Thank you.
Further to the backlog, two constituents come to mind. One young gentleman who's 28 years old—I coached him in hockey—stepped up to represent our country, not only here in Canada but in Afghanistan. We found out two days ago that this gentleman finally got his disability claim. It was 63 weeks—not 16 weeks but 63 weeks.
The second constituent has been waiting for over a year. In fact, his paperwork was in place as of December 14 of last year, and he was told that the department was working on files from June of 2017—a year ago. Even if things progress quickly, it will be a year for him on December 14. Let's say it's six months to get to where he is. It's still taken a year and a half to get to where he is.
Now, this young gentleman unfortunately had a mental health crisis. He phoned the assistance line, because he was given that by a caseworker. The assistance line basically said to him that they weren't there to help him. He was fortunate to have friends and family who talked him off of that cliff, but he had six other colleagues in his platoon who committed suicide. If those people had called that line and didn't get assistance, how is that acceptable to this department?