Stuart Hooft (Director of Registration Reform, Registration Reform and Policy, Procedures and Program Management, Department of Indigenous Services) at the Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee

Absolutely.

When we talk about the backlog, we mean applications that took longer than six months to process. Six months is our service standard to process registration applications. In 2025, more than 50% of applications were processed within that service standard, and an additional 42%, so 92% in total, were processed within one year or less, which is much shorter than the numbers cited by the five-year study of the Office of the Auditor General.

Specifically, since the report was published in June 2024, the backlog number has reduced by 28%. As of yesterday, the total number of applications sits at 8,900, which we're continuing to process on a daily basis.