- Member of Parliament
- Member of the panel of chairs for the legislative committees
- Bloc Québécois
- Thérèse-De Blainville
- Quebec
- Voting Attendance: 68%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $122,743.44
- Government Page
- Feb/3/23 11:38:41 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, what people are going through with EI right now is a fiasco. It is just like the passport crisis, only this time, the federal government's victims are not waiting to travel, they are waiting to buy groceries. Service Canada is more like “no-service Canada”.
This government is just lurching from one crisis to the next. It is over here putting out one fire while two more are breaking out over there.
When will the minister make sure Service Canada can actually provide services to people?
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- Feb/3/23 11:37:25 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, employment insurance delays are longer than ever. Currently, one-quarter of EI applications take extra time to process, and more than half of those take over 50 days. That means people with no income are waiting 50 days.
Officials even advised people without jobs to use food banks or get their partner to support them. The kicker is that, while all this is going on, the minister has been cutting her employees' hours of work.
When will she do something about this fiasco?
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- Jun/23/22 2:42:34 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there is a discrepancy between what we are hearing and what we are seeing. The passport crisis is not just an administrative fiasco. People are standing out in the rain at their wits' end. People are missing their parents' funerals. People are losing contracts. The minister's message to them? “Your call is important to us.”
When will the people standing in line truly feel their situation is being taken seriously?
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- Jun/23/22 2:41:08 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that is not what is happening; the union is looking for those 600 people. It found five at the Guy‑Favreau complex. So much for that.
The union projects a return to normal only in October. The chaos cannot last another four months. The minister can bring people out of retirement to help. She can transfer resources from other departments. She can create a training blitz for the new employees. At the very least she can let in the people who are sleeping outside and ensure that they are treated humanely, even if that means renting rooms. That is how to manage a crisis.
What is the minister waiting for?
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- Jun/23/22 2:39:41 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the passport crisis comes as no surprise to anyone.
The union warned the government in January. This was foreseeable. Since 2018, the government has cut 450 jobs in passport offices. In the midst of a crisis, the 600 new hires the minister is talking about do not represent an increase in service. Those hires just bring the number of staff back up to prepandemic levels. We are in the midst of a crisis, and that requires crisis-level effort.
When will the minister deploy enough staff to keep the offices open seven days a week?
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- Jun/22/22 3:06:22 p.m.
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How reassuring, Mr. Speaker.
Thank goodness the federal government was not responsible for getting people vaccinated. Remember how the vaccination centres were run? We were greeted at the door with information and instructions, even though millions of us were seeking an appointment at the same time. What a stark contrast to the passport process.
We pay half of our taxes to this federal government, yet it is incapable of getting us a simple piece of photo ID.
Will the government at least acknowledge its own utter incompetence? I hope it at least feels ashamed.
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- Jun/22/22 3:04:59 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the government is taking people for fools when it comes to passports.
Today, it started issuing tickets with fixed appointment times to the people lining up outside the Montreal office. However, by 9:20 a.m., there were no more tickets left. According to TVA, the government gave out about 75 tickets, even though thousands of people are waiting for an appointment.
Is that really the best solution the government could come up with this week? If so, it really has a long way to go.
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- Jun/21/22 2:40:35 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, nothing is clear these days. People are being treated like cattle at passport offices. Instead of managing the crisis effectively, security officers at the Guy-Favreau complex reportedly threw out a journalist who was reporting on the line-ups.
If things are so bad that they cannot be shown on TV, the answer is not to kick out the media. The answer is to do a better job of managing the crisis.
When will the government extend hours of operation, reassign public servants, treat citizens with respect and ensure that everyone gets their passport?
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- Jun/20/22 2:42:07 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this government is incapable of planning and it is incapable of learning from its mistakes.
This is not the first time Service Canada has been in hot water. Its employees were unable to reassure worried citizens at the beginning of the pandemic. They were unable to help victims of CERB fraud last year. They were unable to process EI claims this winter. Now, they are unable to process passport applications.
For two years, nothing has been working, and yet nothing has changed. Does the minister understand that she is the one responsible for this?
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- Jun/20/22 2:41:01 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this week is Quebec's national holiday. Next week is July 1. That is two weeks in a row of statutory holidays that mark the beginning of summer every year. That means more people will be travelling and will need their passports.
In the midst of a crisis, what is the minister planning to do to deal with the spike in demand? Above all else, is she at least planning to keep the offices open on weekends?
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- Jun/20/22 2:39:42 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, people camped out in front of Service Canada offices all weekend to get their passports. They braved the wind and rain and stayed outside all weekend in the hopes of getting service. The worst part is that they were camped out in front of empty offices that closed for the weekend on Friday at 4 o'clock.
This weekend, people saw with their own eyes that no federal public servants were at work to help them. Does the minister realize how insulting that is?
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- Feb/1/22 2:44:30 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, behind service standards are people; people who cannot pay their rent because their employment insurance is not coming in, people who are waiting without knowing when that will end and whether they will last long enough, people who have no bread to put on the table. These people are not too concerned about service standards statistics. They want the federal government to find a way to look after them.
When will the minister reduce the backlog to zero?
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- Feb/1/22 2:43:02 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the minister hired staff, but not to process backlogged employment insurance files.
She hired inspectors to detect potential fraud. That will help clear out 10,000 cases, but it will not affect all the other people who are waiting. Canada is a G7 country, but right now, we have workers who have had no income for three months and cannot put food on the table because of administrative screw-ups. Some workers even have to disclose that they are destitute in hopes of being prioritized.
When will they get their benefits?
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- Feb/1/22 2:41:38 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, last year, 300,000 EI applications were not processed on time. Those 300,000 workers were denied their benefits by the federal government, in some cases, for more than three months. Cases continue to pile up every day.
Imagine having to go without income for three months. That is a betrayal of workers who have contributed to EI their whole lives, with the understanding that the federal government would support them in the event of misfortune.
What is the minister doing to eliminate the delays?
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