SSPD Committee Meeting

SUB-COMMITTEE ON THE STATUS OF PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES OF THE STANDING COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT AND THE STATUS OF PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES

SOUS-COMITÉ SUR LA CONDITION DES PERSONNES HANDICAPÉES DU COMITÉ PERMANENT DES RESSOURCES HUMAINES ET DE LA CONDITION DES PERSONNES HANDICAPÉES

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, May 11, 1999

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[English]

The Chair (Ms. Carolyn Bennett (St. Paul's, Lib.)): I call this meeting to order. Brought back by popular demand, we have Mr. Victor Rabinovitch, the assistant deputy minister of income security programs, and with him, Cathy Drummond, the director general, program policy and planning, of the income security programs, and Doug Taylor, the acting director general of central operations, income security programs. Welcome.

Mr. Victor Rabinovitch (Assistant Deputy Minister, Income Security Programs, Department of Human Resources Canada): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I wonder if we should just get right into it.

[Translation]

I will begin in French. I will give you explanations on a small presentation that we have prepared for you and for the members of the committee. You have already introduced my colleagues who are here at the table with me. Other officials are here in the room, but there is no need to introduce them to you at this time.

During your meeting of March 8, you asked a certain number of questions and we then prepared a report that was distributed. This morning, with your permission, I would like to take a few minutes to briefly summarize it for you.

I would also like to point out a certain number of changes as well as certain weaknesses that we have found within our system and that we will attempt to correct.

The Disability Program benefits close to 400,000 Canadians, namely 286,000 disabled persons and 100,000 children. We pay out some 2.6 billion dollars in benefits. In a typical year, we receive some 70,000 applications. I should tell you that for the year just ended, 1998-99, we received a total of approximately 65,000 applications.

[English]

What I'd like to do is spend a minute or two looking at the steps in the process. Members of the subcommittee will be aware that a person who applies for disability can follow up to four steps in the process. The department of HRDC is responsible for administering the first two steps of the process: application and reconsideration. The review tribunal, which is a separate and arm's-length body, is responsible for the third step. The Pension Appeals Board, which is again an independent body, is responsible for the fourth step.

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One number that will come out in the next few slides will show you that at the application step and the reconsideration step, these first two steps, the vast majority of applications are handled and finalized. For the most recent year, 91% of applications are handled and finalized in those first two steps.

Let's have a look at the next overhead. For the next four overheads I will very briefly—and I will keep this down to the time limit—try to describe the typical step-by-step experience based on average statistics. We've averaged out these statistics from our most recent years' experience, although we have based it on the expectation of 70,000 annual applicants, which has been the recent years' average, even though this last year was 65,000 applicants. But the statistics themselves, based on a sampling of 100 people, are reflective of the decisions that have been taken this last year or in recent years. Out of a typical grouping of 100 applications during the last year, 35 applicants were approved at the initial stage by the department's adjudicators and therefore 65 were not approved. You would apply that 35 as a percentage—35%. If it was applied to 70,000 applicants, it would mean approximately 23,000 approvals in the initial stage. This year it's slightly less than 23,000 because of the 65,000 applicants.

The adjudication is done by medical adjudicators, primarily nurses who are supported by a medical advisory unit. They use a variety of data, a variety of information from a variety of sources, and we can get into that if you would like.

Let's move to the next step. In the next stage, which is really the first level of appeal, the reconsideration level, we're following what happens with individuals who were denied at the initial stage. So if you recall, 65 people were denied at the initial stage. Of those 65, 36 on average have chosen not to appeal any further. However, 29 individuals have requested reconsideration. The 29 individuals requesting reconsideration receive a reconsideration by HRDC staff who were not involved in the initial decision. The staff are empowered to consider any new medical information that the applicant brings forward. On average, out of the 29 who have requested reconsideration, 8 have received an approval and 21 have not been approved.

We have done a review this last six months on the decisions that have been made at the reconsideration stage, and as the overhead shows, we've concluded that 94% of all approvals made at the reconsideration stage have been due to new medical information that has been brought forward on the individual. In other words, the key factor that comes into play at this first level of appeal is whether new medical information is brought forward.

To summarize then, at the first two levels, that initial level plus the reconsideration level, we're talking about 91% of all applicants having their applications finalized either through an approval or through a decision made by the applicant to no longer follow any further appeal process.

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At this point we're moving to the initial independent appeal. In effect, it's a second level of appeal because we had the administrative appeal internally. So this first independent appeal is done at the review tribunal, and as you'll see from the numbers that are shown, of the 21 individuals who were denied at the reconsideration stage, on average 9 chose to go forward to the review tribunal stage and 12 people chose not to appeal at all. This is why I've said to you that 91% have been dealt with at the first two levels, and now we are dealing with 9 people out of 100 who have actually gone forward to the independent appeal.

The review tribunal will be appearing before you at a later date. They have, I'm sure, far more information on their process, how it takes place and what the considerations are. All I'm presenting here then are some summary numbers on average based on the statistics we have at hand, and the review tribunal's statistics will be more up to date, so there may be some slight change here. But taken as an average, out of the nine people who will appeal to the RT, approximately two will be approved and seven will be denied in their application of benefits.

I think it's very important to remember that at the review tribunal stage as well as at the Pension Appeals Board, all of these appeals are heard de novo, meaning as if they're being listened to for the first time. New medical information can be brought forward. The individual makes his or her case in front of an independent tribunal. I won't say more about it now. The RT commissioner will be discussing it himself.

Let's go to the last stage of the entire process, and this is the Pension Appeals Board stage. Here we're looking at the seven people who were denied by the review tribunal. Of the seven people denied, on average four choose not to pursue the process further. Three, however, pursue the process to the Pension Appeals Board, and based on the recent numbers we have, of the three people who request leave to appeal—and the Pension Appeals Board is a unique process that is more court-like because it is run by the judges—they must request leave to appeal initially, and if granted leave to appeal then the appeal is heard. Taken out of the total of three, recent numbers will show that one person will eventually be approved for the CPP disability pension and two will either be denied leave or will be denied at the actual appeal stage.

The Pension Appeals Board is staffed by current judges or retired judges all appointed by Order in Council. Obviously, they operate very much at arm's length. We can provide more information on it, but they are an arm's-length operating entity. They have had a very significant increase in the number of appeals throughout the 1990s, which of course is part of the experience of the entire program.

So if we look at the second to last overhead, what you have is a summary of the process as I've described it here, and I believe the process is described as well in the document we've prepared for you. The document has been copied. You have it there. I hope this provides a transparent description of what is actually happening based on our most recent set of numbers.

If we look at the totals of individuals involved, out of the sample of 100 people applying, the recent experience will show that 46 of the 100 will be approved at some point during the process. So 43 will be approved at the earliest part of the process, the part that is run within the department, and then another three will be approved during the latter part of the independent appeals. Applied to percentages, of course, we're talking about 46% approval based on our current experience.

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Turning to the last overhead,

[Translation]

I will now take a few minutes to speak to you about certain improvements that are under way.

First of all, we are pursuing a decentralization process, which means that we are attempting to move the decision-making powers closer to those individuals who are asking for benefits. The decentralization of the program is now nearly complete and we have decision-making centres in all of the regions. In our department, there is a region for each province.

Over the past few years, we have doubled the number of our decision-makers. We are more and more able to make decisions quickly and efficiently. This is why we can state today that for at least the first two stages, the backlog has been considerably reduced.

The second important improvement is in the area of quality assurance. We are this year in the process of establishing a quality assurance program so as to ensure consistency in the process and in the decisions.

A third improvement is that we now have major pilot projects aimed at improving and increasing personal contact. We believe that personal contact is a very important way of improving the quality of the information given to individuals applying for benefits.

[English]

I'll mention three or four other improvements. We are attempting to apply on a pilot project basis some of the techniques of alternative dispute resolution methodology, which involve speaking directly to individuals even before a final decision is made to ensure ourselves that we have received from those individuals all the information they have available to help make a good decision. This is a pilot project that began very recently. We're applying it in three of our regions and we will see how well it works. It's a test.

Another improvement is putting in plain language—

Mrs. Judi Longfield (Whitby—Ajax, Lib.): Which three regions?

Mr. Victor Rabinovitch: Manitoba, Newfoundland, and a part of Ontario.

Mrs. Judi Longfield: Which part of Ontario?

Mr. Victor Rabinovitch: Southwest Ontario.

Mrs. Judi Longfield: Okay, thank you. Sorry.

Mr. Victor Rabinovitch: We're running out of Chatham, I think.

Mr. Doug Taylor (Acting Director General, Central Operations, Income Security Programs, Department of Human Resources Development): Yes, Chatham.

Mr. Victor Rabinovitch: Another improvement is the use of plain language in documentation, in correspondence. We can get into that.

I think we all understand the challenge, and please believe me that when we try to use plain language in a letter, and then other professional individuals, notably lawyers, look at the plain language and say, no, you're writing things that the law doesn't quite mean, it really is a challenge to get it right. But we're not just committed to it; we want to do it. It's the way we want to do things.

Another improvement is in management information. We are developing the capacity to understand appeal rates or appeal outcomes much better. We are developing a statistical analysis of denials to try to understand better who is denied and why they're denied—the causes. We're working at it.

The last one I'm going to mention is simply the one of partnerships, alliances, the sharing of information between ourselves and workers' compensation boards, the sharing of information with provincial adjudicators for the provincial programs, and the sharing of information with insurance companies. This is not brand-new stuff, although a lot of it is much further or much broader than had existed before. We can get into that if you'd like.

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So, Madam Chair, very briefly, that's a quick overview. I hope the document we prepared after the March 8 meeting has been helpful. Through conversation and through questions, I hope we can share a lot more with you.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

Miss Grey.

Miss Deborah Grey (Edmonton North, Ref.): Thanks, Carolyn.

Thank you, Victor and crew, for coming back with that other information. I guess I have a few questions. This presentation was excellent, but I just feel kind of worn out at the end of it, looking at all the boxes—and I'm as healthy as a horse, for which I'm grateful.

We sit here in a room and watch all this, but what about the person who is disabled, who has to make the phone calls to get on a bus, to get disabled transport? How exhausting is this whole system for them? You know a certain percent are going to get through it anyway. Do you aim for a 46% level, or do you say “My budget is $2.6 million, so we'll go up to that”?

Mr. Victor Rabinovitch: We have been criticized in the past—and I say “we” collectively. I've been with the program for 15 months, but I certainly inherited all the good things my predecessors have done.

Certainly the Auditor General in the past argued that the program was being applied in a manner that went beyond what was intended by the legislation. However, there are no production result targets. It doesn't work that way. First, the decision-making is so significantly decentralized that you could not apply a target for results. The results are what are achieved by that decision-making centre.

Last year, for 1997-98, the approval level at the initials averaged out to about 30%. This year, the approval level at the initials, as I've noted, is closer to 36%. There was no calculation. What there is, however—and I think the minister talked a bit about this—is very much a desire to decide compassionately for the individual, but within the rules as set out by legislation.

What does it mean for the individual? We know any person who's going to apply for disability is not going to be in the best of health—that's for certain. So it can't be easy when you have made the decision, personally, that CPP disability is what you're going to apply for. Your insurance company may say you must apply for CPP disability before they will consider you. Indeed, last night I was signing off one letter to an individual—I'll be sending this back to you this morning—who even sent us a copy of the letter from the insurance adjudicator. The adjudicator failed to notice it's not the Department of Health and Welfare any longer; it's HRDC and has been for over five years.

Miss Deborah Grey: But does anybody care, Victor? We get the people in our offices who are just about hysterical. They are despairing; they've given up on everything. I don't think they really care whether it's called Health and Welfare or HRDC. They don't give a sweet fig. They are desperate by the time they get to our offices—desperate. We can't just give them a cute bureaucratic jargonese answer. It just doesn't work.

So when they're in our office, what we get more frustrated about than anything else are your cut-offs; it has to be all or nothing. People say “I could hardly get to your office today, let alone have somebody somewhere determine what my employability is”—whatever level, if they could do something. They're desperate. We just have to report that to you from the front lines.

Mr. Victor Rabinovitch: I can only share with you that we react the same way. The legislation is clear in its wording. How you apply the legislation obviously involves judgment. This will be a bureaucratic answer, but we'll go beyond that and talk about what we will try to do. From an administrative end, we have made the speeding up of the process objective number one.

Miss Deborah Grey: And that's good.

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Mr. Victor Rabinovitch: We have speeded it up through all kinds of money, but also through tremendous interregional cooperation. We've been shifting files around to get it done. The speed-up is good and genuine. That's fine. The reconsideration, which is a first-level appeal, has been much speeded up. It's good. It's genuine. When you get to the review tribunal...and when the commissioner is here, I'm sure he'll talk along the same lines because I know that is their preoccupation.

That's fine as far as it goes, but what we're really after is to develop a way of dealing with the 65,000 to 70,000 individuals as individuals. That's why I was mentioning the phone call approach to dealing with the applicant. We're saying to the applicant “This is what the decision is about, having provided us with all your information”. That will be helpful. That's something. What we'd really like to move toward is to be able to say to the individual “You don't qualify under the CPP disability; however, here are places you should be going where you might be able to get assistance”.

Given that we work under law, and that's all we can do, I think that's a step in the right direction.

Miss Deborah Grey: Yes. That's a human step. At least there's someplace else you can turn to.

With the private insurance companies, you pay premiums for private insurance and think you're going to be covered, and then you find yourself in no man's land. The mortgage people really don't care either that you're stuck between your private plan and CPP; that you pay tax on CPP, but you don't pay tax on your workers' comp.

Ms. Cathy Drummond (Director General, Program Policy and Planning, Income Security Programs, Department of Human Resources Development): I think there's been a real problem in the past about the various disability programs in Canada not working particularly well together and the people—

Miss Deborah Grey: Yes, but we're talking about last Wednesday as being in the past.

Ms. Cathy Drummond: It's true. It's still not perfect, but we've been doing a lot of work on it. We've been trying to get, for instance, information-sharing agreements signed with all of the workers' compensation boards in Canada. Some have been more enthusiastic than others about signing with us, but that is a first step toward understanding each other's programs.

For instance, in Nova Scotia, although we don't have a formal agreement, social services, the Workers' Compensation Board, and our department have been working together co-training front-line staff so they understand each other's programs in order to refer each other. There's a common brochure for the three programs in New Brunswick. So these are very small steps at the front end, but I think they help a little bit so we can direct clients a little better to where they might be able to get support.

So they are small steps. We've been working through the federal-provincial working group on persons with disabilities, particularly with the social services programs, to look at what else we can do, and to look at the gaps between the programs and what we can do. But we're all working within pieces of legislation.

Miss Deborah Grey: I understand that. We need to put pressure on to make those changes. Again, I'm not being critical of you individually, and please understand that. They just look a whole lot different when they've staggered into your office than they do on a form.

Mr. Victor Rabinovitch: It's in the nature of the program that we're playing God. We're sort of playing banker. We're deciding whether you qualify or not, whether you shall receive benefits or not. In our system of government, clearly it's members of Parliament who become the appeal venue of last resort—the process people. I won't share personal stories, but I understand very much the pressure you must be under.

I finish my working day every day by signing letters personally. I sign 10 to 20 letters a day. Wherever possible, I'll write a personal note on the letter, but it doesn't lessen the pain of the individual. I can just keep saying, if we don't remain sensitive to them, we won't be doing a good job as administrators of the law.

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When I was welcomed into my area of the department, I was told ISP was a big family, and there really is very much that personal, compassionate approach by people. That should be at least somewhat reassuring. But in the end, people are denied the benefit. They are.

[Translation]

The Chair: Madam.

Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral (Laval Centre, BQ): I will simply share with you my astonishment at the fact than fewer than one person out of two is considered eligible under the Canada Pension Plan Disability Program of the Canadian government. Why is it that the percentage of refusals is so high, given that these people are applying on the advice of health professionals? That is how this usually comes about. I find that to be quite high.

Furthermore, do you know what happens to those people whose applications are refused? Do they wind up on social assistance? Do they succeed in finding work? Have you any idea of what happens to these clients?

Mr. Victor Rabinovitch: First of all, one must consider the factors that come into play in any decision. Often, the people applying for benefits haven't contributed to the pension plan. Even if they truly have disabilities, these people are not accepted by the plan. That is an example.

What happens to those persons whose applications are not accepted? Some of them, after a certain period has elapsed, make a new application, especially if their health has deteriorated or if they have obtained paperwork from doctors or other health professionals setting out important facts that might change the decision. That happens from time to time. Others ask for social assistance at the provincial level and most probably obtain it.

We try to explain to individuals how and where to apply. There has however never been a study on the number of people in these situations. I have no official report. I am simply giving you impressions. These are correct impressions, but the situation has not been examined in depth in the context of a study per say.

I must say that it is a very good question, because it relates to people whose applications have not been accepted. It ties in directly with the way in which we can, within a federal provincial governmental system, help people who are not eligible for our program but who are nevertheless very ill. I have no answer to give you.

Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral: The Régie des rentes du Québec pays out disability benefits to Quebec citizens who have paid into the Régime des rentes. Could you tell me if the criteria you use are similar to those of the Régie des rentes du Québec?

Secondly, is the acceptance percentage similar or is there a big difference between the two? I will understand if you don't have this information. If you don't have it, I will find it.

Mr. Victor Rabinovitch: We have regular contacts with the Régie des rentes du Québec. Very recently, approximately two months ago, we together discussed the way in which we should be comparing the two systems. I will give you a general overview. I don't know if you might want to add anything. You will be able to do so in a moment.

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We talked with our colleagues in Quebec to determine the differences and the similarities between the two systems. The Quebec system is generally stricter with young people, the thinking being that young people are probably better able to look for work, to purchase medication or to make the necessary changes so as to become less disabled. However, people who are closer to retirement age probably have a better chance of receiving benefits. But this is simply the outcome of a conversation and not of a true study.

Ms. Drummond has certain statistics. I don't know if they would be valid for comparison purposes.

[English]

Ms. Cathy Drummond: Yes, they are to an extent comparable. But it's hard to compare the two programs because in Quebec people cannot receive both, for instance, auto insurance or workers' compensation and Quebec pension plan benefits for disabilities. It's one or the other, whereas in the rest of Canada they could be on both. But the approval and denial rates in the QPP program are about the same as the ones in the CPP. They vary a bit year by year. Their approvals last year were a little higher than ours, but not a lot. They were lower at another point. It's about the same.

[Translation]

Mr. Victor Rabinovitch: We are pursuing our discussions with our colleagues, as well as with our American counterparts. Each one of the systems is looking for answers to the questions you are asking: how to make the right decisions.

Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral: Thank you.

[English]

The Chair: Ms. Lill.

Ms. Wendy Lill (Dartmouth, NDP): Thank you for coming here. This is an area we can't get away from in this committee, nor can we as MPs; it's in our face all the time. I imagine we all have very close relationships with people in the bureaucracy who are tearing their hair out over the whole system as it is configured now. It's great to have you here, and I think out of this meeting will come many more questions, which I hope you will be patient enough to answer because I think we are getting closer to what we need to know.

We all have many examples, but I would like to use an example just for a second. I have one woman in my riding who applied for CPP in the fall of 1995. She has gone through all sorts of stages and is now at a leave-to-appeal stage—and this is 1999. She has a disability that she has been working with all her life. She wants to work, as does everybody who we've ever met with a disability; they want to work. She's slowly being driven under by her disability. It has progressed to the point that it is now impossible for her to work. But going through all these processes has in fact been arduous,and she's now losing her home; she's losing her life savings. She is now very ill.

I use her as an example at this point to talk about the definition of “disabled” and the fact that the CPP disability definition doesn't recognize the varying degrees of capacity. It requires recipients to either be in or out of the labour market. Is there not a definition of disability that would allow for part-time work, which would allow for whatever level of work that people can possibly do, given the benefit of the doubt that they want to work, that they want to be productive? Why can we not work toward that kind of definition? That's question number one.

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I have another question, and it's a real money question. Bill C-2 apparently passed and said we will have savings of $1 billion by the year 2005 in the CPP disability fund. I have a source for that: the chief actuary said the savings from Bill C-2 would amount to $1 billion by 2005 in CPP disability. So in following the money, do we have fewer disabled people? Are we expecting fewer in the future? Are we going to tighten up these criteria and so in fact even fewer and fewer people are going to get through that net? Let's try to be honest about whether this fund is funded sufficiently. Is it becoming much less possible for real disabled persons to have the support they need?

Mr. Victor Rabinovitch: That's a lot of questions, Madam Chair. I'll work through them. I'm going to ask my colleague Doug Taylor to come in, in a moment, on the question of part-time work and volunteer work, which we were just discussing this morning.

First I'm going to start with your very last point about the funding of the CPP and its stability. I think it's a very important point that goes well beyond the disability program but just deals with the contributory public pension plan. The most recent report from the acting chief actuary was then reviewed by an independent group of three actuaries. They confirmed that on the basis of the changes made through Bill C-2 there are some increases in contributions, but because of the stabilization of the various programs within the CPP, the CPP is actuarially sound, as far as actuaries can foresee. They say they can foresee 100 years. They're actuaries, so they must be correct.

So I can't be more definitive than what we've been told. I'm an economist by training, way back when, for my sins. I have read all of the various actuarial reports as well as critical reports, and the numbers are very solid. So it seems to me that just simply from the point of view of administering a public contributory retirement scheme, that is very good news and something to take pleasure in. Being Canadians, we don't usually take pleasure in our achievements, but this is an achievement.

Now let's go to the disability portion. The Auditor General did criticize some years ago the level of favourable decisions or benefits that were being given, and the chief actuary at the time gave a straight upward line projection on the costs of CPP disability. Essentially at the time—this is going back four and a half, five years ago—there was an outcry by people who follow these things. The criticism was that the department, in its administration of the program, and the predecessor department, were being too loose, too flexible, and were imputing to the program standards of admissibility that were not intended by the legislation. That's a long way of saying we were told to toughen up; we were told to become more consistent, to ensure standard consistency across the program—and we have done so. That definitely does mean that fewer people are admitted.

We do not have any target at any time in front of us to say don't give this, don't give that; the following amounts of money must be saved. There is nothing of that kind. We do very much just try to apply the law as we have understood it, and across the board. The quality assurance program we're putting in place now to check on regional consistency is going to help us understand if we're doing that really properly.

Then you come to what I think is really the more interesting question about whether people can work part-time and ought people to work part-time. Then, more broadly, is there a possibility of developing a scheme of partial disability?

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I'll deal with the last one, and then you'll deal with part-time.

Partial disability programs that do apply in some western European countries have not been a great success in that the general view is they have expanded out of control. Now, perhaps people on the receiving end of the pension would say, well, that is a success.

There are very serious criticisms of programs that do exist in other countries that they have not been able to maintain a consistency of application and a consistency of adjudication that is consistent with labour market requirements and policy. I think, however, that's something parliamentarians would want to review and ask whether that assessment is right. That is certainly the criticism we are aware of and are guided by.

Workers' compensation boards, where partial disability is assessed, are under tremendous pressure at all times to be able to apply their assessments in a consistent manner and keep costs under control. You'd be aware of this as a problem for WCBs.

That's just the general answer, and it's a theoretical answer, because it's not our program. Less theoretical, more practical, is the issue of part-time work.

Mr. Doug Taylor: Your question is a timely one because right now, within the department, we're starting to turn our attention to the reality that while clients who are accepted for benefits don't have the capacity to work, a small group of those clients can regain the capacity to work. Some of them indeed go back full time, but others might only regain the capacity to work part-time. So what about them?

We have some measures in place that are designed to help people get back into the workforce. For example, we will continue their benefits for three months while they're trying to get back to work. If they're unsuccessful, then they still have the safety net of our program.

We also have a rapid reinstatement program for someone who leaves their benefit because they go back to work and then subsequently, if they have a relapse for the same medical condition, we can get them back in on our benefit quickly. But we also realize—and this is fairly recently that we've turned attention to this—that we do have still another group of clients who may regain the capacity to work, but on a very marginal basis. We need to be able to tell them clearly how much work is permitted and make sure we case-manage them in a much better way than we do right now.

Frankly, we're not really set up to do much case management. We do have a vocational rehabilitation program, but it's very small. We think there's potential there to help those clients who can get back to work to do so. It's not quite as easy as simply saying everyone's allowed to earn up to a certain dollar value or work a certain number of hours per week. We know we have to look at clients individually. We have to look at their capacity individually. And if we can help them back to working to their full capacity, we want to do that. It makes sense for the client; it makes sense for us. We're just in the process of trying to identify what the measures are that would help us help those clients more to work on a part-time basis.

Ms. Wendy Lill: You say you're in the process. I'm just wondering how that process is working.

I'll throw in one other tiny question. Do you have people with disabilities working through these kinds of issues with you? Do you have people on staff who are disabled and are really living the experience?

Mr. Doug Taylor: Yes, we do, but I'll answer your first question.

One of the first things we wanted to do was make sure that whatever ideas we were talking about were going to make sense from our clients' point of view. So very recently, as an example, we had some focus tests, where we met with clients who have gone back to work, some successfully and some unsuccessfully, and got their perspective on what we could have done better to help them succeed in getting back to work. It was a very interesting exercise. It confirmed a lot of what we thought, but it took it a lot further.

We realized, for example, that we've got to do a much better job of explaining the rules to clients and being a little more proactive with them. If they come to us and say they're thinking about going back to work, our first response should be, what can we do to help? Do they need some guidance as to what appropriate work is? Do they need some active rehabilitation measures that we can provide? If they're involved with a workers' compensation board or private insurer, can we join forces with them so that there's a coordinated approach to help the person get back to work? We got a lot of very valuable information by talking to those clients who had lived the experience, and we're going to build on that.

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The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Scott.

Hon. Andy Scott (Fredericton, Lib.): Thank you.

It's a very good presentation of the process. I'm curious, though, in terms of the time, because I think we probably all have experience with the two denied at the end. So through the course of this, I'd be interested in knowing—if it's a short answer—how much time is between each of these on average, to the end of the process.

The reason I ask that is I'd like to follow the issue of the people who are denied in the front part, because it occurs to me that if time is the problem—and I think most of the time when we hear or talk about it, it is time—perhaps it's not a disability issue. It's probably people who are applying who have nothing to do with disability. It's the absence of other kinds of programs, or worse, it's the provinces that are telling everybody that in order to get income assistance, they have to get a CPP denial first. So consequently, they're pushing into the system all these people who are taking up the time of legitimate disability clients, who now are pushed back about three weeks by a whole bunch of people who are showing up by third-party demand rather than genuine disability concerns.

I'd be curious to know what happens to the 46% or 65%—whatever the number—denied in the front piece. Who are they? Where do they go when they're denied? Who's paying for them then? We're looking at older workers, for example, and my sense is that if there were an older workers program—in the other half that we're looking at in this committee—you'd have less demand from people who are there because they have no choice. That's one. And I would expand that to include the provinces and all the other things.

In terms of part-time work and those kinds of things, what is the relationship between CPP disability and EI? It occurs to me that if you try to deal with Wendy's problem through CPP disability, you might be applying the wrong medicine. Probably it's something that should be looked at through EI, to deal with part-time, so that you've got some kind of middle ground between special benefits in EI and pensions in CPP. To try to change CPP from a pension program to something different from that may be opening the wrong door. I'd be curious to know how you interact with EI and the EI program to come up with policy that is....

The other issue you mentioned is that you don't have a lot of case management, and when it's part-time, it's case managed. But EI does. They case-manage for a living. Consequently, it seems to me that's another argument in favour of going that route.

I have to make the point that a more generous benefit program also means we have to deal with the question of premiums, and we've had a significant debate about premiums. Consequently, one cannot fight raising premiums and demand increasing benefits. I just need to make the point.

I think that's it. But I would be specifically interested in tracking those people, because our problem as members of Parliament is always around time and processes and so on, and I really believe that it isn't because of people with disabilities necessarily as much as it is because of people who are there for other reasons, and that's what takes the time.

Mr. Victor Rabinovitch: Madam Chair, I believe the member has gone to the Wendy Lill school of questioning. There are about five questions here, if I may be permitted to say so.

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Ms. Wendy Lill: I went to his school of questioning.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Mr. Andy Scott: It's a maritime thing.

Mr. Victor Rabinovitch: You should come to the Rabinovitch school of answering.

I'll go through a number, and I'm going to ask Cathy Drummond to get into the CPP, EI, and explore that a bit further. Again, it's something we've begun talking about. I might say, one of the pleasures of being within HRDC is that the labour market focus is a very practical one. It forces us to work with colleagues and think about whether, if we can't get people an opportunity in the labour market through this program, maybe there's another program. It breaks down barriers. That's by way of a bit of departmental philosophy, but it is working.

I have several comments. Case management, as an approach, is very much what we are discussing now of how we should be developing the program down the road. Applying techniques from alternative dispute resolution: that is a step in the right direction. Testing these, of course, implies not just making the decision that this is the way we're going, but rather testing it properly; that is the right way to go at it. Increasingly, as we develop a return-to-work focus for those who can return to work, these are things we manage on a case-management basis. That does involve a substantial change in the way we will administer those files. That is our attitude, though. That's what we're trying to develop.

You asked briefly about those who are denied in the end, the roughly 64%, and what happens to them. As I've explained in answer to an earlier question, I can't give you a clear-cut answer. We know some of them will re-apply with additional information; we will even encourage them to re-apply if they have additional information. Some of them will wind up on provincial welfare in some form or another. That's not a good answer. That's not telling you, yes, we know what does happen to them and how their lives develop. We don't know.

Time for each stage—I hope this doesn't sound bureaucratic. I don't mean it to be, but this is bureaucratic. We are working very, very hard at figuring out the right method of measuring each stage, because at each stage of the process there is a file development period—meaning somebody's file is opened and yet the information in it is not complete—so the officer responsible for that file will contact the doctor who is indicated and ask him or her to send us more information. That's an example of case development.

There is adjudication. Adjudication is what really does happen. Here is the file, it is complete, now let's read through everything. Let's check with the medical professionals to see if we understand it correctly. Let us come up with an adjudicated decision. Then finally there's informing the applicant or the client as to what has happened with their case: this is the decision that has been taken.

For the substantive part that we can measure most carefully now—this is in the absence of having automated computer-based measurement, that we will have once we're over the whole Y2K business—we are averaging 53 working days for adjudication at the initial level. That's the initial application. That is a very satisfactory average. There are deviations from the average, but we are using that average as a way of measuring what is happening in each of the different processing centres, and it has enabled us to take very, very good remedies to speed up the processing in a number of cases. I know southwest Ontario has been a difficult case. To a large extent, that has been remedied over the last six to eight months. So 53 working days is the number we're using now as our average; we believe it's accurate.

At the reconsideration level, the average we have now is 65 working days. I'm using working days, not calendar days. Obviously, for a person who is disabled, a Saturday and a Sunday are just as painful as a working day, but that's what we're able to measure because that's what we're able to control.

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Between the initial and the reconsideration level, an applicant does have up to 90 days to decide whether or not to appeal. For a person who is in that process, the applicant may very well be saying “I'm not well. I'm not sure what to do. I'm going to seek advice.” And 90 days will elapse, or 89 days will elapse, so the entire process will be that much longer. But none of us around this table will be saying they shouldn't have taken 90 days. It's the individual's right to decide how much time to take.

At the review tribunal level—and I'd suggest that when you have the commissioner before you he will likely have better data on what's under his control—we believe it's between 160 and 170 working days, on average, for an applicant at that level to be scheduled and for a tribunal hearing to be held. Obviously, a tribunal is more complex. You have to get the three individual tribunal levers together and get people in one place. It's not a paper process; it's a personal process, so things take time to schedule.

I'm going to make an editorial comment at this point. The first two levels, it appears to us as public servants, are reasonable in time. They take a reasonable length of time. The third level, the review tribunal, is fairly reasonable, although it can probably be accelerated. Explore this, please, with the commissioner.

You now come to the very last level, the Pension Appeals Board, and at that level you are dealing only with the 2% to 3% of the applicants who entered at the very beginning. These are the individuals who you probably see most in your own offices or with your own staff, and certainly they are the ones I will be handling personally, say, in correspondence. They are the individuals who have already gone through so many of the stages. And here the process is taking a long time. It is taking less than a year, but quite a long period. We don't have a firm date or a firm period of time for a leave to appeal to be considered.

We know there have been changes in the procedures, so that many more judges can now participate in the leave-to-appeal process. It used to be only the chair or the vice-chair. So they have had a number of blitzes, as they call them, and they are really handling many more of the leave requests than were handled in the past. So that is being accelerated, but it's still taking a long time.

Finally, you deal with roughly 1% of that initial group of applicants who will have been allowed to appeal and for whom an appeal hearing must be set before what is, on average, three judges. It doesn't have to be three judges, but their preference—and, as in running a court, they run it—is for fairness, that three judges sitting on the panel is the right number. Again, that will take a year, or longer than a year, to schedule. That is the reality we're dealing with.

Even though it's only 1% to 3% of the initial applicants who are being handled at the PAB level, I think we all share the concern you must have, that this takes too long. Our colleagues at the PAB, administering the PAB, are very concerned about it. We are developing processes for sharing of information, for sharing of statistics, for moving files forward more quickly, for seeking whether at the PAB they have received new medical information so that we might be able to adjudicate without even going to a PAB hearing. We're developing processes. It is now a preoccupation of ours to try to speed that up.

All I can say is that, overall, the review tribunal level was only introduced through legislation in 1993. By introducing it, it introduced that extra level of fairness, but it also introduced that extra level of time that's involved. So it's a balance between how much time and how much independent review.

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We will look—this is an internal job we're trying to do—at the entire process and see if there are ways of simplifying it further. We have accelerated it, but it's not good enough. So that's a long answer and a very truthful answer, and it's as much information as I can provide right now.

There was one more question, which was about the relationship between CPP and EI and where the attention ought to go, and I'd ask Cathy Drummond to speak to that.

Ms. Cathy Drummond: I think we agree with you that there are some people who are falling slowly out of the workforce, who are able to work part-time, who have probably been on and off EI quite frequently, and who are not yet disabled enough, according to our legislation. Because of the information-sharing changes in the CPP last year, we've been able to do some data matches to look with EI at who these people are who end up on CPP. Most of them have a considerable pattern of EI use—not necessarily EI sick benefits, but EI use. So we have been doing some work, talking to the people who work on policy there, to try to begin to come up with some ideas of what you might do.

I'm not sure...I agree with you, it doesn't fall under the CPP, and I'm not positive where it does fall. But we do recognize there's a problem there. I think it's going to take a little while. It's something we've also discussed in the federal-provincial working group, because some of this falls to the realm of provincial programs, particularly now when they're looking at labour market interventions in the provinces as well.

I'll take one second—I don't like to correct my boss often—but as you raised the issue of premiums, it would give me a chance to say that in regard to the $1 billion mentioned in the actuarial report as a saving, he was only calculating the change that would be made between 1998 and 2005 from moving to four out of six years. People have to contribute in four out of six years in order to be eligible, instead of the two out of three that was there before.

Ms. Wendy Lill: Is that from a change in the labour force requirements, that amount of money right there?

Ms. Cathy Drummond: It was his calculation that over that number of years, a billion dollars would be saved from expenditures. It has nothing to do with our adjudication.

Ms. Wendy Lill: Okay.

Mr. Victor Rabinovitch: Madam Chair, I'm being unfair, because I may leave the impression that at the Pension Appeals Board, things are just moving slowly. There has been an increase in the number of judges on the Pension Appeals Board. They are making very real and concerted efforts to deal with the numbers that have come to them. I don't want to leave any impression that somehow things just go slowly when they arrive there. It's not the case at all.

The Chair: Mrs. Longfield.

Mrs. Judi Longfield: Mr. Rabinovitch, I apologize for coming in late. I'm on more committees than I can handle some days.

I'm pleased to hear that you're trying to put a more human face.... Almost the first case I saw in my constituency office after I was elected was someone who had been rejected at the initial stage. Her words to me keep coming back every time I hear something: it lacks in compassion, it's cold, it's bureaucratic, it's complicated, it's confusing, you need to be a lawyer to work through the language, it's arduous, it's lengthy. I could go on and on.

So I'm pleased that you're working through those, although I look at the length of time and I don't know whether I would consider these good results. I look at what the average is, and I'm thinking it must be that I only see those who are not anywhere close to the average, because I have some that have been going on for years and years. I don't know how they manage to cope.

You talked about the window of appeal between the initial stage and the reconsideration stage. Is it the 90 days between each of the stages as well?

Mr. Victor Rabinovitch: It is 90, yes.

Mrs. Judi Longfield: Okay. So we just continue compounding that. Thank you.

Mr. Victor Rabinovitch: The interesting question is whether 90 is too long. We began talking about that last week in fact. It's the balancing act between how long it takes an individual to get more information, particularly medical information, versus how we can move this along.

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Mrs. Judi Longfield: The individual may not be in the physical or mental state to move on after the initial rejection.

One of the things that has always frustrated me is that there doesn't appear to be, at the initial intake stage, someone who goes through that file who has a fair amount of expertise and knows what they're looking for to flag those that come incomplete. I've also had those who have come in and said that the application had been there for six months before they said they were missing this report or that report, and that if they'd known that at the time they filed, it could have speeded up the situation. I'm wondering if you're taking any steps there at the initial stage.

Mr. Doug Taylor: Yes. When we first get an application kit, there are different parts of it. Part of it is a questionnaire that the client completes and part of it is a medical questionnaire that the doctor of their choosing completes. Depending on what comes in, it's either a straightforward decision that is relatively easy to make—some cases are—or we get the information and there is not enough objective information to make a proper decision, so we have to go out and ask for more. They may have indicated, for example, that they're seeing certain specialists. They don't provide any of the reports from the specialists. We don't have that opinion from the specialists, so we have to go out and get it. That takes time.

We know we need to look at our application kit and make sure things are in as plain language as possible and as clear as possible, but we are still dependent on what comes in from the medical community. Frankly, some physicians are better than others in providing the kind of information we need, which is really objective stuff.

Mrs. Judi Longfield: That leads me to a question I have, and I don't want to interrupt, but that was where I was going next. What kind of education are we providing physicians? I'm absolutely appalled when I see some of the reports that come in from physicians, particularly when I know that you're basing your decision on what the physician has written down. I'm faced with the constituent sitting across from me, and when I look at the physician's medical report, I think, if I hadn't seen the person face to face, I would have no idea about the severity of the disability. He's just gone through and checked off the list—can work a little, can't do this, can't do that. I'm wondering if there is some way we can assist our clients in ensuring that what the medical professional puts down there is complete and provides the kind of description and assessment that people adjudicating require, because right now something is amiss.

You're right, some are excellent and some are just absolutely deplorable. A couple of times I have actually called the physician and said, look, I'm sitting with Mrs. Brown and reading the report and I don't see any similarity. They've said that they were too busy, that it would be turned down anyway, that it wasn't part of their job, they should understand, etc.

Mr. Doug Taylor: Yes, communicating with the medical profession is a challenge. There are a lot of them. They are extremely busy folks. And getting to them so that they understand the program, what we need and conversely what we don't really need in order to make quick decisions, is difficult for us. Now that our program is delivered in the regions, there's more of an opportunity for our local offices to do some outreach to the medical community in their respective areas. We're hoping that will pay dividends. I don't think we've seen them yet, so there is a way to go on that side.

Mr. Victor Rabinovitch: One thing we've just begun very recently is to inform a client if we are waiting for information from the doctor and that information has been delayed, so that the client will be able to call the doctor and try to put some pressure on. That is going to become a generalized and routine part, again fitting into—as we are moving toward an approach that is more like case management—keeping the client informed at each stage of what is happening with the case. That's a very recent innovation.

Mrs. Judi Longfield: Thank you.

The Chair: I just wanted to know a little bit more about the third-party part. Yesterday I went to see a constituent who has had a bit of a runaround. One of the things, as a physician, I found particularly irritating—and I don't know why—was when people would come with the CPP kit telling me their insurance company told them they had to apply. Also, when I talked to one of the tribunal members, who is quite experienced and a constituent, she said that she always looks at the “cc” at the bottom to see whether a number of insurance companies are being copied on the letters. This tells her a little bit about the genesis of this application and where the pressure is coming from.

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I want to know, if the form said at the top with a tick that I've been asked to apply by a third party, whether we could actually figure out from the beginning where this is coming from, because a whole bunch of our money is going back to insurance companies.

I realize it's one of the problems with a universal system, but I guess I want to know if somebody's been paying huge premiums to an insurance company for full disability insurance—I mean, it was a huge whack of dough in my life as a physician that I had to pay in insurance premiums—if before they'll even talk to me they make me apply for CPP. I guess I have a small problem as to who we're serving here. Is it Canadians or is it insurance companies? If that's the case, then shouldn't your premiums be lower to the insurance companies, if actually they're going to take a big whack out from CPP?

That's a policy piece, and when you say you're dealing with legislation, is there something we could help with in terms of what just seems a bit funny on that? Just in terms of that, I have three little questions.

In the Treasury Board documents I was shown in preparing for the Treasury Board round table, there was this number above the number of people who had been taken off the program. You have income security programs. So if people are taken off the program, and this is a little bit to the question over here, how do we know their income is now secure? If that's what we're actually supposed to do, do these people now go on welfare? Did they get a job? Is there some sort of exit tracking for these people, or were they just cut off? What actually happened to them? I guess that's what I'd like to know.

I'd also like to know, from the whole legislation point of view, have the changes been done in a cost containment way because of the Auditor General and because of the tightening programs, or is it actually sort of an active policy piece that hopefully reflects the change from the medical model and the fact that we've got new technology that allows people to now work?

If that is the case, why do you make me sign “permanent” on the form to begin with, if then you're going to send armies of people around to try to get these people off? The word “permanent” just always bugged me, because, as everybody has heard me say 22,000 times, everybody I've ever dealt with, highly motivated, would rather be working. They'd rather be back in the workforce too. The language on the form to begin with, I guess, is a problem. If you're going to ask me as a physician whether this person is permanently disabled and then two years later send them to some review process, it's a bit of an oxymoron.

Anyway, those were my little questions.

A voice: Fourteen questions.

The Chair: As you can tell, those of us who chose this committee are people who have been thinking about this stuff for a while.

Mr. Victor Rabinovitch: I'm going to deal with your last question. Then Mr. Taylor is going to deal with the question of people going off the program and tracking, and Cathy Drummond will deal with the first one, which is the relationship of insurance companies and stacking and the rest of it. Okay?

The Chair: While you're getting ready, there was one other I forgot. When you said “did not appeal”, is that indeed an act of choice or are those our most vulnerable people? It used to be in big, bold type that you have the right to appeal, and it doesn't seem to be there any more. Is it just that the most vulnerable of our society are the people who don't appeal, and particularly when you come to those last two stages, is it just that they can't afford a lawyer?

Mr. Victor Rabinovitch: I'm going to save that one for the very end.

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Ms. Wendy Lill: Bearing in mind the illiteracy rate in our country.

Mr. Victor Rabinovitch: Illiteracy—that is a big deal. Okay, let's start with whether the changes are for the purposes of cost containment or with another set of thoughts in mind.

I think I'd be naive and mischievous if I said to you that costs weren't an issue. Costs were an issue several years ago at the time when there was the lead-up to Bill C-2. And certainly the auditor and other people in other departments were all pointing to the question of to what extent the costs of the disability program would be allowed to escalate.

Having said that, at no time have I been a part of, or aware of, any discussion amongst the people who run the program sitting around and saying it looks like the costs are getting high or it looks like our numbers are getting high—never. To the contrary, every question I've been a part of, on every case I've sent back and said, look at this, the answers have always come back in terms of the individual and what is there and how do we treat the individual.

When we saw that by the end of the year we were at about 36% of the initials, there was a certain satisfaction amongst staff that we were probably adjusting better, and probably across the country doing a better job, of accurately pinpointing people who were entitled to the benefit. That was the general feeling.

So that's a straight answer to you. We're very keen on moving on this alternative dispute and case-management approach. We see that as being the next logical step of dealing with individuals.

Miss Grey described eloquently the feeling when there is somebody who is in misery in front of you. We want to be able to deal with those people as individuals, not as statistics. It doesn't interest us to deal with them as simply numbers.

Now, having said that, we take pride in the numbers, the fact that 22,000 to 23,000 people have been put into pay this last fiscal year, at the very initial stage. So it means we are doing something right in terms of what the legislation is intended to do.

So that's a straight answer to you. And no, we are not numbers-driven; we are trying to be case-driven.

Mr. Doug Taylor: To deal with the other question about what happens to people going off the benefit and so on, we do from time to time reassess clients because we know that conditions improve. Sometimes people get to the point where they are no longer eligible for the benefit. So we need to know about it. It's not a benefit for life. In some cases it is, of course; clients do die. But in other cases, clients regain the capacity to work. So we do reassess them.

Of the clients that we reassessed and ultimately stopped their benefits, last year there were just about 2,700 clients whom we ceased benefits for. More than half of those were clients who came to us and said they were going back to work. So we think that's a good thing. We'd like more of them to do that, of course, and as I said earlier, we'd like to help more of them get back to work. There are some people who abuse the system, a very small number. We have mechanisms to make sure there isn't abuse and we really feel we've got a good handle on that.

But if we find that someone is no longer eligible, well, obviously we have to stop paying them the benefit. But the numbers are very small in terms of people whose benefit we would stop for not having gone back to work—very small numbers.

The Chair: Are they followed at all? Do they end up on social services? Is there any sort of tracking after?

Mr. Doug Taylor: There isn't much tracking beyond three months. We track them for three months, and, as I said earlier, if they're unsuccessful in their return to work, we've kept them on our benefit. But beyond that, we don't have a longitudinal study of what happens to people afterwards. It's a very good question.

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Mr. Victor Rabinovitch: I'll add one thing to that, and I'm looking at Nancy Lawand, who is one of the directors in the program. She is responsible for a study that will begin on what happens in denials and what the reasons are for denials. Out of the discussion around this table, we're going to—in fact I was just talking to Ms. Drummond—have to ask ourselves exactly some of the questions you're asking here. Let's see what we can learn from our cases. Maybe in a year's time we'll have better information.

I would really like Ms. Drummond to answer the question you were first asking about insurance companies.

Ms. Cathy Drummond: In actual fact, a number of the insurance companies plan their premiums around the expectation that people on long-term disability will also get CPP. So we have to guess that their premiums might be even higher without the CPP being there.

That being said, we have some evidence that some firms are pushing people to appeal all through the system and are threatening them. We have seen some individual letters from people that are really quite unacceptable. It makes our communications look much better and clearer.

We made the decision to try to work through the association, and Nancy has had a number of meetings. The association is going to raise, with the senior officers of the major insurance firms this month, the issue of their referrals and their pushing of people into our appeal system.

We've agreed that probably there are issues from the private sector with us as well as the other way around, and we are willing to be open and talk with them about what they might want from us in return. One of the other issues—

The Chair: This is the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association?

Ms. Cathy Drummond: Yes. They have been quite helpful and open to listening to what our problems are, so I'm hoping that by going at it that way, rather than trying to correspond individually with each insurance firm, which doesn't really get us very far, we may be able to turn some of that around.

The Chair: But that's something members of Parliament could help with too, perhaps, when they come to meet with us in our offices?

Ms. Cathy Drummond: Definitely.

The Chair: I think we're hearing around here that the people Miss Grey, Mrs. Longfield, or Ms. Lill see in their offices are very different from the ones on paper. I know with my patients I used to say “Why don't you just write down a day in the life of...what time you get up because of pain, what medication you have to take and all of it? Why don't you write in a diary, so people actually understand what your life is like, what your day is like?” Are there tools such as that to better help that first assessment of what this person's life is really like?

Mr. Doug Taylor: We don't have a specific tool like that. We try to get the client's perspective when they apply. They complete the forms and so on. But as we mentioned earlier, we know we have to communicate better with our clients, and that means listening as well.

With the pilots we have started now, when we think we have enough information to make a decision, we pick up the phone and have a conversation with that client and find out from them if there is anything else. We say “Here's the information we have about you and your capacity to work. Is there anything missing?”

There's an opportunity there for the client to fill in any of the blanks, whether it's in the form of writing down their daily activities and sending it to us or saying they've since seen a specialist, or telling us what has happened to their condition—whatever the mechanism is. Our ultimate objective is to make sure we have everything that's important and pertinent to the case in front of us when we make that final decision.

We are planning to look at our application form. Maybe there's an opportunity to look at it from that angle as well.

The Chair: In terms of illiteracy, are people able to send in an audio version of this, or do they have to get somebody else to fill it out? What help do we give people to fill out the form or to send it in some other way?

Mr. Doug Taylor: We've been talking very recently with the CNIB, for example, to find out how we can make our initial application kits more accessible to someone with a visual impairment.

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Whatever form it takes, whether it's a tape, written information or somebody to help them fill out the application form, the process isn't really what's important; it's getting the material, getting the information—that's what we're after.

The Chair: Could somebody who had a literacy problem get the application form on an audio tape and give an audio response back?

Mr. Doug Taylor: Yes, we could do that. I can't say that we have done it, but we could.

The Chair: Could you get us an update on the pilot projects and give it back to the committee? Were there any other bits of homework we wanted handed in?

Wendy.

Ms. Wendy Lill: In terms of information that would be useful for us, you've given us information for the last couple of years, but I'm wondering if we could have some data that covers the last 10 years regarding the number of applications, the number of clients who've been accepted and refused, and the number of successful and rejected appeals at all levels.

I'm also interested in knowing whether the application rates for CPP are higher in areas of higher unemployment. What are the regional differences in application rates, successful application rates, rejection rates, and appeals? That might be useful for us to look at because we're all from different parts of the country.

Mr. Victor Rabinovitch: There goes summer vacation, Madam Chair.

Ms. Wendy Lill: I just have one more little question for you, Doug. You mentioned the fact that of the 2,700 benefits that ceased last year, one-half were going back to work. What if someone went back to work and, lo and behold, six months later they were no longer able to work? You mentioned at one other point that if their condition reappeared, they could be fast-tracked back in. What if something somewhat different falls apart for them and they are not having exactly the same problem? Do they then have to go right through the same process again? How much are they really guaranteed that they will be able to have that net there for them?

Mr. Doug Taylor: Currently, if a different condition comes up down the road, after they've been off the benefit, they would have to go through the application process again and be looked at. It's something we are looking at now under return-to-work measures, because we know we want to do more. That involves looking at how long an appropriate attachment to the program is, once you leave the benefit. Are there ways to maintain a thread to the benefit? We don't have the answers yet, but it is something we're examining at the current time.

Ms. Wendy Lill: Thank you.

Mr. Victor Rabinovitch: Perhaps this is not the place to get the information, but if there are services or assistance we could provide to MPs' offices that would make your job either a bit easier or a bit more complete when you're dealing with individuals, we'd appreciate any feedback from you. In many of the regions now there are specific liaison individuals with the ability to get into the data network much more quickly. They are supposed to help MPs, but if there's more that you can ask of us, please do so.

As for the other requests, we'll get working on them.

The Chair: Is there a survey on the people who didn't appeal and why?

Ms. Cathy Drummond: Yes, we're starting a study around the people who have been denied in the program. It's quite a complex study. It's going to take a little while before we have some data. The program has never kept information in the system about people who were denied, so I can't go back and look to find out if it varied by disability type—all sorts of things we need to know that we don't. So a year from now we'll probably have some better answers for you on that.

The Chair: Thank you very much. We will see Peter Smith next month. We will keep up our correspondence. Thank you so much for coming.

I will suspend for two minutes while we go in camera for future business.

[Editor's Note: Proceedings continue in camera]