Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I also want to thank my colleague. This is a very important question.
You're right. Implementing a new retirement plan for reservists is certainly a big challenge. I'm very proud of the efforts made.
This is the first time that a new pension plan has been introduced by any government in 40 years. You can also appreciate that going back that amount of time naturally presents logistical challenges with respect to record-keeping for a plan that wasn't anticipated. While we take on board the recommendations of the Auditor General and are working extremely hard to meet some of those challenges and those recommendations, we are working within complex administrative issues.
There has been a much higher than expected take-up, for example, on the part of reservists--that is, more have indicated a willingness to enter into the plan, as you have already stated. We are taking steps to improve this current system, including hiring more staff to deal with the backlog and working with other departments, such as national revenue. To give you a practical example, a reservist in one of the rural parts of the country might have been serving with a unit that didn't keep proper records or that put them in an old filing cabinet that is simply missing. We are trying to replicate, in many cases, documents that are 40 years old or that don't exist at all.
The Auditor General's report of this spring has caused us to accelerate our efforts and to concentrate specifically on prioritizing those that are most in need of that pension and on getting their pensions in place. We are improving the current administration of the plan while actively working to implement a modern pension administration. We are also streamlining the business and the systems that are necessary to administer it. We are doing so responsibly and in a way that provides transparency both to the Auditor General and to taxpayers generally. We want to make sure there is integrity behind the system.
I mentioned hiring new individuals, improving the internal controls, reporting and detecting any errors early on, and implementing the long-term plan to modernize the business process. All other recommendations that have been put forward by the Auditor General have been taken in by the department, and we are working to correct any past shortcomings. It is a Herculean effort, to say the least, to try to put this new pension plan in place, given the state of the record-keeping that existed 40 years ago.
I might ask Kevin to add a few words to that.