Veterans Affairs committee  First of all, I want to clarify that Veterans Affairs accepts the diagnostics from CAF doctors. We do not provide diagnostics. We have doctors who may review a diagnostic to say, “Do we understand exactly what the medical doctor is telling us?” It would be the same thing from the private sector, not just CAF.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, thank you for the question, Mr. Chair. We already have gone out with the requests. We have 600 applicants on the case manager side and 600 applicants—and I'm generalizing the number, rounding off—for our CSAs and adjudicators. Once the bill is approved, we're hoping to start to bring in some case managers as early as July and the same thing with the adjudicators.

Veterans Affairs committee  The case managers will be targeted across the country in our offices or in IPSCs, some of our integrated personnel units. For the adjudicators, there will be some in Charlottetown, but there will also be some here in Ottawa to be embedded. There are 23 resources that will be embedded with our CAF partners to accelerate and eliminate the backlog.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes. We've already started to do that in reviewing our eligibility criteria. Some of the stuff has already been pushed down to the field for accelerated decision-making.

Veterans Affairs committee  If the veteran is case-managed, he or she does not have to fill out an application. The case manager will do that for the veteran. If they're not case-managed, there is a document that will have to be filled out.

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you kindly, Mr. Chair. Good morning, Chair, members, mesdames et messieurs. As the chair said, my name is Michel Doiron and I am the assistant deputy minister for service delivery at Veterans Affairs. With me today is my colleague Bernard Butler, the acting assistant deputy minister of policy, communications, and commemoration.

Veterans Affairs committee  They're allowed to make a percentage, but I don't know what it is. We can get that number to you. There is a formula. They are allowed to make a little bit of money, but at a certain point it starts clawing back. They would not be allowed to do $15,000 to get to that.

Veterans Affairs committee  It depends on what program we're talking about because every program is a little different. In the case of the adjudication process we've invested a lot of money in the past six months to a year with our colleagues at CAF, but we still have delays receiving medical health records.

Veterans Affairs committee  —79% are approved at first application, yes.

Veterans Affairs committee  The disability award is not clawed back. The disability award is a lump sum. That's not clawed back.

Veterans Affairs committee  I agree with you, sir. We do look at the files, and that's part of what we're looking at, eliminating the seam, and how much more we can do there. I would even go further than that to ask if they want to apply.... Now, they have to apply, but do they want to apply for their DA now?

Veterans Affairs committee  Of the 200,000, it's 7,000, yes.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, sir.

Veterans Affairs committee  The average last month was 1 in 34.

Veterans Affairs committee  We have 226.