Government Operations Committee on Dec. 7th, 2023

[Marie-Chantal Girard]

As the employer, the terms and conditions of employment that we offer to our employees include their salaries, of course, but also a pension and benefits. There are several benefit plans. There are plans in different organizations, but for the core public administration, we have health, dental and disability benefits.

It's good practice in the industry and an obligation for us as stewards of the public purse to retender those on, let's say, a more regular basis. We know there are innovations and that the systems are improving. To ensure that, we're asked by the Treasury Board to retender at a certain pace.

With the PSHCP being the largest one, we started there because it was outdated. We indeed had to update that contract and make Canadians and employees benefit from better industry practices. We started there. Then we did dental, which we just announced, and we'll move to disability later down the road.

It's a regular and structured process to make sure that the contracts we sign on behalf of Canadians remain competitive on the market.

[Charles Sousa, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you for that.

We've spoken about what happened after July 1, raising issues with respect to some people not being able to reach Canada Life, some of the long wait times at the call centres and so forth. We've heard already about the situation.

You mentioned that the situation has improved somewhat. Could you provide more specifics to the committee as to what has been done and where the delays and wait times stand currently?

[Marie-Chantal Girard]

Absolutely. We have seen an evolution in the nature of the issues, and that has allowed us to monitor progress. Many things have been done.

First, Canada Life has more than doubled the staff that they put [Technical difficulty—Editor] call centres, but also for the treatment of claims themselves. Those are two different functions.

As well, they've increased and provided more in-depth training in those two areas, both at the call centres, to be able to better answer questions from our members, and also with the adjudication process.

The hours of operation have been extended. Throughout the summer until September and now until December 17, they remain open evenings and weekends.

By analyzing on a weekly basis what was happening, we observed that there were multiple doors of entry. We shut down two doors—chat and email—to only have phone calls. Instead of having people treat the same request many times, they only have it once. We've talked about letters and communications with pharmacists.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

That's our time, Mr. Sousa. Thanks very much.

Mrs. Vignola, you have two and a half minutes, please.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to pick up where I left off last time.

As I was saying, someone who submitted their claim on October 22 received an email indicating that Canada Life was only up to September 15 claims.

Can you guarantee me that, going forward, no one else will be told to wait five weeks for their claim to be processed?

[Marie-Chantal Girard]

I'm going to look at the weekly dashboard we get from Canada Life. According to the information provided by Canada Life—again, its representatives will be appearing after us—the company had processed 13,000 claims as of November 29. Much of the backlog had been cleared and the average processing time was 2.2 days.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

You are guaranteeing me, then, that this will never happen again.

[Marie-Chantal Girard]

That is right, according to the information I have.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

I hope so.

Ms. Royds, this may not be how you put it, but you mentioned an analysis of the transition phase and criteria for compliance. Can you provide the committee with that report on Canada Life?

[Pascale Archambault]

As of now, we have no such report. When the transition period ends, we will have specific information on Canada Life, but we probably won't be able to disclose that information for confidentiality reasons.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Ms. Girard, could you please provide the committee with the dashboard you referred to?

[Marie-Chantal Girard]

I think so.

It's also worth noting that, for a week and a half now, Canada Life has been posting performance data on its website, so that information is available to you.

I will still provide the dashboard.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you.

I will simply end with a comment.

In October 2023, the Senate administration allocated resources to help senators and their staff deal with issues caused by the switchover to the new plan administrator. Retirees and employees did not receive that same support, other than through their union.

Understand this: if the people at the Senate need help, ordinary folks must really be struggling.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thanks very much.

We have Mr. Johns, please, for two and a half minutes.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Canada Life was well aware of the size, customer service expectations and expected challenges related to significant plan redesign of this contract, yet Canada Life reported that the first significant wave of hiring started really only weeks before July 1. I'm concerned as to why they didn't make serious efforts to staff up their customer service centre in advance of the handover date of July 1.

In the same vein, I guess, it's standard practice for plan administrators to put out informational resources to help plan members understand their benefits. While the PSHCP administrative authority and Treasury Board provide the service to plan members, industry best practices are for plan administrators to also educate their plan members.

Why did Canada Life not take this initiative? Is this a case of Canada Life doing only the bare minimum as required by the contract, or is Canada Life incentivized to not educate members, given the fees Canada Life is able to charge for customer support interactions when plan members need to call in for clarity?

[Marie-Chantal Girard]

Thank you.

Several of the questions that you ask are really directed towards Canada Life and their management practices, so perhaps open up those questions to them.

I will say that we also noted the need for more communications and adaptive communications. We have communicated extensively, but still we know that practices are changing and habits are changing. We know that longer communications are more complex, let's say. Technical ones are less easy to understand. We will adapt and learn from that.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

I'm hoping that you can put pressure on them to do better at this.

Plan members have reported receiving denials—again, I raised this earlier—for life-saving medications and treatments that were previously covered when the plan was administered by Sun Life. Some of these treatments are subject to plan directives that have not changed. Why is Canada Life taking such an extremely restrictive approach to cover exceptions?

To go back to what I talked about—people with a plan or a spousal plan—we've heard of people who actually aren't getting any coverage because they go to Canada Life first and then they're barred from their other plan. How are you going to fix that? This shouldn't be happening.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I'm afraid we're out of time for Mr. Johns, but perhaps you can get back to the committee. I imagine your department probably has an action plan for this. Perhaps you could share that with us.

Getting back to Ms. Vignola's point, you were waving around the dashboard. Perhaps you could table that as well.

[Marie-Chantal Girard]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

We have Mrs. Kusie, please, for five minutes, and then we'll go to Mr. Kusmierczyk.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you very much.

I was interested in the type of consultation you did with the public servants, please, prior to implementing this new plan.

[Marie-Chantal Girard]

Do you mean before the negotiation of the plan, not the contract part?

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

What did it look like, please? Can you provide specifics as to the formats? Was there a survey administered? Was there a round table? How did these consultations take place, please?

[Marie-Chantal Girard]

I will start, and my colleague will complete my answer if need be.

There's a partners committee, with the support of the administration authority. That's how we receive information on an ongoing basis on how the plan is doing. For example, for years we heard about how many appeals we had received. This is very helpful information, because we know where the pain points are in the plan. Then there are the number of requests the administrator gets. We do get reports from them. Those give us a sense of how the implementation is going.

Then we have research and analysis done for the partners committee on the various areas of the plan. It's mostly on what is newer. This sector advances and progresses at such a high speed that we have experts coming in and discussing it with us.

Then bargaining agents bring what they think are the key elements from consultations with their members. We also have discussions internally with the employer and certain experts in the system to see what would respond to needs.

I'll give you the example of mental health. We saw the trend with disability leave. For the community, we knew this was an issue we had an opportunity to better address through these negotiations.

This information, in addition to the benchmarking study and the analysis of what is made available elsewhere, informs the negotiations.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you.

Whose idea was it to implement a manual enrolment process rather than the industry standard automatic enrolment process?