Veterans Affairs committee  Yes. The people we're hiring now are full-time, but we do have some temporary and casual employees, usually to fill an immediate need or where we do not have the resources to put in an indeterminate employee. I do not have those percentages with me, but I can get them to the committee.

Veterans Affairs committee  We've hired 180 staff of the 309 that we were approved to hire over a number of years. Of those, we've hired 72 new case managers who have been deployed to the field. You will accept that prior to their being fully up to speed, we have a training program to make sure they're providing the proper services, and they have now started to take on new veterans.

Veterans Affairs committee  The reason is the gradual increase in clients. We are currently managing the cases of 7,200 veterans but we anticipate that the number will increase to 9,700 over the next five years. So we will staff case manager positions over the next few years to accommodate that increase in clients.

Veterans Affairs committee  The reason for the additional resources—especially case managers—is to ensure that we have staff for those who need it, in other words veterans whose cases are being managed. We are making sure we have people to assist them.

Veterans Affairs committee  It has to do with the forms and paperwork. We're in the midst of reviewing our forms and the way we communicate to make sure that the information is clear, that veterans can understand it. Nevertheless, certain pieces of information have to be provided when a veteran is filling out an application.

Veterans Affairs committee  I realize that, and that's why we are reviewing the forms to make them a lot easier to understand and much more user-friendly.

Veterans Affairs committee  We have a task force that will be providing their report before the end of June on reviewing all our forms. Presently we're looking at the 23 most common forms, which actually account for 90% of the forms used by the department. We are working with our ombudsman's office. We've asked for comments from the ombudsman's office.

Veterans Affairs committee  Once this is approved, there will be no more than one case manager for 30 case-managed veterans.

Veterans Affairs committee  That means one case manager will handle fewer than 30 case-managed veterans.

Veterans Affairs committee  That is correct, sir.

Veterans Affairs committee  In addition, within that 30 we are also ensuring that we balance the intensity and the complexity of their clients, their veterans, so no more than 20% would be complex cases. The majority would be the medium cases but no more, because if there were more than six serious or complex cases, they would run out of time.

Veterans Affairs committee  We hope it will be much easier to access. We're working with CAF to accelerate our receiving the medical files. Redaction has begun. We are adding purposes. What I said was, we are adding 23 adjudicators embedded within CAF for adjudications, which then will accelerate because it's not the same level of redaction.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, I guess is the short answer. But we have to understand that on the CAF side, case managers are nurses, so it's medical case management. When you come to Veterans Affairs, it's psychosocial case management. We look at not only your physical and mental health, but can you get a job.

Veterans Affairs committee  We always invite the member's family to come to the interviews. It is the member's choice if the family member attends or not. We strongly encourage it, because the member may tell us there are no issues, but the spouse may give us a different story.

Veterans Affairs committee  I think you would have to ask that to the CAF since they're still serving. My personal view is that they would be better suited to answer that question.