Canada Employment And Immigration: Service Canada

Nosedive Dept: But Service Canada s work force is expected to shrink even further as Human Resources trims costs to meet deficit reduction targets. Call centres are being closed and consolidated to help achieve a savings of $247-million by March, 2013, according to Globe and Mail. The harried staff who answer the phones at the Service Canada centres say the 28-day goal for deciding whether a claim is payable is constantly exceeded and meanwhile, the jobless rate rose last month to 7.3 per cent and could continue to grow if the economic recovery cannot be maintained a trend that would put greater pressure on the EI system. An additional 1,800 temporary workers were hired at the height of the 2008 recession to help with the spike in EI claims. But those people are all gone now, and the Canada Employment and Immigration Union, which represents EI processors and service agents, says there are hundreds fewer employees now than there were before the economy went into a nosedive. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.