A Calgary woman is speaking out about her frustrating attempt to claim Employment Insurance after a discrepancy with her birth certificate.
Belinda Barber, 53, was laid off from her sales and training job in November.
When she applied for Employment Insurance (EI), she was in for a surprise. She had never noticed her name was spelled wrong on her birth certificate.
Barber had her original birth certificate stolen several years ago, and used a replacement to register for EI.
However, the replacement misspelled her name.
"The E in my name was changed to an A," she said. "So when I went to try to explain to EI all of this, they said 'that isn't acceptable' and I need to get a legal name change done before I can apply for EI."
Getting a new birth certificate would have cost $500 and taken at least a year. Her claim was closed, even though she had a passport, Nexus card, and driver’s licence with the correct spelling. She has also paid taxes under her name for roughly four decades.
But the Ontario government insists Belinda’s name was spelled with an “A” on the original handwritten form filled out by her late mother at the hospital.
"With the amount of frustration and the runaround that they gave me, it was almost getting to the point where it wasn't even going to be worth it to even continue on because I had come to a roadblock," Barber said.
Government officials say that Barber's case is extreme, but it reflects concerns they've heard about the EI program.
"That clearly is a horror story when people are at a very, very sensitive time in their lives when they need Employment Insurance to pay the mortgage, to buy groceries [and] are not getting service from their government," said Terry Duguid, a Winnipeg MP who co-authored a recent report reviewing the EI service.
Barber says Employment and Social Development Canada reached out to her after being contacted by CTV Calgary. She was called in to show her other ID again and provide a signature in person. Her claim is now being processed.
Julia Sullivan, a spokesperson for the government department, says that in these types of situations, the affected individual should reach out to the department for clarification and request follow-up actions be taken, if needed.
Barber says she expects she missed out on several weeks of coverage due to the error and hopes the government won’t be so quick to dismiss EI complaints.
Now that she’s done playing the name game, Barber hopes she can concentrate on the job search.
With a report from CTV Calgary’s Shaun Frenette
