Certainly. I have a couple of points.
I should start by acknowledging that I was not at National Defence during the peak of COVID-19, though I was certainly in close contact.
National Defence was very much two worlds during COVID-19. You had people who, due to the nature of their job, were in the traditional workplace most of the time because they handled information that was not allowed to be home. You had others who were able to work remotely. That would have included members of the corporate secretary team. That dynamic certainly led to some delays when it came to ATIPs. However, to be fair, National Defence was challenged on ATIPs before COVID-19. It made a challenging problem worse. The backlog grew because of that dynamic.
As we discussed earlier today, we're back at it now, trying to streamline the process and use tools. Last year was, frankly, a break-even year for us in terms of the number of requests closed and the number of requests that came in. It's a growing business and we will not be able to improve our performance unless we find automated technology tools and a better process. Throwing people at it will not serve us well in the long run. However, COVID-19 made a challenging problem worse.