Question Period Note: Tabling of Employment and Social Development Canada’s Supplementary Estimates (B) for Fiscal Year Ending March 31, 2025

Why is Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) requesting $31.1 million to
stabilize information technology to support program delivery in the Supplementary
Estimates (B) for fiscal year ending March 31, 2025?

ESDC is the largest federal service delivery organization in Canada. However,
decades of chronic underinvestment in IT put ESDC in an unprecedented situation,
where the systems could fail and affect the ongoing delivery of critical programs
and services to Canadians.
• In 2020, an investment of $469 million over six years was approved for ESDC to
address infrastructure technical debt.
• Then in 2022, through the Government operations funding process, an investment
of $292.2 million was approved over five years to alleviate applications-related
technical debt.
• The $31.1 million included in these Supplementary Estimates, excluding Employee
Benefits Plans (EBP) costs, represents the Consolidated Revenue Fund’s portion of
the $133.9 million required for the fiscal year 2024 to 2025. This funding is essential
to address the most pressing issues in stabilizing aging IT systems, including the
stabilization of IT applications. These funds help ensure the continued delivery of
services to Canadians by reducing the risk of infrastructure of system failure.

ESDC’s IT systems are aging. The IT systems that support the three major statutory
programs (Employment Insurance, Canada Pension Plan, and Old Age Security) are at the
end of their lifecycles.
• ESDC was enabled to access a total of $761.2 million to reduce its technical debt, with a
focus on alleviating infrastructure and on IT applications-related technical debt.

Table: Funding for the Technical Debt Remediation Initiative
Funding (in $) and Full Time Equivalent (FTE)

FTE
Existing Funding (Main Estimates 2024-25): 0
Supplementary Estimates (B): 144
Total Funding: 144

Salary
Existing Funding (Main Estimates 2024-25): 0
Supplementary Estimates (B): 14,095,065
Total Funding: 14,095,065

Operating and maintenance
Existing Funding (Main Estimates 2024-25): 4,764,790
Supplementary Estimates (B): 16,962,124
Total Funding: 21,726,914

Total Operating (Vote 1)
Existing Funding (Main Estimates 2024-25): 4,764,790
Supplementary Estimates (B): 31,057,189
Total Funding: 35,821,979

Grants and Contributions (Vote 5)
Existing Funding (Main Estimates 2024-25): 0
Supplementary Estimates (B): 0
Total Funding: 0

Sub-Total
Existing Funding (Main Estimates 2024-25): 4,764,790
Supplementary Estimates (B): 31,057,189
Total Funding: 35,821,979

Employee benefit plans
Existing Funding (Main Estimates 2024-25): 0
Supplementary Estimates (B): 3,805,668
Total Funding: 3,805,668

Total Funding
Existing Funding (Main Estimates 2024-25): 4,764,790
Supplementary Estimates (B): 34,862,857
Total Funding: 39,627,647