Well, I think I need to first explain to you why we're doing it.
First of all, what we want to do is for very routine questions—people who may want an information kit or a brochure or something—we don't want to use the valuable time of our skilled and trained employees to handle those routine questions. So when a veteran calls the number, they basically have an option that says, “If you're a client of Veterans Affairs Canada, if you're a veteran, or if you are a family member, push one, and if you're looking for general information around veterans' issues, push two”. That goes to Service Canada.
We have a contract with Service Canada to handle those calls. We have been working with Service Canada for many years. When we've had various issues with new programs or what have you, and also to allow for surge capacity to be able to handle our calls, we've often used Service Canada in the past. So this is not new.
Service Canada has a number of government employees and a number of contract employees. I believe it was in the year 2008 that Service Canada entered into this contract with the company you refer to. These employees are trained to the standards that we set. We've actually had our managers over in the centre, making sure that the veterans are getting the service they need.
Quite simply, what we want to do is that we want to leave our staff, who are well trained in veterans issues, to handle the approximately 800,000 phone calls we receive in a year, and in so doing, have some of the more general non-client-related.... For example, Service Canada does not access the private information of a veteran. They do not have access to the database.