CIMM – IRCC Services in Official Languages – May 12, 2022
Key Messages
IRCC ensures at all times that the public can communicate with its organization and receive its services in English or French, in accordance with the official language of their choice, and that communications and services respect the principle of substantive equality, that is, equal quality from one language to the other.
IRCC is committed to addressing mistakes in our products and is correcting its revision procedures in order to meet its obligations and provide equal quality services in both official languages.
Supplementary Messages
The Client Support Centre
Clients have the option to choose service in English or French, and IRCC ensures that it has adequate numbers of bilingual agents at its Client Support Centre (CSC) to respond to the demand for support in both official languages.
Approximately 80% of callers ask to speak to a CSC agent in English and 20% of callers ask to speak to a CSC agent in French.
Ninety-one percent (91%) of CSC agent positions are designated bilingual.
There are currently six open complaints related to Part IV of the Official Languages Act (Communications and Services), one of which is related to wait times for services in French at the CSC.
Quaid (chatbot)
On February 11, 2022, IRCC was made aware the chatbot was appearing in the wrong language on one page of IRCC’s website.
On February 14, 2022, the cause of the error was determined as an update made by the external contractor who maintains the chatbot and IRCC corrected the error.
Digital Journey Labs (for Minimum Viable Products)
The Department is modernizing its immigration service delivery and this includes building new digital and user-centric tools. Throughout the design, testing and development of these new digital tools, the Department will continue to ensure consistency and access across both official languages.
Background
Recent media coverage on official languages at IRCC
The article noted that IRCC has recently recruited unilingual Anglophones for the Client Support Centre (CSC); alleged that some clients are not provided service in French when contacting the CSC; the article contains incomplete and misleading information regarding the number of complaints filed to the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages (OCOL) and mentions that the Minister of Immigration is not able to speak French. The article also includes reference that internal client experience surveys have revealed that communications are not always clear.
High turnover at the CSC requires IRCC to continuously recruit. A recent selection process called for multiple linguistic qualifications including Bilingual, English or French essential. Ninety-one percent (91%) of CSC agent positions are designated bilingual.
Between November 1, 2021 - March 31, 2021, 88% of clients contacting the CSC were assigned to the English queue as per their selection of language of service.
All complaints put forward to OCOL are recorded. Upon analysis by OCOL, complaints are either determined to be receivable and subject to further investigation or un-receivable and are therefore not forwarded to departments.
The article alleges that OCOL has collected 41 complaints on this subject.
Client Support Centre
The Client Support Centre (CSC) at Immigration, Refugee, Citizenship Canada (IRCC) provides personalized client support for clients seeking immigration information, application status, technical support and other services through three primary channels: telephone (in-Canada only), email (via a webform), and the Ministerial Centre for Members of Parliament and Senators.
In 2021-2022, IRCC’s CSC received:
8.6M telephone enquiries;
1.9M online (or e-mail) enquiries; and,
272,000 enquiries at the Ministerial Centre for Members of Parliament and Senators.
Live agent telephone support is offered, in both official languages, to clients located in Canada, coast to coast, during business hours, and touchtone self-service for general information and simple application status is available through the Interactive Voice Response system 24/7. In-Canada and overseas clients can contact the CSC via email.
In 2021-2022, the performance for the CSC for telephone support was (average speed of response is 28 minutes) and 9.4 days for email processing (service standard is 10 business days for responding to emails).
IRCC continues to ensure that it has bilingual agents at IRCC’s CSC, in adequate numbers, to respond to the demand for support in both official languages from across Canada. Approximately 80% of callers ask to speak to a CSC agent in English and 20% of callers as to speak to a CSC agent in French.
All employees at the supervisory and management level at the CSC are bilingual to ensure that all subordinate employees can communicate in the official language of their choice.
Official languages complaints
To date IRCC has received 18 complaints from OCOL for 2021-2022. Of those, ten (of the 18) are related to the communications and services to the public (or Part IV of the Official Languages Act); one of the ten is related to wait times for services in French at the CSC.
The 41 complaints reported in the Radio Canada article include complaints that had not yet been analyzed to determine if they were receivable.
Of the 41 complaints reported, as of February 7, 24 complaints related to the Minister’s speech in English only. As of today, the number of complaints related to this matter is 55. The 55 complaints have been grouped into one open complaint.
Quaid (chatbot)
IRCC’s chatbot was launched in 2018 and was the Government of Canada’s first artificial intelligence (AI)-driven conversational chatbot to answer general enquiries on social media.
In 2021-2022, IRCC’s chatbot had over 1.1M chat conversations.
IRCC’s Social Care team is responsible for making sure Quaid (chatbot) delivers service equally in both official languages.
