Of the 7.7 million Canadians who are receiving benefits, we still have 48,000 new applicants who are waiting for their claims to be processed. These 48,000 applicants, though, are not a monolithic group of people. In some cases, they are people who are working very hard to establish residency in Canada, because there are periods of time when residency is required to be eligible. It will affect people's OAS periods. The department and the staff are working diligently with the cases that are still waiting for assessment, and that number continues to track downwards.
