No, I cannot, but maybe I can provide some explanation. I think there are three things that are getting somewhat mixed up, if I can call it that, and I'd like to break it down into three pieces.
Number one, there's the discussion we have been having about the $200 million. That has nothing to do with the personnel in the department. As I mentioned, no veterans will lose a penny. Veterans' services and benefits will be provided. However, as I noted in my opening remarks, the department has a new reality, which is that we're in two worlds. My youngest client is 20 years old and I have clients who are over 100. The reality is that the needs and the expectations of the 20-year-old client and those of the 100-year-old are very different because they're at different places in their lives.
In order to move forward and to continue to provide services to our war era and Korean veterans, and also recognizing that in some cases our services are not as fast as they should be—the wait times are too long and some of our business processes are too long—we had a choice. We had the choice of muddling along or we could actually take this on, and we decided to take it on. So over the next five years, there will be a transformation of Veterans Affairs based on the principles that I outlined. We will reduce wait times. We will reduce the complexity. We will work with DND. We will work to enhance the new Veterans Charter and, in fact, we will be reflective of the demographics.
What we're going through is a significant process of business re-engineering. We are fundamentally going to re-engineer our disability award process. And let me be very clear that this is not about reductions or taking any benefits or services from veterans. It's about how we do business, and we're doing business in a very paper-intensive world. That simply does not allow us to be as fast and as nimble as we should be. So that's why in August of this year we started digital imaging of service medical health records at Matane, Quebec. That is why we are re-engineering. That is why we are looking at greater collaboration with the Department of National Defence, so that at the end of the day, it will be a smaller department—but a department that will provide better services to veterans, faster services to veterans, and particularly as they relate to our modern-day veterans. When I go out and talk with veterans and veterans' associations, many of them tell me that we need to step up our game on the website. They appreciate being able to call, but, actually, they would like to be able to transact most of their own business....
That's why we've done these things. And we're just getting started with things such as the direct deposit for claims by some of our benefits. So yes, it will be smaller. The estimate that has been put forward—and I want to stress that it's an estimate, because until you actually do the business of re-engineering, which we've started.... Indeed, we've started the re-engineering for disability benefits, for treatment benefits, and the veterans' independence program. But it's all about providing better service to veterans. In some cases, where we have people who are involved in photocopying paper, moving paper, filing paper, using paper, we are going to move to a much more digital world, and that's going to mean fewer jobs in the department.
Overall, in the department's base, there are upwards of 500 positions that could be reduced over five years via the use of technology throughout the department—and, to some extent, due to the declining numbers....
The reality is that what we've been doing, for example, is adding additional staff in places like Val Cartier, Petawawa, and Edmonton, because there is significant growing need in those places. In some other cities, we have not been adding staff because of the lower demand there. They don't have a high concentration of Canadian Forces veterans, and so we're actually taking those resources and moving to areas of higher need.