Question Period Note: SOCIAL INSURANCE NUMBER PROGRAM – SERVICE STANDARDS

Social Insurance Number (SIN) program – service standards update – week ending December 1 2023. /

ESDC strives to meet all service standards associated with the SIN program and works diligently to identify issues or improvements to ensure successful SIN delivery to the clients.

SIN program service standard results for the week ending December 1, 2023, are:

Mail channel: 100.0% (target 90%)

In-person channel: 98.5% (target 95%)

SIN@Birth channel: 100% (target 99%)

E-SIN channel: 94.3 (target 90%)

Introduced in 1964, the Social Insurance Number (SIN) is a nine-digit number used as a file number for a variety of Government of Canada programs and benefits. The SIN plays a vital role in the sound management of many programs and services across the federal government. This includes ensuring that Canadians’ accounts are accurately identified and to share data for administration purposes.

The SIN Program processes over 2.6 million SIN transactions a year including the issuance of over 1.5 million new SINs, changes to the SIN record such as name changes, renewals, and requests for replacement or confirmations of SIN.

Since the launch of the eSIN application in April 2020 to date (December 12, 2023), approximately 2 million (1,996,834) transactions have been successfully processed through this service channel. If the online channel did not exist, one can make the inference that clients would have had to visit a Service Canada Center or submit via mail channel to avail of these services.

(*Transactions include first time SIN applications, Confirmation of existing SIN, update to existing SIN record and change of status (900 series SIN - Temporary Resident) to Permanent SIN.)

None