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Claim-filing logjam has MP furious with feds

By: Bruce Owen

Posted: 12/31/2011 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

A Manitoba MP says the countrywide logjam at Service Canada is due to a failed push by Ottawa to automate claims for Employment Insurance and Canadian Pension Plan and other federally delivered programs.

"Our office in Winnipeg has been inundated with complaints from people who simply can’t access the insurance program that they paid into should they become unemployed," Winnipeg Centre MP Pat Martin said Friday. "You can’t consolidate and cut back Service Canada and not have a corresponding impact on service."

The result is federal and even provincial constituency offices have been bombarded by people seeking help to file claims to programs they’re entitled to, or just to hear a human voice, he said.

"We’re getting constituents from other ridings, Conservative ridings, saying our MP is telling us there is nothing wrong," Martin said. "We’re doing what we can, but MP offices are becoming the de facto delivery agents for government services, which is not the intent. You’re supposed to go to your MP when all else fails and you have some long-standing issue that can’t be resolved and we can break the logjam. But they’re coming to us for the filing of basic forms."

The Free Press reported Friday more of Manitoba’s jobless are collecting welfare despite the province having one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country.

Experts like Neil Cohen, executive director of Winnipeg’s Community Unemployed Help Centre, say one reason is due to the unemployed being forced to apply for provincial social assistance because of increasing delays in processing federal EI claims. In some cases, it takes up to six weeks or longer to process the paperwork. The delays are blamed on staff cutbacks in Service Canada.

Manitoba’s Family Services Minister Gord Mackintosh was unavailable, but a spokeswoman for his office said the province is concerned by the delays in processing EI claims.

One EI claimant, who did not want to be named, said she still is waiting for her benefits after being laid off Nov. 18 and applying the next day.

"So I spent Christmas stressed out and worried about how I was going to pay the rent, phone and hydro, not to mention the cable (which I need to fill out my Employment Insurance reports) and food," she said. "This only made my mental and physical health worse.

"This is incredible and pathetic for a so called social safety net or social support system."

Martin and others said one the biggest complaints in applying for benefits is it’s automated or online, and many people need help filing a claim electronically.

bruce.owen@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 31, 2011 A5

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