The report we drafted and provided to you and to parliamentarians takes into consideration improvements that were mentioned, such as digitization of files. It takes into consideration what we were told by Veterans Affairs were improvements that they made. It's a bit surprising for me, personally, to hear that there are further improvements the department is undertaking, which will further reduce the backlog, without my office and me having been informed of that while we were drafting the report.
Nonetheless, we know that bringing in new staff, as the report suggests as a way forward, would probably decrease productivity. If you bring new hires into a system as complex as the veterans benefits system, it takes a while for employees to become fully familiar with the process. Even if it is true, and I have no reason to doubt it is true, that Veterans Affairs is implementing further changes to increase the productivity of its staff, bringing in new staff would probably decrease productivity.
That is why we have made the assumption in our report that productivity of employees overall would gradually improve over two years if the department were to implement either of the two scenarios that we mention in the report. Productivity would increase gradually over two years and reach its highest level, which was recorded recently, in 2015-16, after two years, once employees are up to speed.
That, I think, is probably a fairly generous assumption to begin with. If there are further enhancements to the processes that the department has put in place, I am very happy to hear that, because it will benefit veterans who are waiting for applications to be processed. However, I was not given any evidence of that when my team and I were drafting the report.