VAC has failed to meet its own service standards for disability benefit claims for over a decade, a fact documented by the Auditor General in both 2014 and 2022. Caseloads have grown by 61% since 2015. Veterans routinely wait three to five years for final resolution.

Now, severe budget cuts have reduced the Bureau of Pension Advocates — the only free, impartial legal service available to veterans — by 44%, from 226 staff to 130. With 27,000 claims in the existing backlog and 25,000 new files expected in 2026 alone, experts warn that wait times could triple.

The Reforms
This paper proposes two structural reforms that can dramatically reduce wait times and improve outcomes — within existing budget constraints — built on five foundational changes we identified in our companion paper, The Waiting War.  They are:

• Precedent Recognition for Environmental Illness Claims • When VAC has previously granted entitlement for a specific cancer arising from a specific documented environmental exposure, all subsequent veterans presenting the same diagnosis from the same exposure should receive automatic entitlement. This eliminates the inequity of veterans with identical circumstances receiving different outcomes based on the order in which they filed, dramatically reduces adjudication caseload, and concentrates scarce resources on genuinely novel cases.

• Early Dispute Resolution • A small team of professionally trained facilitators, reporting to
the VRAB, would be deployed to facilatate discussions between the VAC decision-maker and the veteran. There are three possible outcomes:

(1) confirm the original decision was fair; (2) identify specific additional evidence that would support a revised decision; or (3) agree that the case should proceed to a VRAB Review.

A directly analogous program implemented at the BC Public Service Appeal Board resolved 70% of appeals without the need for adjudication.

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