Senator Gold: Again, thank you for your question. It’s an important one, and I thank you for your commitment to the issue. I will make inquiries and report back.

Senator Gold: Thank you for your question. The government has made, is making and will continue to make progress on this issue. For example, as of this moment I’m advised that there is less than a one-week discrepancy between male and female applications. That’s down from a seven-week difference not that long ago.

The government has also improved the discrepancy between anglophone and francophone veterans by seven weeks. There is still a problem. There is still an eight-week difference, which is not acceptable but is down from a high of fifteen weeks.

The government has hired a 30-member francophone team based in Montreal to work solely on processing these claims. They have also increased the hiring of bilingual staff across the country to process these claims and reduce the times. The government, with all of these actions and investments, is seeing real, tangible progress, but there remains work to be done.