That is the application process. A veteran will submit a claim for a particular condition, perhaps with some supporting medical documentation. We will verify their service record to confirm whether or not they experienced, if we are taking the example of a physical injury, an accident whereby they hurt their shoulder or a specific accident whereby they may have hurt something, or whether there is what would be considered repetitive exposure to something. If you think of somebody who jumps out of an airplane regularly, they're probably going to have problems with their knees, ultimately, based on the impact they suffered from repeated exposure to that kind of thing. Those are the kinds of things we might be looking for in their service record.
To get back to the earlier question as well, because I think there is a chance to work in a bit of an answer to that one here, yes, we would see in a veteran's service record whether or not they were in an area that had some exposure or contaminants that have been identified. As part of the medical records, as the Canadian Armed Forces and DND officials testified earlier, there may already be things on their file that indicate there was exposure at a particular site where they were for either a short period of time or a long period of time. It could be a factor in looking at what their condition might be.
In terms of our being able to access information from the Canadian Armed Forces with respect to service records, it is much better. We are much faster. We had 22,500 files beyond our service standard, which is 16 weeks, in 2020. We're down to just about 6,000, so there's been a reduction of about 72% over the last number of years. We're making decisions for veterans much more quickly. That's thanks to being able to get information from the Canadian Armed Forces on service much more quickly as well.