Thank you for the question, madam.
I am pleased to inform you that, after a meeting this morning, we have appointed 22 part-time members to the SST. Almost all those members worked with the former Pension Appeals Board. As a result, they do not require as much training, which clearly takes a few months.
In addition, we have transferred 12 decision-makers at the SST from the employment insurance division to the income security division, because of the drop in the number of appeals filed by people whose EI claims were rejected during the internal review process of EI files.
So there are 33 additional decision-makers for the Canada pension plan. I asked the chair of the SST to tell me what she plans to do to clear up the backlog. To do so, she has hired a company to develop a productivity model. Additional decision-makers might need to be hired then.