Good afternoon and thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members, for inviting me to appear before you today.
I am Steven Woodman, the acting senior director of legal operations at the Bureau of Pensions Advocates. It is my pleasure to be here to speak about the bureau. The bureau has existed for more than 90 years in one form or another and is the only service of its kind in the world.
The mandate for BPA is set out in the Department of Veterans Affairs Act, which creates a free legal service for veterans. That mandate includes assisting applicants and pensioners in the preparation of reviews or appeals under the Veterans Review and Appeal Board Act and arranging for representation at those hearings by our lawyers.
The act stipulates that the relationship between the bureau and the person requesting assistance is that of a solicitor and client, which means that the exchange of information with our clients is confidential.
The Bureau of Pensions Advocates calculates intake to be approximately 20% of the department's output. This means that as the backlog is reduced and more decisions are made at Veterans Affairs Canada, the work at BPA and then the Veterans Review and Appeal Board, VRAB, increases.
Last year, in fiscal 2022-23, our intake at BPA was 16,818 files. The average over the previous five years was 13,303. With the exception of the first year of the pandemic, our intake has risen annually. With this increasing intake, we are working closely with the Veterans Review and Appeal Board to implement strategies that are resulting in greater responsiveness to veterans' claims.
As you heard from Mr. Bouchard, these initiatives include working with VRAB to create a simplified settlement process on some files and the creation of what we called the VET, veterans excellence teams, which consisted of junior lawyers working on less complex matters to help resolve those matters outside of our usual process and creating an early resolution process.
About a third of the requests for assistance the Bureau of Pensions Advocates receives will require a hearing before the Veterans Review and Appeal Board. At the end of the day, the bureau represents veterans in over 95% of the cases heard by the board.
In addition to representing veterans before the board, the bureau submits 2,000 to 3,000 files each year to Veterans Affairs Canada for departmental review. An application for ministerial review is essentially a request to the department to review its own decision in light of new evidence or a clarification of the evidence that was already available at the time of the initial decision.
In recent years, the department has received additional funding to temporarily increase its capacity. This funding has allowed the bureau to address its own backlog. In budget 2023, the government announced new funding to help the bureau continue to reduce its backlog and maintain services for veterans. This is obviously invaluable assistance, but we continue to work on a long-term solution to these challenges.
Thank you.