The federal government is receiving more calls from Canadians making financial benefit inquiries on its 1-800 telephone lines than it has capacity to answer.
Government employees have said there are so many calls, even 150 operators are not able to keep up, according to a June 28 briefing note, 1-800-O-Canada.
“Call volumes have skyrocketed,” said the note, according to Blacklock’s Reporter on July 31. “The program needs ongoing service delivery officer capacity beyond the existing base funding levels of approximately 150 officers to meet the anticipated volume demand.”
“When compared to pre-pandemic levels of demand, call volume has increased by 35 percent—1.6 million calls in 2018–2019 compared to 2.1 million calls in 2021–2022 and 2.2 million calls in 2022–2023,” the note said. In the 2023 budget, cabinet set aside $17.7 million in funding for a five-year period.
According to the briefing note, the current budget “only covers up to 1.6 million calls a year,” despite actual call volumes being over a third higher. There was no explanation for the shortfall.
“The growth in volume has begun to stabilize while remaining above two million calls annually when the program is only funded for a service delivery officer capacity of up to 1.6 million calls annually.”
The note said that during the pandemic, the call lines provided Canadians “with answers to specific questions about the government’s pandemic response.”
“Call volumes and call duration increased and continue with little indication of reducing. This in turn drives the extra service delivery officer capacity and infrastructure requirements for the program and a structural deficit.
An internal research report in 2021, “Grants and Contributions Applicants Client Experience,” indicated Canadians who needed benefits typically had to try calling at least three times, and sometimes as many as ten times, before being able to reach a government agent.
Of those who called the 1-800 number, only 20 percent said they were “very satisfied” with the service.
During 2020 meetings of the Commons government operations committee, an IT manager testified that sometimes calls didn’t get answered at all.
“There were problems with calls that weren’t dropped but simply never got answered frankly,” said Paul Glover, then-president of Shared Services Canada, the federal IT service. “That was another issue,” said Mr. Glover. “So people would get in and the call would never get dropped, it was just never answered.”
