Calls cost $655,000 to field

OTTAWA — It cost the federal government more than $655,000 to respond to just nine days’ worth of calls from people worried about a data breach at Human Resources and Skills Development Canada that exposed confidential information on almost 600,000 Canada Student Loan recipients.

The department spent $586,659 — about $1 for every person affected by the data breach — for a dedicated private call-centre company to field calls from concerned Canadians in the first nine days that a toll-free number was set up. On top of that, the department spent about $69,000 to have a government-run call centre take inquiries.

Postmedia News obtained the figures under the access to information law. The costs are calculated from Jan. 14 to Jan. 23 — the date the news service’s request reached the department — and the numbers provide some insight into the financial cost for the government as it continues to respond to the large loss of data.

By Jan. 23, there had been about 100,000 calls on the toll-free line. Since then, the number of calls has doubled. The department did not respond to multiple requests on Friday for updated costs.

The toll-free number was set up in the wake of a Jan. 11 public announcement that an HRSDC employee had noticed a portable, external hard drive missing from national headquarters on Nov. 5, 2012. The drive contained the personal information of 583,000 loan recipients, including their addresses and social insurance numbers, along with personal information on 250 department employees.