Thank you very much.
It's a pleasure to have you here, Ms. Stoddart.
I must confess that I'm a guest here, just replacing someone, but I find the conversation extremely interesting and fascinating.
In a past life I was a public servant myself, and one of the things we dealt with was the speed of service. That was one of the determinants of the quality of our service. You mentioned that you have a 12-month target, and if an investigation is completed before 12 months, you've met the target. The number you have that aren't meeting that target is considerable. I read somewhere in your report that your average investigation lasts 14.5 months. In my past life, which was in processing unemployment insurance claims, we used to process 90% of them within 21 days.
I just can't imagine that you would build in a target that would go out that long. I'll tell you why I say that. When I was in a position similar to yours, and I was explaining to the upper echelon why I couldn't meet those targets on occasion, they would ask if it takes longer to process a claim at the beginning of the claim than it does 14 months out. I ask you that question. Why would you not process the claim?
Actually, I had a friend lodge a complaint, and I don't know if he ever got an answer, but he certainly said to me, “It's been four months, Guy. Can't you do something about it?” When I inquired about the four months.... I don't think anybody gets an answer in four months.
I wonder if you could make some comments about that.