Thank you, Chair.
Thank you all for being here today. It's extremely important, and we appreciate the information that you're providing us on the various topics. That would be the rehab—you were able to clarify some very important facts—and now on the supplementary estimates.
The word that I want to touch on is “facts”. I think the facts are the key here. When I became MP in 2015, I was very disappointed, to be very honest, that our numbers in the backlog were so high. We invested $11 million and what we were doing was adding new programs to support veterans, like the income replacement, the pension for life options, the well-being fund and the emergency fund. Those were key elements, but the numbers weren't going down, and I was asking what was happening and what was causing this.
I think I got the answer. The answer is, one, that the new benefits added more applicants. We've seen that. The facts show that there are a lot more applicants.
The other factor—let's not hide from that—is that the former government in 2013-14, before the election, cut the budgets on the back of our men and women who served. We saw cuts in two major areas. There were nine offices right across the country.... I know. I'm from Nova Scotia, and we have a large population. We were very upset, because we lost that office in Sydney. We then saw over 1,000 frontline employees fired.
By rehiring all of those people and reopening all of those offices.... It takes a long time to find the personnel and do the training.
Those two factors are why, in my understanding today, the backlog was so big. Maybe you can talk about that.
There's also the fact that we're seeing the backlog.... It's not enough. We need to be at zero. Get me straight clear. We need to be at zero, but I'm so happy that we went from 22,000 to 8,500. Tell us a bit about how things are improving in that way, because we have to get to zero. It's crucial.