Question Period Note: DISABILITY PROCESSING TIMES AND ACTION PLAN

DISABILITY PROCESSING TIMES AND ACTION PLAN

• The Government is fully committed to the health and well-being of Veterans and their families.

• Between 2015-16 and 2019-20, Veterans Affairs Canada experienced a 40% increase in disability benefit applications, including an increase of more than 75% in first applications. However, in 2020-21, applications received by VAC returned to 2015-16 levels, possibly due to the pandemic.

• Veterans Affairs Canada continues to streamline the disability benefits process, to simplify the decision-making process for some medical conditions, and to work with its partners to speed up access to service health records.

• Additionally, Veterans Affairs Canada released a strategy to address the long-standing issue of processing times for disability benefits decisions, and hired more than 350 additional employees, dedicated to the disability benefit decision-making process.

• We know there is more to be done – which is why we are working on a number of new initiatives to make more decisions faster and putting Veterans first.

BACKGROUND - DISABILITY PROCESSING TIMES AND ACTION PLAN

Current State (October 21, 2021):
• On September 28, 2020, the Parliamentary Budget Office released a report on Disability Benefits Processing at Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC). The report focused on Public Service Capacity requirements to eliminate the backlog of applications beyond the 16-week service standard.
• Year to date, the average turnaround times are 41.1 weeks for First Applications; 10.3 weeks for Reassessments; and 32.6 weeks for Departmental Reviews.
• In the last year, there has been a 20% decrease in the total number of pending applications. As of September 29, 2021, the total number of pending applications was 36,246, compared to 45,517 as of September 30, 2020.
• Also in the last year, there has been a 17% decrease in the number of applications beyond the service standard (i.e., backlog). As of September 29, 2021, there were 16,307 pending applications in the backlog, compared to 19,633 as of September 30, 2020.
• Applications are fast-tracked for those who are medically at risk (e.g., palliative, advanced age, etc.) or who have an immediate, unmet health need related to their claimed condition.

Veterans Affairs Canada Action:
• Reducing processing times for disability benefit applications is our number one priority.
• The Department published a Strategic Wait Time Plan, Timely disability benefits decisions: Strategic direction for improving wait times in June 2020, which set out a multi-pillar approach to reducing processing times. The plan outlines four lines of effort: Public Service Capacity; Integration; Process Innovation; and Digital Solutions. Since the release of the plan, we have made progress on a number of the initiatives.
• The Government committed to more than $192 million over two years in additional funding (2020-2021 and 2021-2022), with a portion of these funds dedicated to putting our plan into action.
• This additional funding was used to extend resources from Budget 2018, and to hire 300 temporary staff to work on the most common applications and an additional 50 ancillary staff (Payment Officers, Training Staff, Service Health Records clerks, Program Management, etc.) to provide further support. The new staff have been making disability benefit decisions since January 2021.
• In addition, the Department received approval to extend some trained staff for an additional year (2022-2023), and to develop more efficient application and decision-making processes using digital technologies.

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