Perhaps I'll speak to that quickly. It's a very good question.
Of course, as you know, the department is engaged in many initiatives right now around transformation and trying to improve service delivery, improve our communication to veterans, and improve our policy framework so that adjudicators have easy access to updated, clear-speaking policies. We're doing a lot of things internally to help facilitate the adjudication process.
That said, there is a lot.... One has to understand the reasons cases are dealt with favourably at the Veterans Review and Appeal Board and have a different outcome from what they do at the departmental level.
A lot of those reasons relate to basic things, such as new evidence. The advantage of the system currently is that at the departmental level, a departmental adjudicator, as Mr. Christopher has referred to, will look at the evidence available, make a decision, and provide very clear reasons to the veteran as to why he or she is not qualifying. Those can be very simple things. It can be because there is not clarity around what the medical diagnosis is—in other words, what is the disability? There may be very little evidence on the record to show that this individual in fact had a service-related injury, for any number of reasons.
At the Veterans Review and Appeal Board level, the difference is that at their first level, which is called a review level, the veteran, for the first time, has the opportunity to actually appear in person before a review panel and provide oral evidence with respect to the issues that were identified by the department.
That's the first time in the process that the veteran is actually present. He can look in the whites of the eyes of the tribunal members and give clear evidence to fill in the gaps. Clearly, at that point, it's a new perspective. There is new information. There is a better opportunity to assess the credibility of the witnesses in terms of their recollection of events and so on.
That's a simple example of why, at the review level of the Veterans Review and Appeal Board, a fixed percentage of cases are favourable. If we did that at the front end, the problem or the challenge is that you would then delay the first adjudication for many veterans, particularly those for whom the outcome is very clear and who make up the 75% favourable cases that Mr. Christopher refers to. There is always a balancing process in these administrative types of decision-making, and one is challenged to find the best one, the one that works most favourably to the veteran.
There are always opportunities for improvement, but right now this is the system. We're trying to reduce the processing times at the front end. As Mr. Christopher says, we're making good headway there, and as a function of that, in a certain number of cases you are going to find that there is simply not enough evidence; however, if there is another opportunity to come back, that may change.
Hopefully that helps.