Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm going to echo what Comrade Ray has just talked about. I did have some speaking notes here, but some of it is things that he has already said. I'm not going to waste everyone's time regurgitating things. I'm more of a “get 'er done” type of person and don't keep beating things to death.
We have seen an increase in claims. We've been doing as much as we can to help them through the adjudication process, but I think some of the challenges that we see can be remedied by empowering the front-line staff of Veterans Affairs. As I said before, this is about a get-it-done mentality. There is no reason that our front-line staff, whether it's the VSAs, the case managers or the field nurses, don't have the capacity to approve applications that are fairly clear. With hearing loss, tinnitis, where we have an audiogram, where we have a physician who says there's hearing loss related to service, why does it have to go through all the levels of adjudication? Not only transparency, but proficiency and efficiencies are really what's needed.
With things such as chronic pain, a lot of chronic pain applications are usually favourable. It's fairly clear in their medical records that they have an injury due to service. Nothing is strange about it, yet it still takes 19 or 20 months to approve a knee injury.
A quick, easy solution might be to have them able to give a limit, whether it's 5% or 10%, whatever the number is, able to approve some of these supports right off the bat. Get them the treatment. The treatment is almost more important than the overall benefit. If we can get them into the treatment immediately, with a bit of support right away, that's going to at least get them where the problem doesn't exacerbate over time. There are some things on a proficiency level, on an efficiency level that we can look at, taking a look at mainstreaming some of the processes. I'm just going to reiterate whatever Ray has mentioned in terms of the backlog.
One of the challenges we see that would be of great help is for those who have to go to an OSI clinic for the first or second time. Some of these guys don't have the ability. They can't afford to go, so either they don't go or they're relying on us. That's a dangerous barrier for them to succeed. For them to admit that they can't afford something and they need help, that's not going to be successful. If they don't have the funds to get to the OSI clinic, they're just simply not going to go. There have to be ways that we can provide them with accommodations, provide them with the ability to travel, but without any barriers to them being successful on achieving their outcomes.
I'm just going to leave you with a quick story on how we operate here in Saskatchewan. We are front line. I have two service officers here who work with veterans every single day and I liaise with them. I talk with them. We have the ability to do some things at our level that might not be as easy at a federal level, but one of the things we do here is that we can have a veteran come into our office at 10 in the morning in need of shelter, food or medical attention. Throughout our various networks, whether those are social services, Legion branches or various service groups, we can have housing established, food provided, usually a stream of income through social services, medical appointments set up, and start the process for Veterans Affairs benefit claims, all by the end of the day. That's one day. I'm sure we can do better than 19 months. The target was 19 weeks. We can do better than that. It's all in the process and removing barriers, and it starts with empowering the front line.
Mr. Chair, I'm going to turn it back over to you. Thank you very much for your time.