Widely relayed by the major media, “the passport crisis” has for several weeks aroused the indignation of many Canadians who are surprised by the monumental failure of Service Canada to issue passports within a reasonable time.
Unemployed people who have had to deal with the defective machine that is Service Canada are probably frowning at the minister’s remarks when she invokes the exceptional nature of the situation. Some will also remember that in 2006, a union of Canadian public service employees pointed out the existence of internal directives that had the effect of falsifying the figures on real waiting times at Service Canada.
The lack of transparency and the mess at Service Canada are not new. Since the establishment of this mega-federal agency, groups defending the rights of the unemployed in the province have constantly denounced the increase in waiting times for the 006 salary, to reduce the backlog of 80,000 files the treatment exceeded 28 days, the Autonomous and Solidarity Movement of the Unemployed (MASSE) recommended increasing the number of agents by at least 20% and stopping the hunt for the “bad unemployed”.
The same story was given in 2008, 2010, 2013 and for all subsequent years. Finally, the Massé report on the quality of services, published in 2015, suggested a set of solutions that could have been put in place long before the pandemic. We must increase the number of officers and improve their training, simplify operational procedures and invest in technological infrastructure.
After seventeen years, it is clear that Service Canada has not only become a machine that weakens vulnerable populations, but a real obstacle to the exercise of the right to protection in the event of unemployment for all workers.
Since the winter of 2022 — when unemployment claims hit a historic low — Service Canada has been breaking sad records. In January, nearly 300,000 files did not meet processing standards, with some people waiting up to a year for their application to be processed. Kept in the shadows, future service providers have to call front-line services on average seven times to get a follow-up on their case.
The height of the aberration, requests classified as “humanitarian emergencies” have not been considered a priority for some time. Unemployed workers in distress are told to be patient, to go into debt and sometimes even to seek social assistance. The consequences are dramatic. Do you know many people who are able to support their families without income for two or even four months?
Beyond the pandemic
Far from being permeable to the waves of public administration reforms observed since 1970, Canada created Service Canada in 2005, a one-stop agency within which the programs of fourteen departments will henceforth be administered. This new structure, we are promised, “will make it possible to improve the quality of services while saving money”.
Service Canada imports management methods specific to those of private companies and demonstrates a clientelist vision of public services. The increased importance accorded to staff performance evaluation mechanisms makes administrative procedures more cumbersome, while the wall-to-wall computerization of services is unsuited to the real needs of the unemployed whose applications are “irregular”.
Result: the addition of a medical certificate in the application for employment insurance, or the declaration of indemnities from the CNESST for example, can deprive an unemployed person of benefits for months.
In the summer of 2020, the Trudeau government promised to adapt the unemployment insurance system “to the reality of workers in the 21e century “. However, as long as the government denies the profound dysfunctions of the apparatus supposed to administer the plan, Canadians risk not seeing the color of the benefits to which they are entitled.
The government’s amnesia has lasted long enough.