Public Accounts Committee on April 21st, 2016

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Good morning. I call the meeting to order.

This is meeting number 10 of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts on Thursday, April 21, 2016.

If you weren't here earlier, I'll remind everyone that we are being televised today.

Today we are studying the fall 2015 report of the Auditor General of Canada, chapter 6, the Canada pension plan disability program.

We're thankful to have a number of witnesses again here this morning.

From the Office of the Auditor General we have Mr. Michael Ferguson, the Auditor General of Canada. We welcome you back, sir.

He is accompanied by Glenn Wheeler, a principal with the Auditor General's office.

From the Department of Employment and Social Development, we have Ian Shugart, deputy minister, and Benoît Long, senior assistant deputy minister, processing and payment services branch, Service Canada.

From the Social Security Tribunal of Canada, we have Murielle Brazeau, and also Margot Ballagh, vice-chairperson, appeal division.

From the Administrative Tribunals Support Service of Canada, we have Marie-France Pelletier, chief administrator, and Raynald Chartrand, executive director.

We have a number of opening statements from our witnesses, and again we welcome you all.

Auditor General, we will begin with you, sir.

[Michael Ferguson, Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada]

Mr. Chair, thank you for this opportunity to discuss our 2015 fall report on the Canada pension plan disability program. Joining me at the table is Glenn Wheeler, principal, who was responsible for the audit.

The Canada pension plan disability program, or CPPD program, is the largest public benefit program for long-term disability in Canada. The CPPD benefit provides partial earnings replacement to someone who has made sufficient contributions to the Canada pension plan and who cannot work because of a severe and prolonged disability. Beneficiaries have a range of physical or mental disabilities. In 2013, almost 60% of beneficiaries were between 55 and 64 years old.

Employment and Social Development Canada is responsible for delivering the Canada pension plan disability program. The department reviews applications and determines whether applicants are eligible. If denied, applicants may ask the department to reconsider decisions. Applicants who still disagree with the department's decision after their applications are reconsidered may file an appeal with the Social Security Tribunal of Canada. The tribunal is independent from the department and started operating on the first of April in 2013.

We examined whether Employment and Social Development Canada assessed applications for the Canada pension plan disability benefit in a consistent and timely manner. We also examined whether the tribunal decided appeals in a timely manner.

Let me turn first to Employment and Social Development Canada. We found that the department met its service standards for assessing initial and reconsideration applications for disability benefits. However, it did not respect its guidelines for making faster decisions for applicants with terminal illnesses or grave conditions.

We also found that a high proportion of decisions were overturned at the reconsideration and appeal stages. In the 2014-15 fiscal year, 35% of initial decisions were overturned by the department at the reconsideration stage, and a further 67% of appeals were overturned by the tribunal or by the department before the tribunal decided the appeals.

The department did not have a quality assurance framework in place. Consequently, it did not have assurance that its medical adjudicators made appropriate and consistent decisions. As well, the department did not analyze the tribunal's appeal decisions to determine why the tribunal had overturned the department's decisions.

Furthermore, we found that the initial application for benefits was lengthy and complex, requiring the completion of many forms. Department officials stated that the application kit, totalling 42 pages, could take applicants several months to complete. Since March 2012 the department has made available to terminally ill applicants a condensed 11-page application.

Let me turn now to the Social Security Tribunal of Canada. We found that the tribunal did not decide appeals in a timely manner. This was partly because of Employment and Social Development Canada's poor transition planning before the tribunal was established. Once established, the tribunal was not ready to handle the inherited backlog of 6,585 appeals. It did not have the people, systems, or procedures in place to deal with its workload. For example, the tribunal expected to start operating with 96 employees, but had only 21 in place when it opened.

The tribunal was created to increase the speed and efficiency of the appeals process. However, we found that the number of CPPD appeals in the backlog was higher than it was before the tribunal was established.

In the 2014-15 fiscal year, as backlog issues worsened with the addition of new appeals, the average time it took to decide an appeal exceeded 800 days. This was more than twice the time it took three years before.

To help reduce the backlog, Employment and Social Development Canada further reviewed the files of some appellants who were waiting for a decision from the tribunal. The department determined that about a third of the appellants were in fact eligible for the benefit, meaning that eligible applicants could have been approved sooner.

Canadians who have contributed to the Canada pension plan and cannot work because of a severe and prolonged disability may have to rely on the program as a source of income. For this reason, we believe the program needs to be improved so that it is designed in a way that best serves applicants from the initial application to the awarding of decisions.

Employment and Social Development Canada and the Social Security Tribunal of Canada have agreed with our recommendations and have committed to take actions to implement them.

Mr. Chair, this concludes my opening remarks. We'd be pleased to answer any questions the committee may have.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Ferguson.

We'll now move to Mr. Shugart, deputy minister of the Department of Employment and Social Development.

[Ian Shugart, Deputy Minister, Department of Employment and Social Development]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to be here with you along with my colleagues to address the findings and recommendations of the Auditor General's report, the audit on the Canada pension plan disability program.

I want to convey to the committee this morning how seriously we take this audit and how determined I and my team are to improve the administration of this program for the benefit of its clients.

We accept and agree with the recommendations. We will be the better for them and we are determined to do better for our clients.

Two of my senior ADMs are leading this file, Kathryn McDade and Benoît Long, and they will assist me in answering your questions this morning.

The Auditor General’s report identifies a number of significant concerns and makes important observations about a program that serves some of the most vulnerable Canadians. My department agrees with the Auditor General’s recommendations, and we have implemented a detailed management action plan to address each of them.

Before I describe that plan, I would like to provide a bit of context about the program. The Canada pension plan disability program was introduced in 1966, making this its fiftieth year. It is the largest long-term disability program in Canada for working-age people with disabilities. In 2014-15, my department provided over $4.2 billion in benefits to more than 328,000 Canadians and 82,000 of their children.

This program is not Canada’s only long-term disability program. Provincial and territorial governments, as well as private insurers, also provide disability benefits. It is estimated that every year Canadians receive between $22 billion and $26 billion in disability benefits.

To qualify for benefits, individuals must have made sufficient contributions to the Canada pension plan, and they must demonstrate that they suffer from a “severe and prolonged” disability that renders them unable to work. This is a stringent test that requires medical evidence regarding an individual’s work capacity. Gathering and evaluating this evidence can be challenging for both our applicants and our adjudicators. The evidence is not always straightforward, and medical conditions often evolve over time.

The audit found that there were challenges for my department—indeed, shortcomings for the department—in three main areas, which I will address in turn: the timeliness of our decisions, the consistency of our decisions, and our openness to working with claimants and beneficiaries to learn from their experiences.

On timeliness, a key finding of the audit is that it takes too long for clients to access the program. We have committed to improving the application process, in particular by leveraging online and electronic systems as part of a broader service improvement strategy for the Canada pension plan.

With the consent of our clients, we will also work with other providers of long-term disability support, such as private insurance companies, to share information and thus reduce the burden on clients, who often have to provide the same or similar medical information multiple times.

As we committed to in the management action plan, we have also recently completed a review of service standards across all of our national pension programs, including CPPD. We will be introducing CPPD service standards after consulting with clients and stakeholders, and that will be in the near future. The standards will be achievable, while at the same time challenging the department to continually improve our service delivery.

One of the most troubling findings in the audit is that we are not meeting our own service guidelines for applicants with terminal illnesses and grave conditions. To address this, a prototype project was launched in January to test new ways of processing these specific applications. Early results from that pilot have informed the development of the new service standards for these applications. These standards recognize the urgency of the situations faced by these clients. We believe they will be achievable and will provide more certainty for this particularly vulnerable client group.

On consistency of our decisions, the audit recommends the implementation of a formal quality assurance framework to ensure that our decisions are appropriate and consistent. The department recognizes the importance of collecting business intelligence on our decisions, not only for the purpose of providing feedback to our department's decision-makers but also to help inform continuous improvement in program policy and service delivery. We have completed our work to develop a quality assurance framework and have begun its phased implementation.

On openness, in an effort to be more open and responsive, to demonstrate a better attitude to our clients, we have renewed a dialogue with CPPD clients and stakeholders. Our aim is not only to seek their input on implementation of the specific actions in our management action plan but also to establish a sustainable, ongoing process for stakeholder and client input in the management of the program.

We initiated this dialogue on February 17 at an event that was attended by senior officials and by our minister, the the Honourable Jean-Yves Duclos, Minister of Families, Children and Social Development. We received feedback at that meeting on our response to the Auditor General's report, as well as concrete suggestions on implementation of an ongoing process for client and stakeholder engagement.

My colleagues are here to speak to the findings and recommendation of the Auditor General related to managing recourse for clients who choose to appeal a decision of the department to deny CPPD benefits.

As you are aware, the Social Security Tribunal of Canada is an independent administrative tribunal. The Auditor General has documented the significant challenges the SST faced when it began operations in April 2013. The SST was transferred a significant number of appeals by its predecessor tribunals, the vast majority of which pertained to the program.

As the audit notes, as of December 31, 2014, the SST’s inventory of CPPD appeals had reached nearly 11,000 cases. This resulted in unacceptable delays for clients awaiting a decision on their appeal.

To assist the Social Security Tribunal with its own efforts to reduce the inventory, the department assembled a specialized multidisciplinary team that was able to review more than 10,000 cases between December 2014 and the end of summer 2015 and to offer settlements where possible.

As a result of these joint efforts with the SST, the inventory of CPPD appeals has now been reduced by more than half and remains on a downward trajectory. Our review of over 10,000 case files also provided invaluable insights into our decision-making process. This is informing our work to renew the program, and in particular the improvements to the supports and tools for decision-makers.

My colleague Ms. Brazeau will provide further detail on the current performance of the SST. I want to emphasize to the committee this morning our commitment to continuing to work collaboratively with the SST.

Finally, I recognize that having a management action plan is necessary but not sufficient for success. The plan needs to be well executed. I have elaborated on some of the details of our action to this point to give the committee some assurance that we are in fact executing that plan. In that respect, I'm confident that we have the right governance to deliver on our management action plan.

First, we have established a multi-branch working group that is responsible for implementing the activities set out in the plan and which reports to me on progress—and, if necessary, course corrections—on a regular basis.

Second, a supporting committee chaired by my associate deputy minister has been created to monitor the SST inventory, assess progress in implementing the plan, and ensure seamless communication with the SST.

In closing, I would like once more to acknowledge the Auditor General's contribution to ensuring that, going forward, CPPD benefits are provided on a more timely and consistent basis and that the program will be more responsive to the feedback of our clients and stakeholders.

We will be better as a department for this audit, and our clients will be better served as a result of this process.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Shugart.

Now we'll move to Ms. Brazeau, please, from the Social Security Tribunal of Canada.

[Murielle Brazeau, Chairperson, Social Security Tribunal of Canada]

Bonjour.

We are here to discuss the Auditor General's report pertaining to the Canada pension plan disability program. The tribunal fully supports the Auditor General's recommendations.

I will provide you with some background about the tribunal, explain the measures taken to resolve our initial challenges and to address the Auditor General's recommendations, and outline the positive results to date.

The Social Security Tribunal is an independent administrative tribunal that makes quasi-judicial decisions pertaining to the Canada pension plan, the Old Age Security Act and the Employment Insurance Act. The tribunal is comprised of a general division and an appeal division, and all decisions are made by single members. The general division has an employment insurance section and an income security section. This new tribunal was designed to replace four separate tribunals, and its mandate is to offer fair, impartial and efficient appeal processes for Canadians.

The Auditor General's report examined the first two years of the tribunal's existence, from April 1, 2013, to May 2015.

The report concludes that the poor transition planning before the tribunal opened its doors led to the transfer of a large backlog of appeals that the tribunal was not ready to manage. The report also notes that this large backlog contributed to the tribunal's growing backlog and to the time it took to decide appeals.

The tribunal agrees with these findings and with the Auditor General's recommendation that we review our policies and practices to ensure expeditious appeal decisions, and we are continuing to make progress on this front.

The Auditor General's report already details the situation we faced when the tribunal opened its doors. Suffice it to say that we were understaffed and under-resourced. There were no infrastructure, systems, or operational processes to manage the income security caseload, and we were overwhelmed by a huge backlog of 9,000 appeals from the former tribunals. Close to 7,000 of these appeals were the Canada pension plan disability appeals. Basically we needed to put in place a solid foundation for the future while at the same time dealing with both the inherited backlogs and the new incoming cases.

The situation was very difficult for us in the tribunal, but it was totally unacceptable for appellants, their families, and Canadians generally. We prepared a comprehensive action plan to obtain all the necessary resources to implement a stable infrastructure for the tribunal. Since the inception of the tribunal, we have collaborated with the department and with the minister to secure additional full-time and part-time members to increase the total number of employees required to meet the tribunal's mandate.

At the beginning, the tribunal started with seven members assigned to the income security cases. More members were gradually appointed and trained so that by December 2014, 40 full-time members and 22 part-time members were ready to decide income security cases. More staff were gradually hired and trained, and we now have 150 employees supporting the tribunal, which is seven times more than the 21 employees we had when we started.

The case management system and operational processes required to manage, assign, hear, and decide income security appeals were developed and implemented, and we continue to review and improve them. The case management system is now sufficiently developed to provide accurate data that allow us to monitor and manage the caseloads and member performance. We continue to improve the quality of our decisions through legal support and an ongoing training program for our members.

Besides working closely with the department, we also focused on developing relations with our other stakeholders. As a result of our ongoing exchanges, we have made a number of improvements: for example all decisions of the appeal division are now being published, our website content has been improved, useful tools have been provided to parties, and we made positive changes to our toll-free line.

Implementing these measures required resources and staff, but most importantly, it required time. With all these initiatives, and with more settlements from the department, we are now showing positive results. Our backlog and total inventory has decreased significantly.

As of this Monday, April 18, we have received a total of 17,707 disability appeals. That's since opening our doors on April 1, 2013. Of those, 13,200 have now been completed. Our active inventory is now reduced to 4,507 disability appeals, which is 32% lower than the number of backlogged cases we inherited on day one.

The average age of our total Canada pension plan disability caseload is now at 317 days. We have implemented service standards, committing to decide 85% of new cases within five months of the appeal becoming ready to proceed. We will continue to reduce our inventory of cases, and we expect to be able to meet our new service standards with the current rate of incoming files, number of members, and available resources.

We have worked very hard over the past three years to get where we are today, and I am very proud of the considerable progress accomplished. Nothing is more rewarding to us than receiving positive feedback from our appellants and stakeholders who recognize the progress we have made and thank us for the work we have accomplished to date.

As the Auditor General documented, the tribunal faced significant challenges and pressures at its onset. We took control, developed a plan of action, secured the necessary resources, and established a solid foundation that allowed the tribunal to process appeals in a fair, impartial, and efficient manner.

As we continue to move toward a more stable environment and continue to increase our use of technology in this high-volume tribunal, I am confident that we will be recognized for our innovative and efficient approaches that improve access to justice for Canadians.

Thank you for your attention.

Mr. Chair, I'm happy to answer any questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Ms. Brazeau.

We'll now move to Ms. Pelletier, the chief administrator from the Administrative Tribunals Support Service of Canada.

[Marie-France Pelletier, Chief Administrator, Administrative Tribunals Support Service of Canada]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the committee for allowing me to be here today.

As Mr. Chair has indicated, with me is Monsieur Raynald Chartrand, who is the executive director for the secretariat that supports the Social Security Tribunal.

I'd like to begin by describing the role and mandate of the Administrative Tribunals Support Service of Canada, or ATSSC for short, and specifically its role in supporting the Social Security Tribunal.

The ATSSC was established on November 1, 2014, with the coming into force of the ATSSC Act. Our organization is responsible for providing support services and facilities to 11 administrative tribunals by way of a single integrated organization.

These services include the specialized services required by each tribunal—that is, registry, research and analysis, legal services and other mandate and case-specific work—as well as corporate services, which include human resources, financial services, accommodations and security, and information management and technology.

The provision of these services enables the tribunals to exercise their individual powers and perform their unique duties and functions in accordance with their respective legislation, rules and regulations. The purpose of the Administrative Tribunals Support Service of Canada, or ATSSC, is to improve the tribunals' capacity to meet their needs, achieve efficiencies through economies of scale, and improve access to justice for Canadians.

This year our organization has planned for expenditures of $82 million and a staff of 550 employees. We support the nearly 200 Governor in Council appointees who are members of the 11 administrative tribunals.

The Social Security Tribunal is the largest we support. It comprises 90 members, and currently 150 employees are dedicated exclusively to the tribunal. This year's funding to support the tribunal is set at $18 million.

From April 2013 to November 2014, the tribunal received all of its support services from its portfolio department, Employment and Social Development Canada. Since November 2014, the ATSSC has been responsible for providing the tribunal’s support services, and we have been providing the specialized support services (registry, legal, research, etc.) directly to the tribunal since then.

In terms of corporate services, an arrangement was made for those services to continue to be provided by the department on behalf of the ATSSC to allow for a full but gradual transition to the ATSSC over three years. Given that the tribunal's operations had been embedded in the department previously, many corporate systems were also integrated into those of the department. It was therefore more prudent for those transferred to be phased in over time to minimize any risks to the tribunal's operations.

This was especially important at a time when the tribunal's focus was on reducing the backlog in CPPD appeals in addition to delivering on the other parts of its mandate.

We are satisfied that these internal services have been appropriately provided by the department on our behalf, and we are currently in discussions with the department to plan the transition and begin the transfer, in phases, of these services to the ATSSC. As the chairperson for the Social Security Tribunal just indicated, the tribunal has been working hard in the last three years to set up necessary systems, processes, policies and practices that ensure fair, impartial and expeditious processing of appeals. The ATSSC has been diligent in supporting the tribunal in its endeavours in all areas of its mandate, including in the area of income security.

As relates to the Auditor General's review of the Canada pension plan disability program, the ATSSC assumed responsibility for the tribunal's support services in the last seven months of the review period. Along with the tribunal, the ATSSC agrees with the findings and recommendations in the report, and it will work with the tribunal to provide the necessary support in responding to those recommendations and in implementing the action plan.

To this end, I would like to note that several improvements have already been achieved in addressing the two recommendations in the Auditor General's report.

In relation to data quality, there have been five updates to the tribunal’s case management system since November 2014. Each update enhances the system’s capabilities in reporting and quality assurance functionality. For instance, the case management system is now able to track the receipt of notices of readiness from parties; allow vice chairpersons to assign files to members; and reflect the business appeal process in all divisions through automated workflows. Those are but a few of the improvements carried out each new update to the system. Several more updates are planned for the upcoming year, which will continue to address the action plan and will ultimately improve the tracking and reporting of the tribunal’s statistical data.

In relation to the review of policies and practices, the ATSSC has worked closely with the tribunal to improve a number of aspects of its operations. To begin, we proceeded with hiring additional staff to support tribunal operations and backlog reduction efforts.

Among these new employees are employees assigned to a call centre to communicate directly with parties to provide timely and relevant information on their cases. Other new employees are legal service employees who, in addition to providing legal counsel, participate in the development of guidelines and tools that assist members in making quality decisions. As well, communications and IT employees were hired to publish the tribunal's decisions on its website and provide remote IT support to members located across the country.

Other ATSSC employees worked with the tribunal to develop more than a dozen operational instructions in the income security sector alone. These instructions provide written and clear guidance for registry employees, which ultimately reduces the number of potential errors and allows them to work faster and more efficiently.

Despite all that has been accomplished thus far, our work is by no means done. The action plan that we share with the tribunal outlines several areas in which we will focus our efforts in the coming months.

Further enhancements of the case management system and the quality of statistical data will be undertaken. We will give continued attention to making operational processes more efficient and we will seek out advice in so doing.

We are committed to continuing to support the tribunal in all aspects of its mandate, a mandate that is so crucial to the lives of so many Canadians.

This concludes my remarks, Mr. Chair, and I will be pleased to respond to questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much.

As a member of Parliament, not as chair of a committee—and to some of our new members of Parliament, these are the kinds of issues that every member of Parliament deals with time and again—I liked your last sentence, Ms. Pelletier, when you said, “this is so crucial to the lives of so many Canadians.”

We thank you for being here today and giving us a bit of an update on the progress, but there are a number of questions from our committee members.

We'll begin with Ms. Mendès, please.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being here to testify before us today.

Upon reading the report of the Auditor General, Mr. Ferguson, and the analysts' findings, I am extremely shocked to see that a service that is supposed to be provided to Canadians effectively, quickly, and very humanely has taken a terrible turn. What shocks me the most is not so much the Tribunal—it is fairly new and we need to give it time to iron out any wrinkles—but very much the disability program itself.

As you said, Mr. Shugart, the program is 50 years old. How did we get here? How did we get to some of the observations that Mr. Ferguson is raising with us? I find it absolutely incomprehensible that so many cases were rejected, but in the end, upon review or when the complainants took their cases to this tribunal, you see that they should have been granted the disability pension after all. You have not even started processing these types of requests. How is it that in 2016, we are still processing such onerous files in paper format? I cannot fathom why a person with a terminal illness still has to fill out an 11-page questionnaire.

I would very much like to have answers to these questions because I am really astounded by this.

[Ian Shugart]

I do not share your observations at all. I will address a thing or two and then ask my colleague to elaborate on the process.

The application documentation, which was inordinately long and complex and has now been considerably reduced, is of necessity—because of the subject matter—not the kind of typical application for service that we might anticipate. Included in the application is the provision of frequently detailed and extensive medical information. That is all included in—

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Shugart, but Mr. Ferguson does point out that a lot of the information is found in more than one form. The same question is in more than one form.

[Ian Shugart]

Yes, and that is what we have been working to streamline and simplify. We're dealing—until the time of the audit, frankly—with many legacy issues, the continuance for too long of a particular application process and decision process.

As I indicated, as part of our CPP service improvement strategy, we are progressively moving to an online and electronic system to reduce the paper burden. However, the legacy of these programs has for too long been a paper-based system. That adds complexity and has added inordinately to the time. That has to change, and it constitutes a very significant part of the application process.

With respect to the decisions on appeal—please understand that this is in no way an excuse—there are going to be inevitably some reversals of the decision on appeal, for a variety of reasons. The decision-maker on appeal believes, in good faith, that the initial decision—taken, I would assert, in good faith—is incorrect, that the initial decision-maker just got it wrong, and the decision is overturned.

The second thing, which actually happens very often, is that the applicant's situation has changed over the course of the review, and often what would correctly have been an unfavourable decision becomes now, because of new evidence—the evolution of the patient's condition, or for that matter, new medical knowledge—a different decision. That will, to some degree, always be the case.

The third category was that when we put together this team of people to go through this backlog as rapidly as possible, we asked them, in cases in which on a balance of probabilities the decision would be reversed, to make that decision quickly and not let it go through the rest of the process.

Those are the three kinds of situations that will lead—or did lead, in this case—to an overturned decision.

These are, even in cases in which the ultimate decision is not in favour of the client, difficult situations. At their very best they are very difficult situations. The initial adjudicator has to make those difficult decisions on the basis of the evidence, and the reason for there being an appeal process is to catch any errors or to make a different decision.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

Very quickly, how can you explain, then, that people who haven't contributed enough to the fund are not given an answer within 24 hours when they apply, which would be the normal thing to do, and still have to wait months for an answer?

[Ian Shugart]

That is something we fully intend to change, including by developing tools that will be available for the adjudicator so that the decision on eligibility on the basis of contributions is assessed or flagged right at the outset.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much.

We'll now move to Mr. Poilievre, please.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses. In particular it's good to see some of my former colleagues from my time at ESDC and to thank them for their very good work on this file, particularly in reducing the backlog over the last year.

Before I begin more substantive questioning, I want to confirm the numbers that are in the Auditor General's report, in a response to a question on the Order Paper that I submitted to the Commons, and in the testimony that I heard from Madame Brazeau.

As I understand it, based on exhibit 6.6 of the Auditor General's report on page 21, in roughly December 2014 to January 2015 the number of appeals was in the neighbourhood of 10,000. According to a response to my Order Paper question, as of November 1 it was reduced to just under 6,000. In February of 2016 it was further reduced to just under 5,000. Also, if I heard Madame Brazeau's testimony correctly, the number of appeals is now at around 4,500.

Is that accurate?

[Murielle Brazeau]

It's 4,507 appeals.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

All right. So the number of appeals has declined precipitously over the last year to 16 months, roughly.

I think part of the reason for this success is that the department, under the leadership of Deputy Minister Shugart, established something that was colloquially known as the “spike unit”.

I don't think you ever liked that term, but anyway, it caught on.

This was a group basically of doctors, lawyers, and other experts who reviewed previously denied cases that were up for appeal and, as you said today in your testimony, granted those cases that, on the balance of probabilities, were likely to succeed at the tribunal.

Can Deputy Minister Shugart confirm whether that unit continues to be in operation? As the backlog continues to dissipate and is eventually eliminated, what is the future of that unit, and how can its work be integrated into the long-term process of turning around fair decisions quickly for CPPD applicants?

[Ian Shugart]

Mr. Chair, yes, the specialized unit is still in place, and it continues to review those cases. In addition, when we use the channels of communication with the tribunal to indicate what we are likely to decide, there is very good co-operation to remove those cases from the pipeline, and the government settles those cases under the auspices of the department.

In the future, we will not be likely to retain the unit per se; that procedure will be integrated into the decision-making process itself, and I fervently hope that at no point in the future will a process like it ever be required again.

One of the things we are doing in the action plan is to give our adjudicators in the first instance tools so that we actually engage with the clients and the stakeholders of this program to learn how to better take account of developing situations and developing medical conditions that could lead to a different decision over the course of the application from first application to decision.

Our expectation is that we will continue to be more attuned to that balance of probabilities and be more up to date on the tools that are available to adjudicators to help them make the right decision in the first place.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

You have two minutes.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Part of the reason the CPP disability appeal system is under stress is that according to the fall 2015 Auditor General's report, there has been an increase in demand on the program. In paragraph 6.6 on page 1, the audit finds that in the 2000-01 fiscal year, the CPP disability program had 282,000 beneficiaries, who together received just over $2.5 billion in disability benefits. By the 2013-14 fiscal year, the program had almost 330,000 beneficiaries, an increase of 17%, who received just over $4 billion in disability benefits, or an increase of 50%.

What share of the increase in beneficiaries from 282,000 to 330,000 can be attributed to demographic causes alone?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

A very quick answer, please.

[Ian Shugart]

I don't think that we are able to specify a proportion, Chair. I would indicate, however, that demographics are without question a factor. Age, unfortunately, often carries with it the triggering of disability, so that is definitely a factor, but I do not believe that we have the capacity—I'm not sure it exists anywhere, frankly—to be precise about causality as far as the quantity is concerned. But unquestionably it is a factor.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Shugart.

We'll now move to Mr. Christopherson, please.