Hon. Salma Ataullahjan: Minister Fraser, an Auditor General’s report in 2019 found that 1.2 million calls to your department’s call centre were prevented from reaching an agent. Regrettably, the situation has only become worse.

An answer to a written question on the Senate Order Paper shows that between April and December of last year, the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada call centre received over 2.6 million calls and 1.45 million of them were prevented from reaching the wait queue.

Minister, let me repeat that for you. In less than a year, almost 1.5 million calls were dropped, including calls from Canadian citizens, permanent residents and foreign nationals, some of whom are in desperate situations around the world and need your government’s help.

Minister, is that acceptable to you? Service has gone from bad to worse. Can you share with us what you are doing to fix it?

Hon. Salma Ataullahjan: Minister, two weeks ago, the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development released a report which criticized your department in spending funds that are intended to help communities in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to transition away from coal. This audit found that the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency funded many projects that “. . . lacked a connection to the coal transition.”

Minister, your department still has over $30 million from the Canada Coal Transition Initiative–Infrastructure Fund to spend between now and March of 2025. What are you doing to ensure that those taxpayer dollars are better targeted to specifically help coal workers and their communities in those two provinces?