Minister accepts auditor’s recommendations, but defends program

With a list before him, Saskatchewan’s social services minister thanked the provincial auditor’s office for its work and accepted the recommendations, but also defended the work the ministry has done on the Saskatchewan Income Support (SIS) program.

Among the auditor’s criticisms was the social services call centre, pointing out her office tried three times to get through to someone and failed each time. She also said more than 60 per cent of the 50,000 calls that came into the centre regarding SIS in a six-month period went unanswered.

“There is just a volume (of calls), it’s quite a volume, and we do our best but sometimes we’re not able to get to every call,” said Social Services Minister Gene Makowsky. “There’s reasons and there’s different call volumes at different times and that’s the case with, I would suggest, a few call centres.”

He said the ministry is working hard on the problem, noting that in the spring budget, money was allocated to put another 10 people working in the call centre. Money also was added for community outreach positions to have caseworkers on the ground to help people.

“We’ll see what sort of a dent we’re able to make,” Makowsky said when asked whether 10 people would be enough in the call centre.

“This is a start, I think it signals that we’ve heard the concerns out there and we’re going to see how it goes, and hopefully this will certainly speed things up and (we’ll) be able to answer more calls.”

In the first three months of 2023, Makowsky said the ministry has made some progress, answering an average of 16,150 calls regarding SIS each month. During the six months the auditor looked at, there were 50,000 calls related to SIS.

The minister also pointed out the ministry is offering Wi-Fi and more computer access in service centres to make it more available for people to apply online, and that it moves people around in peak call times.

In her report, the auditor said there were more than 5,000 SIS clients who were more than a month and $100 behind on utilities.

Makowsky disputed that number only in saying that some clients may have been counted for a SaskPower account and a SaskEnergy account, so the number of clients in that situation may be fewer.

“We work with clients to make sure that they are paying those bills and if they are in arrears, we want to work with them to have a repayment plan to keep those connected,” said Makowsky.

While critics have said that previous income assistance programs were better for clients because they had direct payments for utilities instead of requiring clients to pay the bills out of their shelter benefits, Makowsky said benefits are actually higher under SIS for a single person.

He also said rates have increased in successive budgets – about $30 a month – and the ministry has since increased trusteeship for those who need more help managing their situations.

“I would suggest that trusteeship is somewhat, for those struggling, I believe personally a better program, as the trustee looks at the entire pool of funds … to be able to pay their bills. So it’s not just the shelter benefit on the SIS program, it’s the entire amount of funding that people are able to draw upon that a trustee can help people pay for things,” explained Makowsky.

The auditor was critical of the ministry for not having or keeping track of some information, pointing out it’s difficult to assess a program’s success without some information.

In particular, the report found the ministry had very little idea how many clients on SIS were being evicted from their homes.

Makowsky said the ministry had been relying on reports from landlords on clients in danger of eviction.

“The ministry will take a look at those numbers and certainly start paying more attention to the information from the (Office of Residential Tenancies),” he said.

As a whole, Makowsky said the ministry is accepting the auditor’s recommendations and will look into implementing them, while pointing out what has already been done.

“Some we already knew about and brought about some dollars and hopefully some solutions to some of these challenges in previous budgets as well as this budget,” he said.

‘Failure across the board’

Meanwhile, the Saskatchewan NDP’s social services critic is taking the report as confirmation of what she said she’s been hearing for years – that the SIS program isn’t good enough.

“This has been a program that has been an absolute failure across the board, it’s led to increased evictions and homelessness. We hear every day from folks walking around their communities, the increase in homelessness is visible,” said Meara Conway.

She said the province has made the program less accessible.

“When you have folks living on the margins, you want to make sure that the supports you make available to them are as accessible as possible,” explained Conway.

Before politics, Conway had been a legal aid lawyer and many of her clients were on income support. She said many can’t pay for a computer or internet or maintain a phone and when they can borrow one, if they can’t get through to social services in a few tries, they’ll give up. She said SIS doesn’t have user-friendly supports.

Looking at the auditor’s report, Conway said there’s been a failure of the ministry to analyze the program or put in place measures for success.

“We have absolutely no way of measuring the success of this program, which is a colossal waste of public resources when we’re trying to support people as effectively as we can, and if the stated goal of this program is to move folks to self-sufficiency, this just simply isn’t doing that,” said Conway.

Conway and the NDP are calling on the provincial government to go in and fix the problems with the program.

“Everyone is telling them that this isn’t working. It’s time for them to stop parroting their slogan ‘growth that works for everyone,’ accept that this SIS program is a major screwup, get to the table and fix it,” she said.

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to clarify the number of calls which came into the Ministry regarding SIS