Question Period Note: EMPLOYMENT INSURANCE PROCESSING AND CALL CENTRE

Employment Insurance (EI) Program Performance

The Employment Insurance Program, including its Call Centres, remains at the forefront of the Government of Canada’s service to Canadians.

The Employment Insurance Program will be entering summer peak in the last week of June and weekly intake numbers will be approximately double the weekly average for a period of 4-5 weeks.

Service Canada is well positioned for this year’s summer peak period and continues to put measures in place to ensure that Canadians have timely access to the Employment Insurance benefits when they need it most.

If pressed (French Processing)

In 2022-23, Service Canada hired and trained over 600 processing officers in the Quebec and Atlantic regions, of which the majority are capable of working in French, to increase French capacity.

If pressed (Québec Region)

In 2023-24, as of May 31, 2023, Speed of Pay results for the Quebec region were (65.5%), which is lower than Service Canada’s three other regions. This is due to the Employment Insurance network working to reduce the inventory of older pending claims.

Every claim processed beyond the 28-day service standard has a negative impact on Speed of Pay results, but processing these claims was necessary to improve service to clients in the Quebec region.

The Quebec region’s inventory has decreased significantly and the region has begun to meet the Speed of Pay target of 80%, achieving 81.8% for the week ending June 17, 2023.

Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) is the largest federal service delivery organization in Canada, delivering benefits and services to support Canadians at all stages of their lives. Since the beginning of the pandemic, ESDC has been tirelessly working to manage efficiently the processing of EI applications and call volumes and issued more than

$36.4 billion in EI benefits in 2021-22.

On November 3, 2022, the Fall Economic Statement announced $1.02B for Service Canada to process EI and Old Age Security claims faster, while reducing the EI claim inventory. In addition, $574M was announced to reduce the EI and Pensions Call Centre wait times.

EI Processing Speed of Payment

Service Canada’s key client service performance indicator for timeliness of EI claims processing is Speed of Payment (SOP). The target is to issue a payment, or notification of non-payment, to claimants within 28 days of filing their application for benefits, 80% of the time.

In 2023-24, as of May 31, 2023 (the latest available monthly statistic), 78.7% of EI payments, or notifications of non-payment, were made within 28 days for the whole of Canada, compared to 71.8% over the same period in 2022-23. By region, the results were:

o 87.4% for the Atlantic Region (compared to 81.4% in 2022-23);

o 65.5% for the Quebec Region (compared to 63.6% in 2022-23);

o 81.6% for the Ontario Region (compared to 72.9% in 2022-23); and,

o 82.5% for the Western Canada and Territories Region (compared to 73.6% in 2022-23).

In 2023-24, as of May 31, 2023 (the latest available monthly statistic), the average number of days it took for a client to receive their first EI benefit payment was 22 days, compared to an average of 30 days over the same period in 2022-23.

In 2023-24, as of June 17, 2023, 466,555 EI Initial and Renewal applications were received and 496,823 were processed.

EI Inventory

The EI inventory is composed of Initial, Renewal and Revised claims.

Initial claim: a new application to establish an EI claim

Renewal claim: an application to renew or reactivate an existing claim that has already been established and has weeks of entitlement remaining.

Revised claim: is created when updated or new information is received during the claim lifecycle. New information may be provided by the client, the employer or by third parties. 

The EI network prioritizes Initial and Renewal claims to put clients into pay. During the COVID19 pandemic, the various measures that were implemented to ingest and process the unprecedented volumes of EI applications caused the Revised inventory to increase significantly.

The Department received multi-year funding to reduce the inventory to a sustainable level over the next three years (by the end of FY 2024-25). The Inventory Stabilization Strategy (ISS) began in FY 2022-23 and the EI network has hired and trained over 600 incremental resources to meet service standards while it reduces the inventory.

EI Call Centres

As we move into a post pandemic phase the EI Call Centre has re-aligned capacity given call demand is forecasted to decrease, as a result of a reduced claim intake forecast. Approximately 2,625 officers remain from a pandemic high of over 3,000, which is still more than double the number of agents prior to the pandemic, and will be moving to approximately 2,450 officers for 2023-24. The Department continuously works to align call handling capacity to the call volume.

In 2023-24, as of June 16, 2023, the EI Call Centre answered over 1,100,000 calls with an average annual wait time of 1 minute, compared to an average of 18 minutes for 2022-23.

The EI Call Centre has improved its accessibility to be near 100% for callers accessing the queue to speak to an agent, compared to 50% in 2020-21.

In 2023-24, as of May 31, 2023, 78.7% of EI payments, or notifications of non-payment, were made within 28 days for the whole of Canada, compared to 71.8% over the same period in 2022-23.

In 2023-24, as of May 31, 2023, the average number of days it took for a client to receive their first EI benefit payment was 22 days, compared to an average of 30 days over the same period in 2022-23.

In 2023-24, the EI network has processed more claims than it has received, which has resulted in a reduction of the inventory of new EI claims to its sustainable level. As of June 17, 2023, 466,555 EI Initial and Renewal applications had been received and 496,823 had been processed.

In 2023-24, as of June 16, 2023, the EI Call Centre answered over 1,100,00 calls with an average annual wait time of 1 minute, compared to an average of 18 minutes for 2022-23.

The EI Call Centre has improved its accessibility to be near 100% for callers accessing the queue to speak to an agent, compared to 50% in 2020-21.