I'll let Rick answer the one on the still serving personnel. We are looking. We need to remember, though, that while the person is still serving, although they are in the same process, they are getting some of the best medical help in the world, and they're getting their treatment. We have been talking with the Canadian Armed Forces about a strategy surrounding those still serving to ensure that for somebody who's not in the Canadian Armed Forces, that is, not receiving any treatment, what we should do with that. There are some conversations going on.
On the appeals, I will admit that I'm a little surprised, because in my discussions with VRAB and our BPA director general.... They're actually counselling probably 50% of the people out because they got the right answer. Often, they don't like the percentage. Now, that is based on what the doctor tells us, so if the doctor says there is a 15% derangement of the knee, we have the table of disabilities that says a 15% derangement of the knee equates to whatever it equates.
When they go in front of VRAB, VRAB has flexibilities that we do not have. I've been there for a bit more than six years. They were overturning a lot of our decisions, so what we started doing six years ago was to look at why they were overturning our decisions. We started bringing that into our decision-making. Where, at that point, our first app approval rate may have been in the.... The percentages varied, but generally speaking, they would have been around 60%. I'm generalizing. We are now, I think, at 79%, if I count absolutely everything, on first app approval. I usually say that it's over 80% because a lot of them are really higher. That is based on looking at what VRAB was rendering as decisions.
There are some that we will never be able to do. Okay, let's put those aside; I can't do anything about that. But on the other ones, why would they accept certain information and we would not? I'd go back to my policy colleagues and ask, “Okay, is this acceptable or not as evidence?” In many cases, it is and then we actually use that.