Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members, for the opportunity to appear here today.
As the chair noted, I'll share my remarks today with my colleague, the deputy chair, Jack Bouchard. For the record, I should also note that Jack is a veteran of the Canadian Armed Forces.
I know that this committee understands the important role that the board plays in ensuring that veterans and their families receive the benefits to which they're entitled. In short, we provide an independent appeal process for those who are dissatisfied either with the denial of their claim or the extent of the disability that has been awarded.
Essentially, our program provides two levels of review. The first is a review of the initial VAC decision. If veterans remain dissatisfied, we offer a second level of appeal of the board's decision. The thing to remember is that veterans can always come back to the board with new evidence or new arguments, regardless of the time involved, and have a previous decision reviewed.
The board, like all aspects of the disability benefits system, has been challenged at times in meeting and ensuring that we deliver decisions in a timely manner and in the language of the veteran's choice. Today, we want to share a few things that we've been doing to overcome those challenges.
When we appeared before you a short eight months ago, we could not have imagined how the pandemic would affect how we service veterans and how we ensure that they get the benefits to which they're.... I cannot praise the staff of the board enough. In a matter of a few short weeks, we transitioned from a bricks and mortar operation to a totally virtual or remote operation. That would not have been possible without the unwavering commitment of staff to veterans and their families.
Throughout the pandemic, we continued to operate. We processed claims and issued decisions. Between mid-March and today, we've issued more than 1,700 decisions. However, we have had our challenges, and the biggest challenge was the ability to hold in-person hearings. I'm pleased to say that we transitioned through to the use of technologies such as teleconferencing and video conferencing. We have transitioned to start, but in October we began incrementally, where public health protocols allowed, to have in-person hearings again in a very incremental stage. That's an important part of our process.
I'm going to turn it over to my colleague, Jack, at this point so he can take us through some specifics of what we're doing.