Veterans Affairs committee  A number of things have been done internally around reducing red tape. We talked about the plain language initiative. We're going to be looking at all the documents that we send out to applicants. We've reduced the number. We've reduced documents on how to manage your lump sum aw

Veterans Affairs committee  I can't identify a trend. What I would say, though, is that when a higher number of first applications are approved and a lesser number come through as appeals or reviews, it means that you're making a proper decision the first time.

Veterans Affairs committee  To request a departmental review, it's a matter of filling out a form and providing additional information. They can submit that directly to the department on their own. They can also engage somebody from the Bureau of Pensions Advocates, which, as we mentioned earlier, is a serv

Veterans Affairs committee  It's difficult to tell by the year. We talked about some departmental reviews and how 68% were favourable. The issue we have is that we don't know from year to year which years they came from: they might be favourables and they came back. In 2011-2012, about 2,200 came back. Now,

Veterans Affairs committee  About 2,200 have come back for review. Now, whether they're—

Veterans Affairs committee  It's out of the 20,000, because as Bernard was saying earlier, they were approved, but the applicant did not agree with the assessment.

Veterans Affairs committee  I don't have that number. I know that 2,200 come back, but as I said, some of those will be considered to be positive.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, we can provide that number.

Veterans Affairs committee  I don't have an exact figure. There would be a fair number of people—

Veterans Affairs committee  It would be somewhere in that ballpark.

Veterans Affairs committee  We don't measure that. Other than making sure that we're doing quality assurance and training, we do not interfere with the decision-making of the adjudicators. We do not put any pressure on them and say they have to average a certain number of approvals or rejections. We do no

Veterans Affairs committee  I don't know. I have no opinion on where we're going wrong. We have to make sure that they meet the tests, that the disability is linked to their service and that there is a disability. We have to make sure that we assess the impact of that disability. There are legislative requi

Veterans Affairs committee  I would say that each case is completely different. There is complicated evidence that each adjudicator has to look at. They are instructed to apply the benefit of the doubt if there's contradictory evidence.

Veterans Affairs committee  I wouldn't say “balance of probabilities”. It's not a probability. The adjudicators are trained to look at and consider all of the evidence. They may have medical opinions or incident reports, and they may have some that contradict each other or do not clarify. At the end, in som

Veterans Affairs committee  No, I never used the words “50-50”. I don't know if there are any cases that would be 50-50.