A last year student from Toronto is talking after he ran out of her safety benefit of old age for months due to a simple error of Service Canada who left her in a serious situation: the wrong year supposedly was entered into her system.
Debbie Westfall says OAS requested in January, long before turning 65 in March, because I knew it would depend on it to survive.
But many months and phone calls later, she was still without her benefit.
Now, after CBC Toronto communicated with the agency, Westfall’s waiting is over and she says that her money was deposited on Friday.
Even so, Westfall and his case administrator are talking because they say that for someone like her, a delay in obtaining the benefit could be the difference between maintaining a roof on his head and losing it.
“I was so overwhelmed that I could never have done this on my own. I am very relieved to have money for rent and food”, its case administrator in the Parkdale The activity recreation center told CBC News Westfall said.
Getting someone in Service Canada to solve the problem was not easy, she says.
“We call and call calling, and I cried every day,” he said.
Service Canada says that there are a number of measures to ensure that older people have support through the process, but a researcher who has studied problems with OAS says that the system can often be difficult to navigate.
More than a dozen phone calls and hours
Max Kelly, an intensive case administrator at Parkdale Actreation Center, worked with Westfall through the process. He says he made more than a dozen telephone calls to get to Service Canada and spent hours.
When Westfall approached the possibility of eviction, Kelly says he managed to access an emergency bridge program with the province of Ontario. But it is extremely frustrated about how long and effort they needed to solve the problem.
“It seems to highlight a basic problem solving problem within the federal government,” he said.
During one of his calls, Kelly says, an agent told him that someone in Service Canada had entered the year 2035 instead of 2025.
And although many of the agents sympathized and said that the situation was marked as urgent, Kelly says he was not rectified with urgency.
Service Canada responds
After CBC News communicated with Service Canada, Kelly said he received his first call from the government agency.
He says they told him that Westfall money would be put in his account within 10 business days.
Westfall confirmed that he received the payments he has been fighting for on Friday.
Service Canada confirmed to CBC News that your application was processed of high priority. He did not answer the questions about the error that was told Kelly at the end of the agency or on the long retention times they experienced in the process.
He also said that he is committed to ensuring that all older people receive the benefits to whom they are entitled, and there are several measures to identify and help customers access them.
“These measures include the automatic registration of the OAS for some customers, a dedicated pension call center, direct dissemination initiatives through associations with several community support organizations, a series of promotion and awareness initiatives, including email campaigns and support to obtain information or request benefits in more than 300 Canada service located in all of Canada,” the agency said in a statement.
John Stapleton, from the National Institute of Aging, has investigated problems with OAS and says that Westfall’s case points to a major problem.
“The safety benefits of old age are extremely complicated,” he said. Stapleton says he has advocated around 100 people fighting with the system when they reach their members of Parliament or advising them to do so.
He says that people from other countries sometimes struggle to lose acceptable documentation, especially if a country has broken the infrastructure. People may have difficulty committing to the system because they fight with technology as older adults.
“This is a program that has had many band bands over the years. It is generally a very generous program, and it is a program that many Canadians admired, but at the same time it has complexities that have been added over the years,” he said.
Kelly feels relieved to know that Westfall will get its benefits soon, but hopes of highlighting this problem cause changes.
“What is at stake is the welfare, health and dignity of someone. It could not be more important.”
