Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for inviting us today.
As you said, my name is Anthony Saez. I am the executive director and chief pensions advocate from the Bureau of Pensions Advocates. With me is Charles Keliher. He is our appeals and legal issues director. In fact, he's our chief lawyer.
I believe we distributed a deck earlier, and I'll use it as a general guide, but we'll leave it with you.
The Bureau of Pensions Advocates is a unique organization. It provides legal advice and support to veterans, to members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, to merchant mariners, and to eligible family members who wish to appeal or consider appealing a departmental decision around disability or pension.
The bureau has 32 lawyers in 14 offices from coast to coast, so we have offices in most provinces of the country. Most of our offices are based close to large bases and in areas where there is a large number of retired veterans. That's our geographic location.
In terms of what we actually do, a veteran will come to see us, having received a decision from the department.
By the way, you should know that the Bureau of Pensions Advocates represents about 95% to 98% of the people who appear before the Veterans Review and Appeal Board. The reason they come to see us is that, when the department turns them down or makes a decision they don't agree with, the letter they receive from the department says that should they wish to consider appealing the decision, they have available to them the services of lawyers at the Bureau of Pensions Advocates. Usually their first stop is at the bureau.
They will come to the bureau and tell one of our lawyers that they are not pleased with the decision they received from the department. At that point we review the whole file to see what the decision that was made is all about. Then we sit down with the veteran or RCMP member and go over that decision.
We usually offer advice at that point. We might say that we think they have a very good case and that they have a good chance of having the decision overturned at the Veterans Review and Appeal Board, or we might say that based on what we see, there's not much left for them to do. Another thing we do a lot of is say that we noticed that the reason they were turned down is that they were missing a particular piece of evidence, or there was something more that they didn't offer, which we think we can help them with. Instead of going to the Veterans Review and Appeal Board, we would offer to help them get that piece of evidence and send it back to the department. In most cases, that is enough; they don't have to go through the VRAB process when that happens.
On the fifth page of the deck, you'll see our chart of total claims by year. On average, we handle about 12,000 cases a year. The biggest percentage of this work is dedicated to the number of claims that are completed, which is about 7,000 to 7,500.
We also have about 5,000 claims that are what we call counselled out. Counselling out occurs when the veteran comes to us to take a look at the department's decision and when we review it we say that based on our experience, we don't think there is much the veteran can do.
In the end, thanks to the legislation, it's completely up to the veteran to decide whether he or she proceeds to the Veterans Review and Appeal Board or accepts that he or she probably doesn't have much of a shot and decides not to proceed.
In total we handle 12,000 to 13,000 cases a year.
What the bureau has to offer to veterans, above and beyond the service it provides, is a higher analysis of the particular case.
When the department itself makes a decision about a foreign application, sometimes it will deny that application because it's based entirely on the application that is provided by the veteran. Quite often a particular case may involve a much more sophisticated type of analysis that can't be done at that first level, so if the department turns it down, and they come to us, the bureau then has the expertise to take a really close look at that file and examine not just the evidence, but the law as well.
That's an important thing to remember. The bureau is a much deeper level of analysis that is provided to the veteran. We also help the veteran coordinate the gathering of evidence, which they may not have done in the first instance.
In the final analysis, what the bureau offers is probably 32 lawyers who probably know the Pension Act better than most people in the department or in the government because that's entirely what they focus on. They've got a very high level of expertise with regard to that piece of legislation.
I believe that was all I was going to provide as opening remarks, unless my colleague has any comments to offer.