Human Resources committee  We undertook to put as many people as possible on the processing activities so that it would not create important delays in relation to the key performance indicators we have. We have kept an average of 23 to 24 days for processing applications. But given the important increase in the number of applications, we knew that what we were doing would not be sufficient, and if we could not have additional resources, it would result in additional delays.

Human Resources committee  As I said, we kept realigning people within the organization to focus on EI processing as a priority.

Human Resources committee  Yes.

Human Resources committee  Thank you for your question. In fact, Mr. Savage, you know that there are two important peaks in the EI period, year after year. One has to do with the winter, which is usually in December, and the other one deals with the summer peak, which starts in June. In early October, we started seeing an important increase in the number of EI applications.

Human Resources committee  From many angles, absolutely.

Human Resources committee  Thank you for the question. In terms of the specific numbers by province, I will have to come back and report on the numbers. In terms of the measures, when we refer to monitoring the workload nationally and redistributing the workload, that means we look at the overall capacity in Canada.

Human Resources committee  Thank you. Our priority, of course, remains to pay the clients as quickly as possible and on a timely basis. At the end of December we were meeting our key performance indicator of paying our clients 80% of the time within 28 days. There are occasions when, for a number of reasons--incomplete applications, missing documentation, and so on--it takes longer than 28 days.