Public Accounts committee  Correct. Some 92 people were in that section in October 2006, before the plan came into place. We have grown it incrementally and systemically over time to a total of 232 people.

Public Accounts committee  Based on the current staff resources in place, the 232 people that we have--

Public Accounts committee  Fifty additional people would take it up to 280 people. But based on 230 today, our best assessment is that it would take until 2017 to clear that backlog. Now in fairness I need to say that as the processing time comes down from 150 to 100 hours and to 80 hours and 50 hours, there is always the potential for that to go faster, and that is the expectation.

Public Accounts committee  I'll ask Mr. Grandmaison, who is also the director of the pension renewal project, to address that specific question.

Public Accounts committee  Certainly. The two websites will be combined into one by March 2012. The communications process related to reservists is in itself a challenging piece, particularly for part-time reservists. Sometimes they parade, sometimes they don't, sometimes they move, and then it might take them a while to re-engage in another unit.

Public Accounts committee  I will give you a partial answer and I'll ask Mr. Grandmaison to elaborate momentarily. Of the 871 files that remain outstanding for people who are retired or retiring, they could be in a first, second, or final audit phase. With some of them, we have to go to the Canada Revenue Agency for a liaison function.

Public Accounts committee  In going through the financial audit, we worked very closely with the Office of the Auditor General, and that very issue came up. We had a very engaging discussion back and forth on whether things would change with respect to the pension buyback in a material way to make it worth a significant investment of time by the Auditor General's office to go through the statements again.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, an additional year or two to get to a point where there really is a material change.

Public Accounts committee  I have one small correction to make, if I could, upfront. You said three people, but you really only named two. The assistant deputy minister of finance and corporate services is one individual, Mr. Lindsey to my immediate left. The assistant deputy minister for information management is that third individual.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you for your question. Currently based on the 230 people we have in place, as I said, the number of hours per file has gone from 150 down to 100. As we automate more records as opposed to the 1960 paper or manual processes, I fully anticipate that this number is going to come down to 80 hours and then 50 hours.

Public Accounts committee  As I mentioned earlier, we are continually examining how we can process files more quickly and make our current administration system more efficient. We will continue to assess whether we can hire more staff to help us, something we regularly do to reduce wait times. It's always possible to bring the seven years back to something along the lines of six years or five years.

Public Accounts committee  In light of what we have learned since, I am not sure that today we would have acted the same way. I would say that in keeping with standard project management practices and principles, we would have had a single senior-level official, at least at the assistant deputy minister level, in charge of the project, and equally a master implementation plan in place.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you for the question. I'll address each recommendation. There is one recommendation, but there are really four sub-components of it, and I'll come at those in turn, if I may. On the first one with respect to hiring and training of staff, both prior to the audit and post-audit, we significantly increased the staff horsepower associated with addressing the backlog.

Public Accounts committee  In the past, when the administrative aspect fell under another assistant deputy minister, there were two systems and two websites. We will combine them to have a single website, so that reservists have one place to access all of the required information.

Public Accounts committee  In terms of processing times, I'll just correct one thing. When we started this endeavour, the processing times for the files were in the order of 150 hours per file. That is just a further indication of the complexity associated with going through manual records. Due to the efforts put in place, we're now down to about 100 hours, and that number of hours per file will decrease over time as we automate more of the records.