There are three parts to that.
I've heard the same suggestion, that because we've had folks remotely at home, we are less productive. I can tell you, without question, that the opposite is true. In the last two years, Transport Canada—I've been the deputy for seven years—has done much more than it's ever done before. For most of that period, we had most of our employees working from home. If you look at any measure in terms of the regulatory work, the policy work, we got more done with the same number of people. They're kind of tired right now because a lot of them have been working a lot of overtime, but we've been more productive as an organization.
As part of our hybrid policy, we're still encouraging people to come in to the work site to spend time together. It's not for productivity; it's for other reasons.
With respect to the service standard, on things like ATIP, for example, we maintained all our ATIP services right through. We didn't skip a beat on stuff like that.
With respect to transportation security clearances, we maintained a service standard. We got a little behind in the spring when we had an avalanche of new applications. One of the challenges in the air sector was the 280% increase in traffic. The airports and the airlines hired a ton of people and sent us a tidal wave of applications. We brought that back down to pretty close to prepandemic levels.
We had a similar problem with aviation medicals. For 70% of the applications, we dramatically reduced the time required because we went to instant approvals. We were able to do that because we had a digital system, which we put in place because we actually had everybody working at home.
So, we've been able to be more productive, and we've been able to get back. Where we have a problem, I have to concede—and we're still working on it—is with complex medical cases. There's a backlog there that is not where we want it to be, and we're continuing to work on that.