We often ask the officers or the commission to talk to us first from the moment a representative is assigned to a case. Unfortunately, it has previously happened that an officer who needed additional information after the appeal—he was doing a second check after the appeal—directly called the claimant. They redid some checks together to see whether they could change the first negative decision. That's not what I prefer. I prefer the officer to call me and ask me questions. I check with the claimant and I subsequently call back the officer responsible for the case.
In some cases, in making checks regarding a decision of this kind after winning before the board of referees, I've seen the applicant obtain a new unfavourable decision or a disqualification as a result of the discussion we had to resolve the period recovered. So the worker was penalized once again as a result of a statutory technicality.
After the second meeting at the board of referees, while once again checking the period that had been recovered, we found that the worker had been disqualified again on another technicality. Throughout the procedure, the worker had an underlying psychological health problem. So the officer could tell him virtually anything without wanting to. In all instances, we won the three cases using the same basic argument. The problem was a major depression. That's why we ask that representation be respected by the officers handling the docket.