,000 to, say, $80,000 for ones that have to protect a lot of cash.

In our situation, either we have the machines in our own offices or we place most of them in other controlled environments, other government offices such as those of people who work in the social services field. When they are in a controlled environment, they don't have to be so bulletproof. So we have taken the low-tech, cheap approach of using nicely painted plywood cabinets and regular micro-computers. Our kiosks cost around $5,000 to $6,000 in comparison to, say, the steel version for $30,000, which is what it would cost if we went that route.

Mrs. Ablonczy: So no one is going to beat the machine up if it doesn't deliver a job right away.

Mr. Matheson: Well, we have had some vandalism. Not to pick on any particular city, but the folks in Charlottetown like to pry the caps off the keys. There are a few cases of vandalism, for sure.

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Mr. McNaughton: In the meantime we're providing employment for the carpenters.

Mrs. Ablonczy: I have a question for you on the employment component of insurance and the training programs. I was wondering how the training agents are chosen. Who gets the contracts to provide training programs under these initiatives?

Mr. Matheson: Here I assume you are referring to our usage of third parties to deliver certain of our services.

In the delivery of various programs in the employment service that are primarily funded by unemployment insurance - they're aimed at claimants - the choice of contractor rests at the local level. Our local manager and staff at the local level tend to make that decision, which is based on representation from within the community. So it depends completely on the circumstance within the community. Sometimes coordinating groups or third parties are chosen because of their relationship with a certain clientele. Sometimes they are chosen because they have unique features as service providers.

We could cite examples from across the country. For example, in the Halifax north area there's a large black population. A coordinating group has been chosen that represents that community. It's a community that we would have difficulty dealing with. In the part of the country that you represent, we have significant problems dealing with aboriginals and our Pathways activity. We recognize that aboriginals often don't qualify for unemployment insurance, but we work with Pathways and native bands themselves to devolve the programming to them.

So we have a variety of initiatives and a variety of contractors. As I say, the choice rests at the local level. Usually coordinating groups are selected based on some particular characteristic they can bring to the service offering, which complements our normal office offerings.

Ms Minna (Beaches - Woodbine): I have a few questions around the CEC offices. Take the presentation. I think we're reducing staff by 5,000. Is my understanding right that of the 5,000, 30% are on the front line?

Mr. Matheson: No, it's the reverse. The reduction at the national/regional office is 30% of their current complement of staff. The reduction at the local level is approximately 17%.

Ms Minna: The half hour that you were talking about, is that by car or by public transit?

Mr. Matheson: It's by car. It's an arbitrary way we have used to equalize the service nationwide. For example, we didn't say that for every 100,000 of the population there should be an office. What we did was to try to take into account the diversity of the population. Based on that, metropolitan areas like Toronto will have fewer offices on a per capita basis than rural areas. So rural areas get a greater proportion.

Even doing that, you still have some problems. We will still have problems reaching all the clientele living across the country. It's not possible for us to afford placing sufficient offices in every community across the country to give everybody access on a face-to-face basis. What we've tried to do is strike a standard that represents a compromise between the cost, the affordability aspect, and the ability to provide service. We have tried to structure a plan that provides that 90% within 30 minutes for each province.

On a province-by-province basis, we have then equalized the service. Some provinces have more offices than others, but we feel that's a fairness aspect of the plan in terms of the provision of similar services across the country.

Ms Minna: You had talked about the contracting with local organizations and community service agencies. I presume these are voluntary, not-for-profit organizations that would be providing services in a local environment. Some of them provide job training, employment services, and what have you.

.1635

Mr. McNaughton: When we're referring to local groups being extensions of our offices, we're absolutely referring to a not-for-profit situation. When we're referring to training, that could be either.

The point Doug was trying to make is that when we're doing employment training we're absolutely convinced, as I know you are, that one size does not fit all. We're trying to leave a lot of discretion to that area of the country, to the knowledge the local people have, and to give them the freedom to do what they think is right. Our emphasis is on what works, and if it isn't working, then it suggests change.

Ms Minna: So for job training you could be contracting with an employer, for instance, as opposed to a community-based organization?

Mr. Matheson: Yes. We're talking about a variety of situations here. At the lowest level, I spoke to the need to provide a basic package of services to Canadians. That basic package of service was essentially the labour market information, specific job vacancy information, and the ability to file an unemployment insurance claim. For that basic package of service, which is a little bit separate from the question you just raised, we're looking for and have had discussions broadly with many not-for-profit groups in many communities across the country, at both the provincial and municipal government levels and also in terms of non-government organizations, the NGOs.

The situation you raised a moment ago related to other kinds of services beyond that basic package of information. We may also want those people to deliver this basic package, but you were referring specifically to other groups we contract with for the provision of other kinds of service. For example, we contract with groups to provide counselling services, certain kinds of placement services, selection and referral to training, and in some cases, specific training delivery.

If we take training delivery as an example, in the past our most frequent contract for training delivery has been with provincial organizations, provincial institutions. But we have always had some contracting for training delivery with private sector for-profit firms, which I suppose we could call private schools in a sense. We're talking here not about academic institutions but about technical types of training. So there are some for-profit people we contract for the delivery of specific kinds of services. But for the basic package of services I referred to earlier, we are looking here....

I think we spoke earlier about the post office. Although the post office is very, very widespread, our preference would still be to try to find somebody who works in the social services field, because these people tend to have a broader understanding of client problems. Of course if we cannot get somebody in that field, then we would be willing to entertain other sources. But we do recognize the post office as a profit-seeking entity.

Ms Minna: I was going to say that the post office, apart from being a profit-seeking entity, doesn't have the wherewithal or the expertise to be able to deal with human beings and problems they would be facing. Chances are they wouldn't be able to cope with the kinds of stuff that would come up.

Mr. McNaughton: It's their physical presence in 19,000 locations that appeals to us.

Ms Minna: In terms of kiosks, I understand that, but in terms of doing one-on-one counselling or any other stuff you might contract, it would be somewhat difficult.

Mr. Matheson: Yes, we agree. We've never contemplated contracting with the post office to do those kinds of services.

Ms Minna: My final question has to do with the barriers and the problem of language and literacy levels, which kiosks and technology don't help. Are you looking at your contracting out with community organizations as a way to resolve that, or are you looking at integrating that into your direct service with staff in terms of...?

I know you're not obliged to serve in any more than English or French, but the reality is that the make-up of some parts of this country is quite complex. So there are two problems: the language barriers and the illiteracy in some other parts of the country.

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Mr. Matheson: I think it's best to deal with that by looking at a few examples. In the larger metropolitan areas such as Toronto and Vancouver, where there are substantial populations of immigrants who speak neither English nor French - which have, for example, large contingents of Vietnamese, Chinese and so on - we've gone out of the way to recruit staff who can provide service within our offices in those other languages. East Hastings office in Vancouver is a case in point.

We also very frequently contract with community groups to represent those particular people. In Toronto I believe we have a contract with the Portuguese community to help us deliver service to the Portuguese in the High Park office.

If we go beyond the big cities, and I think your question was most concerned with this, the issue of language is an important one and we have two situations. The first is the non-English problem. For example, with the formation of Nunavut, the Inuit language will become official. So our Iqaluit office is equipped to deal in Inuit on a routine basis with the clientele, including local translation of our forms and things of that nature.

If we look at the situation in northwestern New Brunswick, where there is a very mixed francophone and anglophone population, our strategy there of course is to routinely provide service in both official languages in our offices. The systems we referred to are available in both official languages and are equally easy to use.

Some of the clientele may not be able to use them, either due to literacy problems or due to disability. The literacy issue is a very difficult one for us because whether you're using a computer or not, those people find it very difficult to read our forms. So we have a significant problem with literacy. In rural New Brunswick we've adopted the strategy of using contract agents to assist with people who have literacy problems. Dealing with members of the public who cannot read and write at the level in which our society normally works is an extremely difficult matter for us, and the only solution is to have those people come to our office.

Now, the proposed office structure can offer assistance to 90% of the public. However, there are still others we can't reach, and for those people our solution is to have them phone us. We then take whatever steps are needed to assist them.

In the situation of people with disabilities, we have working relationships at the national level with all the major organizations representing the disabled: the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, the Canadian Paraplegic Association and so on. In all cases we seek the assistance of the representative group to assist us in dealing with those clients. I'm not aware of major problems in dealing with the disabled from our offices, but when there are any, we work with the group and try to react to the specific individuals concerned.

The Chairman: I will turn now to Mr. Scott for a short round and then we'll go to the other questions that are still unanswered.

Mr. Scott (Fredericton - York - Sunbury): To be very quick and specific, you mentioned official languages, so I assume that the technology incorporates the need to deliver those services in both official languages.

I was curious about the statistical reference to 90% of the population being within half an hour. Are areas such as - you mentioned northern New Brunswick - factored into that equation, where the heavy usage is?

Mr. Matheson: Our clientele represents a very broad cross-section of the Canadian public. I think Dennis cited the more than three million seniors who come to use our services, and the unemployed also represent more than three million per year.

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The actual usage itself is very widespread, but that does not mean there isn't somewhat higher usage in areas of the country with a higher unemployment rate. I think our internal resourcing models allocate more staff and more budget to those parts of the country that have greater workloads - for example, Newfoundland, where there are significant unemployment problems and significant problems with the fishery that we are working with. Newfoundland has a greater program budget to deal with the fishery. They have a greater staffing complement to process claims, to provide counselling assistance, and to work with the fishery than other regions would have on a per capita basis.

On whether we went to calculate if clientele in small villages in northwestern New Brunswick, for example, might have a greater or more intense usage of our services than others, no, we didn't. We took it on the population level. But as I say, our resourcing models will give greater resources to those parts of the country with a greater workload.

Mr. Scott: You mentioned a 30% reduction in headquarters and regional staff. Does that 30% stand when you separate headquarters and regional staff?

Mr. McNaughton: Yes.

Mr. Scott: It's not weighted one way or the other. It's not hard to tell -

Mr. Matheson: No, it's very close to being equal. I'm sure if you considered the regional office in Fredericton and compared it with the cuts in this city, members from here would feel equally hard done by.

Mr. Scott: Finally, with the total reduction, the 17% or 18% reduction in downsizing on the front line, there was a reference to the desire to lean heavily on administration rather than face-to-face service. I assume you can statistically determine that.

Mr. Matheson: Yes.

Mr. McNaughton: I'd say yes and no, in the following sense. When managers are faced with this kind of challenge, which isn't necessarily the first thing you'd ask for, you start to think about how you successfully carry on with fewer people. If you go about it right, you're probably going to engage a fair number of the people around you in that discussion. You may even choose to engage some clients. You start to think about doing things differently. I'd become very popular in the department, because people are obviously counting on technology to play a share of the challenge here.

I think it would be very hard to measure the before and the after, because it's putting us through a change that most people would consider good. Rather than measuring what the jobs are, you measure which things really will continue to need to be done and which ones won't. God forbid you were counting the spots on the ceiling - and we're not, but you know what I mean. Some things just don't have a place any more. There's a new value system in place.

So as much as we'd like to answer - there's no reason to withhold that answer - I personally would not believe the answer. I'd rather report to you that I see a lot of healthy discussion going on at the manager level about how we're going to do it better. A lot of the indication of this is that we move functions around and adopt new functions and focus to serve the client. I know that sounds like the thing to say, but it seriously is the case.

Mr. Scott: But it is weighted heavily on the side of rationalizing administration.

Mr. McNaughton: Yes, and a lot of flexibility for the local manager and the region - in fact, in some cases, regions. I can assure you there's a lot of healthy discussion going on with the gentleman you'll know in your province and his colleagues in the other three provinces about how we can help each other with back-room types of activity so we can save more of our resources and apply more of our resources to serving the client. It has started an awful lot of healthy discussion and we believe we'll come out of it a healthier organization.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Scott.

[Translation]

Mr. Crête.

Mr. Crête: I have two short questions on the employment centre's reform.

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Concerning regional managers, I know that the structure in Quebec was different from the one in Ontario. According to the reform plan, will this structure be the same almost everywhere or will we keep the existing one?

If we succeeded in an employment centre to make significant savings in terms of renting costs and so on, could we spare ourselves the dismissals, or are these costs part of different envelopes from the personnel?

Take, for example, a smaller employment centre which could have an agreement on a project with la Société d'aide au développement des collectivités and other community agencies, not for a one-stop counter, but to be located in the same building. This could save them one job?

[English]

Mr. Matheson: The first question you raised dealt with the difference in structure between large provinces and presumably smaller provinces. The current structure in Quebec -

[Translation]

Mr. Crête: It dealt with a difference between Quebec and Ontario or another province.

[English]

Mr. Matheson: Quebec and Ontario currently have a very similar structure. I'm talking now of our internal bureaucracy. They have a regional office.

[Translation]

Mr. Crête: This is too what I'm talking about.

[English]

Mr. Matheson: Quebec has a regional office in Montreal, Ontario has one in Toronto, and each of them has divided its operations into areas. In Quebec they're called réseaux and in Ontario they're called districts. The réseau typically has a staff of around twenty people or so, and the offices in the region within that area of the réseau report to the chef du réseau, the director of the district.

In the proposed environment, by having fewer main offices, Quebec is proposing.... Of the 90, Quebec's share is roughly 25 to 28, if I recall. I don't have the exact number in front of me. There they would not be divided into réseaux, so the réseau level of the organization vanishes and there's one source of savings. It's a completely administrative type of overhead. The authority that used to reside at the réseau level is being delegated to the managers of the local office so that they have more autonomy and more authority to serve the public.

The second question is a very complex issue, the issue of the co-location of offices and the duplication of activities with a provincial government, for example.

[Translation]

Mr. Crête: I am not talking about the political aspect of the situation. I don't want to debate about the one-stop counter, etc. I only want to know if we could directly save one job if we were able, technically, to save money by regrouping services. For example, there would be only one conference room. Would the budget authorize this kind of initiative or do we have a separate envelope so that these initiatives won't permit to save one job?

[English]

Mr. McNaughton: I'm just trusting my colleague for a moment, being fairly new to the federal government myself. If my understanding is right so far, the moneys that go to leases are not necessarily directly under our control, Doug, but they are in the hands of Public Works. Do I have that right?

Mr. Matheson: Yes, but that too is complicated. Internal government finances tend to be quite complicated. I was hesitating in my response to your question.

I don't know the exact numbers for Quebec, for example. Our total accommodations budget is approximately $150 million. We are anticipating in this activity to save about one-quarter of that amount of money, but that money doesn't rest solely with us. It also rests with Public Works. I don't know the exact split, so we can report back to this committee outside and give you detailed numbers if it's desirable to do so.

The Vice-Chair (Ms Minna): That would be helpful, yes.

Mr. McNaughton: If I could just expand on that for one second, please, I think it would help the member.

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I'm part of the senior committee that reviews the proposals that come in from the regions. Then our deputy ministers do the ultimate review, in advance of seeking the minister's directions.

The exercise has been one to put freedom and innovation into the hands of the people across the country. Newfoundland is not Quebec; Quebec is not Winnipeg, Manitoba; and Winnipeg, Manitoba, is not British Columbia. So we have encouraged people to come forward with what's right for them. As I said earlier, one size does not fit all. I know you weren't inferring that we were, but we are not measuring things in the spirit of precision that the one side of your question could imply. If people can come forward with positive, creative solutions, then I assure you they're being listened to.

Mr. Johnston (Wetaskiwin): I couldn't help but notice that the two areas that weren't covered when we did our consultations and study were the CPP and the OAS. You made the statement here that there needs to be a complete re-engineering of OAS and CPP delivery. I would like to know what factors necessitate that and the rationale behind it.

Mr. Kealey: I guess there would be four main reasons. One has to do with the level of client service being delivered today. There are a lot of problems with that service: with telephones, with the waiting rooms in the walk-in centres, with the number of backlogs we have in the processing centres, with the inability of our front-line staff to access the computer files to be able to give a quick response to clients, and a number of issues such as those. We're barely managing with the kinds of problems that are facing us today, and over the next 15 years we face a 41% increase in our number of clients. We simply could not sustain a client service delivery network in a responsible way if we continued with what we have.

Another reason is the systems, the work processes we have. It is a very labour-intensive operation. It is fraught with all kinds of errors that can be made because the applications are handled by large numbers of people. They're passed from one staff member to another, and as a result we have what I'll call a mispayment problem. The Auditor General points out that our mispayments total some $175 million per year, and we have to do something about that. Basically the work processes and systems we have in place are not serving us very well in that respect.

Another reason is that, as with all parts of government, over the last several years we've had to look for ways to do more, or provide at least the same levels of service, with fewer resources. We've had to look for opportunities for making efficiencies in our operation.

I think those are essentially the driving factors behind why we are redesigning and re-engineering the delivery of the old age security and the Canada pension plan.

Mr. Johnston: You indicated that an inquiry or application would come in and it would go from one hand to another and to another. What's the reason for that? It seems a tremendously inefficient way to handle it.

Mr. Kealey: Absolutely. I agree with that. It's probably historical; it probably relates to the way the technology was developed. You have to keep in mind that the computer technology we have is basically from the late sixties and early seventies, and we're trying to move it up to the nineties.

Right now our processing centres are like factories for processing the applications, but all of our small walk-in centres don't have access to the computer systems. They can call it up on a terminal and read what's there, but they can't make changes while the client is in front of them. So basically they have to take the client's application, make some adjustments to it, and send it to their mail room. It gets sent off to the regional office. The mail room has to open it, sort it, process it, and send it off to one or two analysts. If it involves both OAS and CPP, different analysts will look after that.

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So there's a whole series of hand-offs from one employee to another. When the benefit decision is made, of course that might be reversed and it has to be sent all the way back again. It's the way the operation was developed originally. I assume it was appropriate to the times. It's certainly not appropriate to today, and we're trying to fix that.

Mr. McCormick (Hastings - Frontenac - Lennox and Addington): Thank you, gentlemen, for being here today. If you see us yawning... I'm talking about myself personally. Perhaps next year I won't book myself quite as extensively on the weekends when I realize we're going to have extended hours in the last two weeks.

I really commend you on what you're doing in any way you can help the public in the delivery of systems, especially the seniors. I realize I'm on this side of the table, but I do like what I hear from within the department, and the efforts you're making when people confront you with situations and you're saying, yes, we have these improvements.

You mentioned, for example, the seniors and the OAS benefits, and that eventually with the new computers the person will be able to address the situation immediately. My one short question is this: approximately - I'm not quoting you - how far into the future might this be available in most areas?

Mr. McNaughton: Before Dennis answers that, I think we should respond - I'll use my own response, but can assure you my colleagues' are the same.... One is very serious about one's accountability to a minister and accountability to a room like this, but an 89-year-old mother keeps you on your toes. That's the kind of accountability I suspect you were referring to.

Mr. Kealey: In most cases, for the processing of a simple OAS benefit, if a senior goes into a walk-in centre, they should be able to walk away within half an hour with the benefit decision. That will begin to take place in March 1997. We'll be making several kinds of improvements along the way, but the full implementation is March 1997.

Mr. McCormick: Thank you. It's in the immediate future; that sounds good.

Regarding the kiosks, I'm not as familiar as I should be with what's available in the CEC offices now. It is one of the many things I must do this summer. Again, how far into the future will a person be able to go into an office in Ontario and perhaps access the opportunities available in that province, and secondly across the country, as far as employment goes?

Mr. McNaughton: You can do that now, in fact, in a limited form. I refer to how we would give new life to the job bank system in the sense of electronic labour exchange and in the sense of labour market information.

Everything I was referring to we are going to deliver on a national level within the next two years, or we're not going to do it. Because of the downsizing challenge, we find we have to spend all our energy now thinking of the immediate future. So regarding your time line, all those things were two years.

Mr. McCormick: Excellent, thank you. I referred to that because I hear the minister saying how we're going to have more opportunities available for the public, so I appreciate that.

In regard to my third question, there's no politics involved in the question, but there is a regional question that I'm getting hit with at home. We heard when we crossed the country on this committee last year, and now Canadians are reading the newspapers and seeing the proposed changes for unemployment insurance... they're reading and hearing how some people already in Quebec of all parties and all citizens are going to kick when 12% cuts are received. Also, our people read that Ontario will receive 5% cuts. But then the public is reading that after all this happens - which is beyond your mandate, I'm sure - Quebec will still get more than 50% more moneys returned to them for what they invest in the UI.

When this happens, that's the way it is, so you're not responsible and we're not responsible, but 50% more... does it take 50% more employees? I know it doesn't, but does Quebec get an improper balance of employees and less cut in employees because of this? I'm interested.

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Mr. Matheson: I think I can safely say no. Regarding the allocation of resources that we have internal in the department, we have a model for allocating budgets. That allocation is based on workloads.

It is true that Quebec as a province has a higher unemployment rate traditionally than Ontario, although Ontario had a high unemployment rate during the last recession. But on an ongoing historical basis, Quebec has had a higher unemployment rate than Ontario. As a result, they have had a greater allocation of the budget on a basis that - and we're not here today with all the numbers to try to prove that to you - internally in the department we think is fair.

In terms of the cuts being made right now in the department, each province is adjusting its resource base in accordance with the principles we laid down. I chose my words somewhat carefully because there was not a flat proportionate increase given to each province, to each region. There was not a flat cut given to every local office. We asked our regional staff to propose a delivery network that responded to the principles and to show us the size of reduction that would come out of it. Based on that, the reduction in Ontario and Quebec was quite similar, given the size of the resources they had.

Ontario is a larger province in terms of its population, but its resource allocation is only slightly larger than Quebec's because of Quebec's higher unemployment rate. The reductions on a proportionate basis were quite similar. If we had to produce numbers and argue whether they were equitable and so on, I think we could show that the two provinces have been affected in very similar ways and have accomplished their reductions in very similar ways as well.

The Chairman: Ms Cohen, did you have any questions?

Ms Cohen (Windsor - St. Clair): I have a couple of questions. I left a few minutes ago, not to be rude but just to check with my office and find out, since I have you here.... There's this lady who lives on...no. I'm kidding. I wanted to check and see how we were doing at home so that I could ask you those questions.

You will know that in Windsor, if you want to phone CPP, you have to call a 1-800 number and I believe the people who answer it are in Chatham. My staffers tell me they found two things with CPP. The good thing about CPP is that the demand is about the same all year long. With Revenue Canada and other agencies, we get peak calls in our office. Neither my staff nor I am complaining; we know we get paid to do this. CPP is fairly even all year, but they have told me that lately they've found, and other constituency offices they talk to in our region have found, that response time at the local office has really gone down. I assume that's because of cut-backs and reorganization. These are the people we deal with.

Mr. Kealey: No, it wouldn't be as a result of any cut-backs. It has more to do with the technological capability we have. I'm not sure about CPP, but I know the OAS systems have been having a lot of down time lately, and it's been happening nationally. It hasn't been in any one particular region. On average it works out to about one or two days per month, which is a lot of down time. It's very unfortunate for us. We don't have yearly peaks but we have monthly peaks, and the workload is around the cheque days. If the system happens to go down on a cheque day, we pay for it in spades.

Ms Cohen: So improving the system, your reorganization then, should relieve some of these problems?

Mr. Kealey: Absolutely.

Ms Cohen: I'm also told by my staff that we do get complaints, and I was really glad,Mr. Kealey, to hear you acknowledge that there are phone problems in terms of the telephone line-up. We get an awful lot of complaints about busy lines, about people waiting, and about people getting somebody on the other end who then is, my staff member used the term, less than professional. There's some abruptness and some real problem in terms of communication between the people answering the 1-800 line and my constituents.

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I'm not trying to be unfair. I don't know where that comes from. I don't know whether it comes from just having a very busy time of it. If there are line-ups to get onto a line or busy signals, then they must be working very hard.

It seems to me that as a government, we have an obligation to see that the people who are doing front-line service, including telephone front-line service, are patient, tolerant, and considerate of their clients. It seems to me that many of my constituents who have problems with front-line public servants, including telephone public servants, are people who can't cope, who have disabilities, who have linguistic or other problems. It seems to me that we should make sure to train people and assist them in giving the support that is needed so they can treat the public properly.

Finally, I hate people who argue by anecdote, but I'd like to give you one that I experienced, just to illustrate another point I'd like to make. A lady called me about four days after I was elected. She asked me to help her with her Canada pension plan problems. She had applied in B.C. She had to make a very difficult decision as to whether she was going to go in at 60 or 65, which was kind of tough for her. She had a disability as well. Then her husband died and she decided to move to Windsor so she could be close to a relative. She was worried about the application, so she went to the CPP people in B.C. They said there was no problem. There were computers, this was a national file, so she didn't have to worry about that.

She came to Windsor, changed her address, and did everything she had to, but she heard nothing. She called and was told that her file had gone missing. She said she'd just reapply, but was told she couldn't do that because there couldn't be two files, and there had to be an investigation about the old file. Seven months went by and she was told that she couldn't be paid retroactively to her 60th birthday.

I was a brand new member of Parliament. I used to practise law. In fact, I was still in my law office, so I was accustomed to having people call about problems I had never dealt with before. So I called the 1-800 number and couldn't get through for quite a while. I finally called Mr. Gray's office. I talked to his constituency assistant. She said she would fax me a form. All I had to do was fax it to Chatham, and then they would respond. I faxed the form to Chatham. Somebody called me back. Within 24 hours I had a commitment of a cheque for her that was retroactive to the seven-month point. Within five days she got her cheque.

Here is the problem as I see it. She told me that the counsellor she was dealing with had told her to go to her MP because she would get faster action that way. I have a problem with that. I'm very glad to do the work - please understand that; I'm not complaining about it - and I'm very glad we have these special numbers we can call to make our lives a lot easier. But there is something that gives me the wrong taste in my mouth when I think that I could get through faster than the guy on the street. Why wouldn't they just do it for her? Why couldn't they find the damned file and get the cheque if they did it for me?

That was my first experience. I don't do that kind of constituency work now because my staff does it, but it happens all the time.

Mr. McNaughton: Here's what we're describing across the department. Yes, we have the challenge of getting by with fewer employees. From one point of view, that might worry you and us even more about these kinds of events, but what I hope you can hear from the three of us is that we're trying to rise above it.

Most human beings like to serve other human beings. They prefer to do it more on a friendly, cooperative, helpful basis than what you and I have experienced in life from time to time, unfortunately. We're trying to empower our people. We're trying to equip them. We're trying to give them a time in the day to take a breath. I probably shouldn't say it, but I'm sure you've thought about how hard it is when you're on a telephone all day long with my mom.

Ms Cohen: There's no question.

Mr. McNaughton: She's demanding. She doesn't always hear things right. But that's never an excuse. What we're talking about is trying to make our service better. That's what our job is and that's what we're trying to do for you so your phone rings less due to your constituents.

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I understand the principle, as you say, that the client should always be able to get through as fast as or faster than you can, but the sooner we know, the sooner we can find a problem, the sooner we can fix it. We're here to help. Let us know as soon as you spot something. It will take you a while sometimes to realize it's a real problem, but we want to know about it and we want to nip it in the bud and we want to fix it.

Ms Cohen: I'm not usually quite as negative as I may have sounded for those few minutes, but after a while the logic of it escapes you. Why do the letters MP after somebody's name get the problem solved when it can't be solved for the person in the public? Again, don't close down those special lines; we need them until this system is straightened out. But I hope the final goal is that Shaughnessy Cohen, senior citizen, can get through as quickly as Shaughnessy Cohen, MP.

Mr. Scott: Wait till she gets to be 89.

Ms Cohen: Oh, you think your mother is mean....

Mr. Kealey: Part of the thinking behind that is obviously a client is having a problem trying to access our services in some way. Whatever they've been trying to do, they've had a problem - sufficiently so that they've had to go to someone else to represent them. So in a sense you have a client who's having difficulty dealing with us, and our response is that this is a signal to us that there's a real problem; let's get on it. I don't think it's so much a matter of the MP after your name as it is the fact that we have a client who's having more than the normal difficulty in dealing with us for whatever reason. Let's get on it and do something about it. I'm sure that is part of the culture in the client service centres across the country.

Ms Cohen: I just want to emphasize that my staff have no complaints about the public servants they deal with in Windsor. We're very pleased and very helpful and we're having an open house for them in a couple of weeks.

Mr. Kealey: I think the managers of either the telephone centres or the client service centres would very much want to hear about general difficulties you may have. One way of getting a reading on the needs of our clients is to get that feedback. If there is an individual - I hope it wouldn't be the case and I would be disappointed if it were - who is providing less than the best service, the manager needs to know about it and take some action.

Ms Cohen: Sometimes you can tell from the person who calls you why they're having trouble on the other end of the line. That happens as well.

The Chairman: The other thing about the special 1-800 line is that probably if it were freely available, there would be a clamour by MPs for another 1-800 line so that they could get through to the 1-800 line they can't get through to because everybody is using the 1-800 line that's freely available. Those are some of the other problems we encounter.

Ms Cohen: That's why I'm saying don't take it away; we want it.

The Chairman: Maria Minna has one question, a very short one because we have to go. I have another question from Mr. McCormick and if I allow this, we'll be here all afternoon.

Maria, please be very quick.

Ms Minna: I'll be very quick, Mr. Chairman.

Mine is going to piggyback a bit on Shaughnessy Cohen's question. It has more to do with my concern with front-line staff. I have dealt with large institutions and front-line staff who deal with clients all day, and there's a problem of burn-out and overwork. I know the decision to cut staff obviously wasn't yours - that was a budget decision and I understand that - but I also would like to know and am concerned about how you're going to address the problem of dealing with people day in and day out.

Quite often what happens when there are cut-backs like this is that inevitably you have fewer staff than you had to cope with something, and there is no opportunity or ability for staff to have a break, for there to be any time off or away from clients. The overload becomes such that the front-line staff, the person who begins to feel all the burden, begins to treat the client negatively and that's only because it's the only person they can vent to.

I'm just wondering if you've built into your plan this whole problem of burn-out, training, supports or whatever for your front-line workers.

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Mr. McNaughton: Yes, and I want to tell you the progress so far. Our deputy minister is very focused on this issue as well. He recognizes that the management team in the department may not have a lot of experience in downsizing, burn-out, and all the other things you stated, mainly because this department hasn't had that experience in a long time, if ever.

We're going back to school. I've been to school twice now. My colleagues and all the senior people on down have all been in various settings. We're trying to be better managers, simply put, more sensitive to real human beings, to the signs of real human beings in trouble. We're being improved as managers and sensitized as managers. We've been in rooms where people are screaming and yelling and crying and the stress has come through. I'm talking about the managers, not the front-line staff.

Ms Minna: It works both ways.

Mr. McNaughton: We're getting ready. We won't be perfect at it, but I can promise you we'll be a lot better than we were at this time last year. We're aware of your concerns.

Mr. McCormick: I have a very short comment and question. I really do appreciate what I hear from you, and I feel things are heading in the right direction. These special phone numbers that we and our staff use are great. I think it's mainly that the person we get seems to be the person who can make a decision, whereas the other person who my cousin phones can't seem to make decisions. That seems to be more of the problem. I'll just leave it with you.

The Chairman: I think that was a comment, not a question.

Mr. McCormick: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: In closing I'd like to thank our witnesses for their testimony this afternoon and for being so forthcoming in their answers to our questions.

The meeting is adjourned.