Veterans Affairs committee  That's a good question. I go back to the same key words: transparency and culture The fact is it shouldn't be a secret the way the board operates, the way board members are selected, the way decisions are made and if they're published. When everything is transparent, there are n

Veterans Affairs committee  That's a good question. I'll start from why we did the Veterans Review and Appeal Board report, and why we did the first report, which had to do with the reasons for decisions. That actually covers the whole spectrum of adjudication from start to finish. As I said before, we'll

Veterans Affairs committee  It's a big issue. In a sense, it's the key issue. You cannot access any benefits or programs in Veterans Affairs Canada unless you go through this application process. Definitely it's the key issue. That's why I said we decided to do that in the second year of my mandate. The f

Veterans Affairs committee  It's a good question. Again, I think what's important here is transparency. It's not about increasing favourability but about informing the board, other members, of previous decisions and how they were arrived at. Everything goes hand in hand. If we made recommendations as to how

Veterans Affairs committee  Not that we can see. Obviously, the cases are de-personalized—I guess that's the right word—so I can't see any, unless Diane has comments on that from a legal aspect.

Veterans Affairs committee  That's a good point. I referred to a report in my opening address from McInnes Cooper. It actually reviewed the adjudication process from start to finish. It found three reasons for the high favourability rate at the first review from VRAB. It had to do with the personal presenc

Veterans Affairs committee  That's a good question as well. We know that decisions are now published. Some cases of interest are now being published on the Veterans Review and Appeal Board website, which is a start. That's heading in the right direction. We know also that they're working with the Bureau

Veterans Affairs committee  We are following up on the report that we published. It will also be a public report.

Veterans Affairs committee  Most of the work on the first report was done by a private firm that was contracted by the office.

Veterans Affairs committee  I will ask Diane to answer. She is working on the upcoming follow-up report, and she was involved in the publication of the first one, so she has those details.

Veterans Affairs committee  I'll take that a point further. Certainly the Federal Court cannot force the tribunal to review or to change decisions or anything like that. I'm not a lawyer; I'm just a simple SAR tech, but I would think there needs to be some kind of respect in a common law society where the a

Veterans Affairs committee  Certainly. That's a good question. I mentioned a bit of it in my opening address. Basically, in the first recommendation we said that as a measure of performance the board was using the percentage of decisions returned from the Federal Court. I agree with you that 100% is a targ

Veterans Affairs committee  I have the expert here.

Veterans Affairs committee  I think we can start off with the Gilbert case. I'll let Diane address that aspect of it and then I'll talk about the board itself.

Veterans Affairs committee  In fact, that was the intent. Again, we go back to transparency. The more people know about the programs and benefits—the eligibility criteria, how they access these programs and benefits—the easier it's going to be for everybody.