As the chairman mentioned, we established an appointment process in December 2004. Through various means of advertising since that time, most recently nationally in newspapers, we've been using the process to assess proposed members on the basis of competency and experience. It's a transparent and professional process.
It involves three stages. The first stage is something called a screening committee, where we have independent individuals who go through all the applications looking at a series of experience requirements and education requirements. Those individuals who meet the requirements are invited back for a formal written assessment to assess certain elements of knowledge, skills, and abilities. If they are successful at that stage of the process they are invited for an interview, where they are once again assessed on ability and knowledge, followed up with reference checks.
All of the information about our process can be found on our website, including the names and biographies of the individuals who participate on both the screening and interview committees.
Once the interview committee has found individuals to be qualified, they are put into a pool of qualified candidates, and based on the operational requirements of the board the minister will draw from the pool for appointments and make recommendations to the Governor in Council. I believe we gave the clerk a chart, which could be distributed, that simplifies this process in very few words.
The next chart is simply a summary of the decision-making process. It shows a bit about the volumes. As you can see, there are various levels of decision-making, so individuals have quite a few opportunities to come back to request a review of their decision: going through the department, there's an opportunity for them to have a departmental review; there are two levels of redress with the board; and then an opportunity to come back to have their decisions reconsidered on the basis of new evidence or if there is an error in fact or law. There is no limit on the number of times or the amount of time that can transpire for returning to the board, should they have new evidence. At the end of the day, they can go to Federal Court to request a judicial review.
We've given you a bit of an overview on the volumes of cases. For example, the department makes around 36,000 decisions, which we call first decisions, on disability pensions and is soon to be involved in awards. They have a 60% favourable rate; in other words, they've made decisions that are in favour of the applicant.
At the board we receive around 4,870 requests for review hearings. As you can see, not all dissatisfied applicants decide to pursue a review or appeal. We vary approximately 59% of those decisions in favour of the applicants once again.
If individuals are still dissatisfied with their disability pension or compensation decision, they can request an appeal hearing. In both of these stages it's a right of appeal. They do not have to demonstrate grounds upon which they wish to appeal; they just have to be dissatisfied with their decision. We receive about 1,510 appeal applications per year and vary around 38% of those in favour of the applicants. We receive approximately 205 applications for reconsideration yearly and reconsider 122 of them. Based on the criteria to reconsider, most of those turn out to be favourable. In any given year, we average about 25 cases at federal court.
We're not a party in federal court. It is the Attorney General and the applicant who are actually in Federal Court.
With respect to board members, we usually have about 29 board members. There are two types of board members, and it's always complicated to explain these. We're limited to 29 permanent members and any number of temporary members, based on our workload. The only difference between permanent and temporary is the eligibility for appointment tenure and the length of time for which someone can be appointed.
All members hold office during good behaviour, and it's important to note that this is a full-time occupation. Our members work full-time at the Veterans Review and Appeal Board and cannot hold another occupation while they're working for us.
We have a little map here that shows the current distribution of our members. We tend to have members located in cities where most of our work is. It's very gruelling work to be travelling around the country to hearings, and naturally we try to locate members where we have the greatest volume of workload. That tends to be in the Vancouver-Victoria areas. We're short members now, but also Edmonton, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, and Quebec City. In the Maritimes we serve Halifax, St. John's, and New Brunswick out of Charlottetown with our members.
You've probably noticed a trend there. Our greatest volumes tend to be in areas where we have significant Canadian Forces populations, since that's the majority of our clients right now.
We'll be back talking about main estimates, so I won't go into details on the budget, but we have about a $9.4 million budget, and as mentioned before, the majority of our budget is devoted directly to operational support around hearings. We report annually through Parliament with both performance reports and plans and priorities.
Our breakdown of appellants is a bit different in terms of clientele from that of the department. Most of ours tend to be Canadian Forces. Over 75% are Canadian Forces, and the remaining smaller number tends to be World War II veterans and a small number of survivors, and about 7% within that 25% would be RCMP.
Pretty well everybody is represented by the Bureau of Pensions Advocates and about 5% are represented by the Royal Canadian Legion service officers at both review and appeal levels. We do see some private solicitors or some applicants who may choose to represent themselves, but if they choose to have someone represent them it's at their own cost, as opposed to the free service provided by the Bureau of Pensions Advocates and the Royal Canadian Legion.
As I mentioned to you, our favourability rates are indicated here, and overall about 59% are varied in favour of the client at review and 38% are varied in favour of the client at appeal.
The chairman mentioned that at review, the first level of redress is the first opportunity that appellants have to appear before the individuals who actually are making a decision in their claim, so they have the opportunity to give testimony and to bring in witnesses to provide testimony. Most applicants attend their review hearings. That's probably the unique difference in adjudication between what happens in the department and what happens at the Veterans Review and Appeal Board.
We hold hearings just about every week of the year, and we have about 34 different locations that we travel to. In fact we'll go wherever there's a significant volume of cases to be heard. All of our hearings are taped. The decisions are all in writing and sent to the appellant, hopefully within 30 days of the hearing. We found in our survey--which we're soon to be releasing--that most appellants feel they've been treated with courtesy and respect, that they've had an opportunity to tell their story at an independent review, and that they had a reasonably good feeling about the hearing.
By the time a case gets to appeal the issue has become very fine and narrow, and the hearings tend to be much shorter. They're held in Charlottetown, and as mentioned, applicants do not usually attend the hearings. A large number of our hearings at appeal are written submissions. We do some by video conference and certainly, as the chairman mentioned, if an applicant really wants to hear their hearing we can plug them in by telephone for that.
Once again, decisions are sent in writing and these decisions are final and binding; however, they can apply for a reconsideration.
With the aging veteran, we have fewer and fewer war veterans allowance cases yearly. We do a handful--less than 50. Basically that's because once a veteran reaches age 65 the war veterans allowance ceases. It's an income replacement program for the veteran, basically.
There are no time limits, as mentioned. We hear very old appeals heard by agencies that existed many years ago and oftentimes people don't appeal right away. However, we know that the Canadian Forces members and former members tend to appeal much more quickly than the traditional World War II veteran did in the past, so we're seeing their cases go through far quicker.
Lastly, the board also has authority to give an award called a compassionate award. It is basically for individuals who've been refused an award under the Pension Act or the new veterans charter act and they've exhausted all levels of redress. The board, under certain types of criteria, can grant a compassionate award and fix the sum.
Lastly, I mentioned Federal Court. Fortunately, we only have about 25 cases per year that we see and we certainly pay a great deal of attention to the direction and information that comes back from the Federal Court. We are a very busy board. I think we're the third-largest board in terms of volume of cases heard per year. In the last number of years we've been hearing over 6,000 cases. We are projecting to see that continue, if not grow somewhat.
I think the chairman already talked about a service delivery standard performance as well as the benefit of the doubt, so that's a very quick summary.
I'd be happy to answer any questions.