Veterans Affairs committee  Normally there would be a diagnosis in the file. It would have gone to the department. The department would have made a decision on whether or not to accept that the individual had the condition. If they are not satisfied with the decision of the department, that could come to

Veterans Affairs committee  It would be for any reason that the individual was dissatisfied with the decision--whether an entitlement was denied at the department, or whether it was an increase in entitlement, or whether an assessment was not sufficient. There are any number of reasons. That's the nice th

Veterans Affairs committee  One of the most common reasons is that there is not enough evidence. There's insufficient evidence on which the tribunal can establish that there should be a different result from what was obtained at review.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, it is possible, because not all medical expertise is credible. The tribunal, being a quasi-judicial tribunal, weighs all the evidence. If there are multiple medical reports...or even not multiple medical reports; the tribunal members evaluate all the evidence, including med

Veterans Affairs committee  That's correct, to review them.

Veterans Affairs committee  From the time an application is registered with the Veterans Review and Appeal Board, meaning that it's ready to be scheduled for a hearing, the average timeline is less than six months.

Veterans Affairs committee  That's the timelines over which we have control—in other words, their representative has registered their application for review—

Veterans Affairs committee  —and they're ready to be scheduled.

Veterans Affairs committee  Two and a half months.

Veterans Affairs committee  Actually, two do. One of them, a former military who served in Afghanistan as a nurse, also has a nursing background. So we actually have two.

Veterans Affairs committee  With respect to your requests for information, I believe that's information we can obtain and we can provide you with as much as is available to us. On your question, again, we tend to receive at the board those cases that are more difficult, and they are not...because of the sm

Veterans Affairs committee  It's difficult to determine because of the fact that there's no time limit on when an individual can come before the board to have a decision either reviewed or appealed. It's not necessarily that they had a previous ruling within the last year that they want to have processed th

Veterans Affairs committee  In general terms, I think the availability of service records are more detailed in the present day than they were for the Second World War vets.

Veterans Affairs committee  That's what I was referring to.

Veterans Affairs committee  In one sense, the modern vets are much more cognizant about maintaining records. Perhaps a lot of it has to do with modern technology, as well, as we try to do on the board in trying to work towards being more efficient, making our material more readily available to our members.