If the digital shift of the Quebec government has been in the news for several years now, far from public debate, a quiet dematerialization is making progress at the Ministry of Employment and Social Solidarity (MESS): the UNIR project, which should be completely implemented by next fall.
Since 2021, many of us have been sounding the alarm to the government without any action being taken. The transformation of public service delivery at MESS inspires several fears among people on social assistance and the organizations that represent them.
What is the UNIR project?
The UNIR project, supposed to reform the way work is carried out at the MESS, is not all bad. The massive digitization of files which is planned will facilitate the processing of certain documents.
This digitization nevertheless represents the opening of a Pandora’s box. Indeed, it is the “decompartmentalized management of files” throughout the province that is at the heart of the project. Concretely, this means that the files of social assistance recipients will no longer be managed by an agent assigned to them, but rather by a multitude of people throughout the territory. It is also an automated process which will assign tasks to be accomplished to agents, thus undermining the place of their professional autonomy in their relations with citizens.
On the one hand, the UNIR project will therefore modify the work of socio-economic aid agents. These civil servants, often trained in social work and representing one of the only points of contact between people on social assistance and the public administration, will be given tasks to carry out in a multitude of cases of people they do not know.
The end of support services
On the other hand, we are already seeing several problems emerging for service providers. Automated case assignment will mean more depersonalized welfare management, where people will be required to repeat their story with every interaction. Imagine a victim of domestic violence having to repeat traumatic events over the phone and to successive officers to justify a note in the file. Yet this is where UNITE risks taking us.
The inability to speak with a single agent responsible for their file will increase the anxiety of many providers, limit the quality of the follow-up offered to them, increase the potential for errors in complex files, etc.
The minister must listen to avoid a new fiasco
We are demanding that the Minister responsible for Social Solidarity and Community Action, Chantal Rouleau, put on hold the implementation of the UNIR project, which seems to us to threaten not only the quality and accessibility of public services, but also the future of our social safety net. We also demand that the minister thoroughly revise this project by consulting organizations defending the rights of people on social assistance.
The government would do well to take a step back to avoid a fiasco similar to that of the Société de l’assurance automobile du Québec. Let us not forget that, in this case, the first victims would be people who are already at the end of their rope, forced to ask for “last resort” help.
*The full list of signatories is here.