Stuart McCabe waited 46 days for his employment insurance money to arrive. It was supposed to take 28 days. During that time the Oshawa father, who has been on paternal leave since Nov. 1, missed his mortgage, car insurance and hydro payments.With Christmas looming, McCabe had no money and a $400 slap in the face in the form of nonsufficient fund penalties for those missed payments. So he called Service Canada to find out where his money was — the automated message told him to call back later. So he did. Twenty times. More than 50 per cent of Service Canada callers in late September also heard that same message.
It’s a familiar scene across the country as massive layoffs at Service Canada have led to delays in employment insurance processing, which leaves people like McCabe frustrated and angry — especially when it is so difficult to get through to a real person at Service Canada.
This comes as 19,000 Canadians lost their jobs in November, increasing the unemployment rate to 7.4 per cent, which also adds demand for employment insurance.
Call centre data obtained by Rodger Cuzner, Liberal MP for Cape Breton-Canso, through an order paper shows the difficulty getting through to an agent. As of September, only 32 per cent of calls were answered within three minutes. That is down from 42 per cent last year and 53 per cent the year before that.