Public Accounts committee  Bonjour. We are here to discuss the Auditor General's report pertaining to the Canada pension plan disability program. The tribunal fully supports the Auditor General's recommendations. I will provide you with some background about the tribunal, explain the measures taken to r

Human Resources committee  It would have been difficult to put standards in place from the outset, because we are dealing with a totally different legislative regulatory framework, and we are also working with different processes that follow those regulations.

Human Resources committee  It's a conscious decision to announce that we will have performance standards. Our members are being consulted in the development of these performance standards because we want to have realistic performance measures and performance standards and we want them to be monitored.

Human Resources committee  We realized that there was a backlog on day one when we received the backlog. I was appointed about a week before the tribunal opened its doors, and on day one we received the backlog. We have had discussions with the minister throughout, probably as of last fall.

Human Resources committee  It was probably last fall.

Human Resources committee  The response was very supportive. We now have almost all our full-time members and almost all our part-time members. I expect I'm going to see significant progress in dealing with the caseload now that I have 73 members plus 21 part-time members who are almost fully trained.

Human Resources committee  As I explained, in the first 365 days of the tribunal we were limited by the 365-day period in which parties were allowed to exchange documentation.

Human Resources committee  I'm looking at this so that I can make recommendations.

Human Resources committee  I answer to the minister.

Human Resources committee  Well—

Human Resources committee  I hadn't thought about that.

Human Resources committee  We operate at arm's length from the department.

Human Resources committee  We are looking very closely at all the aspects of our caseloads. So we're looking at when a document comes in, how long it should take through the regulations, how long it should—

Human Resources committee  It goes to me.

Human Resources committee  We have a few months of experience in working with the income security backlog. With this experience, we are now able to start looking at and defining a reasonable amount of time that members should take to complete the different types of cases, because even in income security we