Have you seen the cartoon? The 12 labors of Asterix? One of the trials of the two Gallic heroes, Asterix and Obelix, is to go to the house that makes you mad to get the A-38 pass.
Posted at 10:00 a.m.
It’s a bit like the same process that Service Canada imposes on its clients. Passports, employment insurance and old-age pension, it’s the same fight! How can we come to this in the “most beautiful country in the world”? We thought we had seen it all with the Phoenix payroll system, but it seems not. After the civil servants, it is the turn of the population of the country to bail out.
And no one has yet spoken in the media about seniors who don’t receive their old age pension or their guaranteed income supplement on time because again, the Service Canada machine is jammed, entangled in rigid administrative rules and lacking in compassion.
I accompanied a person of my entourage suffering from a disability in his quest to receive his pension and his supplement. I must admit that errors were made in the application for benefits. But how do you explain that you sometimes have to wait an hour and a half on the phone to talk to someone to try to sort things out?
180 days
And if you wish to represent a person who does not have the capacity to undertake these steps because of his handicap, then good luck! To be agreed to talk to you, you must send a form to Service Canada signed by the person you represent. Until then, it can be explained. But be aware that it sometimes takes up to 180 days for the form to appear on file. Yes, six months! Just that ! It’s possible that you’ve been waiting all this time before you can intervene. This is the information we give you over the phone.
If the person has omitted to indicate their marital status in their application, just call and ask to correct? Nope ! Write a letter to Service Canada.
We don’t make such changes over the phone. It must be done in writing with all the deadlines that this implies. And the person is still waiting to receive his check!
What do those who have no family do? Elders who have no one to accompany them. I don’t know, but it saddens me just to think about it. It’s misery for sure.
But let’s not blame the officials. Like us, they are forced to live in this madhouse that the federal government has built and to which it seems to have lost the key. The people I have spoken to have tried to help me, but they are trapped in sometimes absurd bureaucratic procedures and obviously there are not enough of them to do the job.