Federal government hires 80 in Sudbury to speed up employment insurance process

The federal government is hiring 80 people to answer phones in Sudbury, Ont. in hopes that it will speed up a sluggish employment insurance process that has brought some to tears.

The people hired will work at the Service Canada centre in the city's downtown, where dozens of workers receive calls from all across the country.

• Employment insurance rolls grow in July as new rules kick in

• Automation of EI claims created longer wait times: report

The federal Liberals made improving EI an election promise last year and newly-elected Sudbury MP Paul Lefebvre can now see why, with complaints regularly coming into his office about the time it takes to get the first cheque.

"It is still being a concern and that is why we are investing, why we are executing on this promise," he told CBC News.

"It's a little bit slow, but that's why we need to hire more people and we see that in a lot of departments, because of the cutbacks in the last 10 years, we need to start reinvesting in our human resources," said Lefebvre.

"Right now the response times are very, very long, so we need to reduce it to a reasonable time frame."

Madeleine Hebert, a lawyer at the Sudbury Community LegalClinic, told CBC News that the long delays often take an emotional toll on people who just lost their job and on those whose job it is to help them through the system.

"They hear so many people crying over the phone because of the circumstances of trying to navigate the system," she said.

"You almost have emotional breakdowns when you're calling these places," Hebert said.

Properly training staff is actually more important than just hiring extra people, Hebert said, so that the workers understand the often complex ins and outs of employment insurance.