Ask yourselves who blew the whistle?
And put your partisan leanings aside, get your brain in gear, read the article, and…think. Who, in this article is upset, frustrated besides the clients? (emphasis mine)
It’s calledthe Office of Client Satisfaction (at Service Canada), and it promises to work to “resolve any issues brought to its attention.” But call centre agents who field questions about EI claims say they have been warned by their bosses not to mention its existence to the frustrated people on the other end of the line.
“The only way they are allowed to give information about it is if the client specifically says, ‘Do you have information about the Office of Client Satisfaction,’ ” said Steve McCuaig, the national vice-president of the Canada Employment and Immigration Union. “So how are they supposed to ask for something they don’t even know exists?”
“Why should they have to call an MP when they've got me on the phone?” said one Service Canada call-centre agent. “I tell them we are late, but can’t take their complaint? Crazy. Who wouldn't go nuts at that? We deliver bad news but aren't accountable to it.”
Well, due to budget restraints ordered by the harper government, the workforce assigned to process claims is smaller, while higher unemployment has increased the number of claims resulting in longer and longer delays in processing which in turn leads to more calls and complaints from clients.
Since there is less staff to answer complaints and there’s nothing much they can say in any event, someone just gave the order to dodge the calls. Not much point in answering, would be my guess as to their motive, if all you can tell the clients is that you can’t meet the 28 days max per claim.
Until July, those processing agents were required to return calls to people who had complaints about their claims within two days. That has been increased to five days because the agents could not keep up with the volume of calls. And Service Canada staff say even the five-day deadline is not being met.
Next – who is interested in maintaining the pretense that essential services aren’t being affected? Not the public servant who is now overworked because some of her mates were laid off as surplus. The only ones who would want to implement this insane policy are harper & co., the ones who ordered the cuts and want to keep pretending services aren’t affected.
“The Ministers in our system of government are ultimately accountable at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day…” - Baird
“Ministers are accountable to Parliament for the conduct of their ministries and their offices.” - - Kenney
But if you watch the whole Kenney tape, it seems that ministerial accountability is one of those nebulous words for CONs, like contempt of Parliament. Depends what side of the hog trough your bacon is parked at. “It’s almost like in the eye of the beholder. ... It can mean a lot of different things.”
With harper's regime, it always means lies and misdirection, avoidance of accountability.
2 comments:
How did we both think of Escher? But it fits. I almost used this one, actually.
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