Pierre believed that an employment assistance worker from the office he used to attend was interfering with his employment, housing and income assistance matters.

He called us, saying the worker had initially been assigned to his file for his benefit, but now she was making things worse. He explained that whenever he called the ministry, he was transferred to the worker at the old office and was not allowed to speak with anyone else. Pierre said that even though the ministry insisted there was no particular worker assigned to his file, every time he called he was transferred to the same worker.

We investigated whether the ministry provided an adequate response to Pierre’s concerns about the worker he said was assigned to his file. A supervisor at the ministry also told us Pierre’s file was previously managed by a specific worker, but the ministry had cancelled the case management at Pierre’s request. However, after further inquiries with the supervisor, she discovered that a pop-up note was being generated by the ministry’s computer system whenever Pierre called into the ministry telephone service. The note indicated that when Pierre called in, he should be transferred to the previous case worker. The supervisor explained that this pop-up note should have been deleted when the case management was terminated, but must have been forgotten.

The supervisor confirmed that she deleted the pop-up and that the notification would no longer appear when Pierre called the ministry. As the supervisor had taken steps to ensure that Pierre would no longer be redirected to the case worker, we considered the complaint to be resolved and closed our file.