Government Operations committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. We do expect post the January change and the last major change there to be within target service standards. Again, we've talked about those, which are continuing to answer calls within one to three minutes and paying claims within about two to three business days.

Government Operations committee  Honourable member, I can confirm that your assumption is correct. The 18-month start-up phase was the 18 months immediately preceding the July 1 operations ready date. With regard to the second question on what, in our integrated schedule, the specific milestones were in preparation, for context I will pick the highlights.

Government Operations committee  We have not yet seen a return to the level that was expected or that was historically experienced by the previous administrator. That said, we are achieving our target service levels now with the increased resourcing that we have brought on board over the last several months. One of the reasons we believe it has not returned to the level expected yet—although it will in the future—is that there are still some additional plan-design changes to come into force for the membership.

Government Operations committee  I do not have those figures handy at this point. We'd be happy to provide them to the committee. More importantly, we are administering those exception requests—excuse me—based on the specific provisions set forth by the—

Government Operations committee  Thank you. I apologize. The point I was making there is that we are administering a further directive and per the guidelines set out by the government on those forms.

Government Operations committee  I want to qualify, perhaps, some of my comments there. We do expect to achieve target service levels much sooner than the actual volumes that would have been achieved from the previous contract. To be clear, we do have the resourcing now to improve our contact centre and wait times, as noted previously.

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. For context on the question, the coverage provided to members and to Canadians posted abroad in the public service is very important, but it's also one of the most complex elements of the public service health care plan. We know it's complex because there are different jurisdictions to handle and different medical centres in each and every country.

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. To the honourable member's question, I want to reiterate that we do know people were frustrated by some of the issues they experienced during the transition. I can't comment on that example in particular, but we did work with members of Parliament and our partners in the Government of Canada to implement an escalation process for those who had constituents come into their office who were facing serious or urgent issues, such as the one you cited.

Government Operations committee  To the honourable member's question, we are just administering the program as per the planned directive and the negotiated changes. I probably wouldn't be in the best position to comment on whether that was perceived positively or negatively, but we do know that some members are frustrated with the changes.

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's an important question from the member. [Technical difficulty—Editor]

Government Operations committee  [Technical difficulty—Editor] to ours. I think that's been talked about a little bit, but again, to reiterate—

Government Operations committee  My apologies. Can you hear me okay now?

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wanted be clear that we do know the plan did change from the previous administrator to our plan, now administered by Canada Life. We talked about the negotiated changes, of which there were several: some to improve and augment the plan and to modernize it, and some to perhaps change some of the coverage levels.

Government Operations committee  Absolutely. I think we can also supplement to the committee some further details outlining all the different changes, if that would be helpful. Just for context, there are a couple of examples here. We have talked about the physiotherapy one at length. Perhaps another good example would be that where it is allowed, in certain provinces there was the introduction of a cap on the dispensing fee that is paid for certain drugs.

Government Operations committee  Absolutely, Mr. Chair.