Old Age Security Extended Absence Leave Prioritization

Service Canada is responsible for investigating misuse or abuse of the Old Age Security (OAS) program including, but not limited to, identifying individuals who do not qualify to receive OAS while outside of Canada and stopping payment after a 6 month absence, as per the program’s policy. This also applies to individuals receiving the Guaranteed Income Supplement, which cannot be collected if they are outside Canada for more than 6 months. To assist in those responsibilities, Service Canada receives traveller information from the Canada Border Service Agency (CBSA), which is then compared against OAS claimants to identify individuals who have failed to report or have misreported their absence from Canada.

A system is being developed to identify misuse or abuse of the OAS program by applying techniques of case load prioritization and optimization with the objective to focus on priority cases. The system will not render decisions regarding the recipient’s eligibility. The decision to investigate an identified individual and render any administrative decision will be performed by a human investigator. The proceeding investigations will be conducted thoroughly, and individuals identified will be given an opportunity to present the necessary documentation and explanation prior to the investigators producing any decisions.

The system is anticipated to use a self-organizing map and clustering model applied to data from the CBSA traveller information system, OAS pensions system, and SIN registry.

Note: The system is not yet in production, an updated Algorithmic Impact Assessment will be published prior to the system being deployed.

Datasets available for download

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• Automated Decision Making
• Information and...
• OAS
• Old Age Security
• Persons
• Processes
• Service Canada

Additional Info

• Maturity Level 1 (46%)
• Maturity Level 2 (23%)
• Maturity Level 3 (0%)
• Maturity Level 4 (0%)
• Maturity Level 5 (0%)
• Maturity Level 6 (0%)

Field	Value
Last Updated	October 20, 2025, 02:50 (UTC)
Created	October 20, 2025, 02:50 (UTC)
Domain / Topic Domain or topic of the dataset being cataloged.
Title Title for the Dataset.	Old Age Security Extended Absence Leave Prioritization
Description A description of the dataset.	Service Canada is responsible for investigating misuse or abuse of the Old Age Security (OAS) program including, but not limited to, identifying individuals who do not qualify to receive OAS while outside of Canada and stopping payment after a 6 month absence, as per the program’s policy. This also applies to individuals receiving the Guaranteed Income Supplement, which cannot be collected if they are outside Canada for more than 6 months. To assist in those responsibilities, Service Canada receives traveller information from the Canada Border Service Agency (CBSA), which is then compared against OAS claimants to identify individuals who have failed to report or have misreported their absence from Canada. A system is being developed to identify misuse or abuse of the OAS program by applying techniques of case load prioritization and optimization with the objective to focus on priority cases. The system will not render decisions regarding the recipient’s eligibility. The decision to investigate an identified individual and render any administrative decision will be performed by a human investigator. The proceeding investigations will be conducted thoroughly, and individuals identified will be given an opportunity to present the necessary documentation and explanation prior to the investigators producing any decisions. The system is anticipated to use a self-organizing map and clustering model applied to data from the CBSA traveller information system, OAS pensions system, and SIN registry. Note: The system is not yet in production, an updated Algorithmic Impact Assessment will be published prior to the system being deployed.
Tags / Keywords Keywords/tags categorizing the dataset.	Automated Decision Making Information and... OAS Old Age Security Persons Processes Service Canada
Format (CSV, XLS, TXT, PDF, etc) File format of the dataset.
Dataset Size Dataset size in megabytes.
Metadata Identifier Metadata identifier – can be used as the unique identifier for catalogue entry
Published Date Published date of the dataset.	2024-12-10
Time Period Data Span (start date) Start date of the data in the dataset.
Time Period Data Span (end date) End date of time data in the dataset.
GeoSpatial Area Data Span A spatial region or named place the dataset covers.

Field	Value
Access category Type of access granted for the dataset (open, closed, service, etc).
License License used to access the dataset.	Open Government Licence - Canada
Limits on use Limits on use of data.
Location Location of the dataset.	https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/123aefbb-c9cb-4243-9be3-7f901daf13f7
Data Service Data service for accessing a dataset.
Owner Owner of the dataset.	Employment and Social Development Canada | Emploi et Développement social Canada
Contact Point Who to contact regarding access?
Contact Point Email The email to contact regarding access?
Publisher Publisher of the dataset.
Publisher Email Email of the publisher.
Author Author of the dataset.
Author Email Email of the author.
Accessed At Date the data and metadata was accessed.

Field	Value
Identifier Unique identifier for the dataset.
Language Language(s) of the dataset
Link to dataset description A URL to an external document describing the dataset.
Persistent Identifier Data is identified by a persistent identifier.
Globally Unique Identifier Data is identified by a persistent and globally unique identifier.
Contains data about individuals Does the data hold data about individuals?
Contains data about identifiable individuals Does the data hold identifiable data about individual?
Contains Indigenous Data Does the data hold data about Indigenous communities?
Portal Type Platform type of the source portal.

Field	Value
Version Version of the datatset	None
Source Source of the dataset.	None
Version notes Version notes about the dataset.
Is version of another dataset Link to dataset that it is a version of.
Other versions Link to datasets that are versions of it.
Provenance Text Provenance Text of the data.
Provenance URL Provenance URL of the data.
Temporal resolution Describes how granular the date/time data in the dataset is.
GeoSpatial resolution in meters Describes how granular (in meters) geospatial data is in the dataset.
GeoSpatial resolution (in regions) Describes how granular (in regions) geospatial data is in the dataset.

Field	Value
Indigenous Community Permission Who holds the Indigenous Community Permission. Who to contact regarding access to a dataset that has data about Indigenous communities.
Community Permission Community permission (who gave permission).
The Indigenous communities the dataset is about Indigenous communities from which data is derived.

Field	Value
Number of data rows If tabular dataset, total number of rows.
Number of data columns If tabular dataset, total number of unique columns.
Number of data cells If tabular dataset, total number of cells with data.
Number of data relations If RDF dataset, total number of triples.
Number of entities If RDF dataset, total number of entities.
Number of data properties If RDF dataset, total number of unique properties used by the triples.
Data quality Describes the quality of the data in the dataset.
Metric for data quality A metric used to measure the quality of the data, such as missing values or invalid formats.

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