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Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, gentlemen.

Mr. Thompson, it's good to see you at the committee once again.

We heard from some people who have had some issues with the appeal process for EI claims. We heard from a number of people about what percentage of claims are appealed, and what are successful and what aren't. You tell us that in the past five years the commission has appealed only 9% of the rulings of the board of referees.

Do you have full statistics on how many EI claims are appealed, and at what level, and what the success rate of all of those is?

On the off chance that one or more members of the committee hasn't studied last year's report in depth, could you give us a précis of what the last report told us?

What was the result of those appeals?

Some of the complaints we heard were from people who generally work with workers who quite often feel overwhelmed by the process of appealing. We heard about some of the issues with how the boards are appointed. I don't think that's within the purview of the study we're doing. I'll leave that one aside, but there were some issues with how long the process took. There were issues raised about how well people are trained when they go on, for example, a board of referees.

Could you tell us who does the training before somebody is appointed, after they're appointed, and before they take part in the process?

In your view, is there some room of review of that process to see if it is, in fact, providing the kind of people we need, with the training they need to do this work?

Are we hearing from the EI Commission?

Okay.

Who does the commission actually report to?

Of your department?

Could you not, then, suggest to the commission that there might be some training that could be made stronger?

Could you tell us who makes up the commission again?

So ultimately it rests with the department?

Understood, but I'm just trying to figure it out. We're doing this study and we're going to make recommendations. I assume we would make them to the commission, but is the commission an entity that reports to the department?

I'm trying to figure out why we're looking at this and having you here if it's the commission that we should be dealing with. That's what I'm wondering. You're telling me that you guys are really at arm's length.

So we do have the authority to have an influence on the commission?

Okay.

We also heard about the length of time for this process. You've addressed some of that, but can you give us some statistics on the length of time to complete the process and whether that varies regionally across the country?