The medical service records come from DND. That can take a little while, but it doesn't take as long as it used to.
The real delay is in obtaining medical reports. It may be because of the growing complexity of cases. In the past, the vast majority of cases were musculoskeletal. You had a broken bone, or you had a torn muscle. You could see it. You could touch it. More and more often now, we are dealing with psychiatric conditions, which are not evident unless you really examine the patient. That has led to what you might want to call “specialist report creep”.
Ten years ago, the report of a family doctor was all you needed. Then, it had to be maybe a psychologist, because they have a little more experience in the field. Then, as conditions were identified and became more complicated, a psychologist wasn't good enough; you needed a medical report from a psychiatrist.
That is probably where the system is slowed down the most for the veteran, from our perspective, because he or she needs a civilian doctor. If they are still in the forces, of course, their DND doctor doesn't provide that kind of service. They have to go out into the civilian world, try to find that report, and then get it back to us for redress purposes. We know the Canadian medical system has its challenges, and that is seen, certainly, in this process.