Veterans Affairs committee  They do work together. It is a continuum of care with respect to how Veterans Affairs manages it. When a veteran is going through a rehabilitation program, they are assigned a case manager. As the veteran completes the rehabilitation program, in other words, achieves the goals that have been set out as part of that program, the case manager will have discussions with them around where they are in terms of their rehabilitation.

Veterans Affairs committee  Sure, absolutely.

Veterans Affairs committee  No, there is no bonus. There's a bit of a mix in terms of what you're asking, in terms of rehabilitation service contracts with some specialists who help above and beyond the rehabilitation and the discussions that happen with the case manager.

Veterans Affairs committee  I don't mean to pass this as well, but actually Ms. Meunier would be best positioned to give you an answer.

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Ledwell. I'm going to try to answer the question quickly. A little earlier, Mr. Desilets, you asked questions about the francophone employees who were hired to help us reduce wait times. I first want to confirm that we are going to be keeping those employees. Second, from 2020‑2021 to 2021‑2022, there was a seven-week reduction in the average wait time for first applications associated with applications by francophones.

Veterans Affairs committee  Thanks, Deputy. It is essentially all salary dollars that have been funded as part of the $140 million. As the deputy indicated, we've renewed those people who were temporarily with us, with term employment expected to expire on March 31 of this year. In the cases where we have vacancies because people left for other employment or permanent employment elsewhere, we've started the process of hiring additional folks.

Veterans Affairs committee  Adjudicators are a particular position amongst the overall capacity of individuals. Adjudicators are typically nurses, although we have other people who help in the disability adjudication process, preparing claims, making sure they are paid as well, as part of the process. We were down about 50 nurses at the end of the two-year period that just ended, and we are in the midst of already hiring back those nurses at this point in time.

Veterans Affairs committee  I apologize. Our forecast is for about 9,500 in the backlog. Those are beyond our 16-week service standard in November of this year. We expect to get to about 5,000 by the end of this fiscal year. In other words, that will be at the end of March 2023.

Veterans Affairs committee  That's correct. The benefit that we have right now is we have a large number and complement of trained staff who were working as of day one on April 1, 2022, to continue the work of reducing the backlog. As the minister noted, we've cut the backlog number in half in the last little bit, so we're down now under 11,000.

Veterans Affairs committee  I can give you an exact figure on that. For 2021-22, the fiscal year that just ended, the number of applications that were completed within the 16-week service standard was 54%. That's up from 36% the year before, so it's up about 18% from the year previous. Again, that reflects the additional capacity that we've had to be able to make decisions more quickly.

Veterans Affairs committee  The role of the office is to accomplish a couple of things. It's to be a key focal point for our stakeholder community to be able to reach out and to better understand the needs of our women veterans, of our LGBTQ veterans. As Ms. Meunier noted before, we don't collect information on LGBTQ veterans specifically.

Veterans Affairs committee  There are a couple of issues. Sometimes those issues are individual. It might be an issue faced by an individual veteran. Collectively, there may be issues that are brought forward. Some of them are issues we've discussed at this committee before, with respect to delays with women veterans' applications.

Veterans Affairs committee  I think there are a couple of things. There's a bigger or broader public service question about location of work with respect to what people are doing. People have worked remotely before this, although there are many more people working remotely, not only within Veterans Affairs Canada, but in multiple areas.

Veterans Affairs committee  We have certainly seen an increase in the number of applications over the past 10 years or so. We monitor the situation, and try to make sure that we have the resources required to avoid backlogs. We're working on it. As for why the increase is temporary, we still have work to do to modernize systems and change the rules to remain as productive with the number of employees we have and ensure that we have the right number of employees in each department to process applications from veterans.

Veterans Affairs committee  Within two years, we expect to be able to cope with the applications and the backlogs, so that, as Ms. Meunier explained, we will be able to answer applications within 16 weeks 80% of the time, which is the service standard. We think we can get there within two years.