Yes, Mr. Chairman. I'd be pleased to answer.
Let me first say that I get the impression from reading the proceedings of the previous meeting that this is not a case where there's an adversarial agenda relative to some public policy objective. The committee is not seeking to find some way to put the government at peril if it doesn't deliver a certain program.
From what I've read, I see this as both sides of the committee seeking to find a common solution that will respect the rights of veterans and the role they have played in the history of Canada. And that's fine. I think there is a way of finding that. But it's a political decision, if you like, as to what kinds of optics you want to bring to bear. Do you want this to have its own standing as a law, or do you think it should be treated as a subset of some other larger legal regime?
That depends on where you are in that spectrum, I suppose. I don't think you necessarily have to be thinking of what you might call punitive measures in the legislation that would penalize or punish some official if he or she didn't meet the required standard.
You can bring in measures that could give credibility to the bill of rights. It has already been mentioned, I think in the material we saw yesterday, about enabling the Bureau of Pensions Advocates to be available at no expense to advance the veterans' cause vis-à-vis the government or the department. That's one measure. It could be that the ombudsman is another measure, and it would depend on what powers you give the ombudsman.
In all cases, one could give priority to this being a constructive regime. For example, you could set the rights in your legislation but give it to government to set standards by regulation, in respect of which the government would be held accountable. Regulations are quasi-legislation. They can be called upon to demonstrate whether they have met the standards in the regulations.
The act would call upon the government to do that. It wouldn't necessarily be Parliament imposing its own view of the standards; it would be government determining its standards by regulation, which may or may not meet with acceptance with members of Parliament. As you know, there is a process in the House for looking at regulations, and there could well be comment by parliamentarians about whether they think these regulations live up to the objectives of the act in terms of making a bill of rights meaningful.
You search out various mechanisms. That's what we do on your behalf, search out various mechanisms, various regimes that would find that balance between outright enforceability through a court of law versus outright discretion on the part of the government.
You find mechanisms to provide that balance, Mr. Chairman. I hear Mr. St. Denis describing a search for a balance that respects the importance of veterans' entitlements but on the other hand recognizes that we're not out to punish anybody. We're out to see that the right result is obtained in each case.
So you look at these options. What do you want an ombudsman to do? What powers do you want to give him? You could look at the Ethics Commissioner's powers. You could look at other sources for the kinds of legal powers an ombudsman has.
You might look at things like reverse onus, where it's not up to the veteran to prove he's entitled to the benefits; he has a prima facie entitlement and it's up to the government to prove he's not entitled. So the burden of proof then switches.... The cost of all of that would arguably shift to the government to prove the veteran is not entitled, instead of the veteran being put to the huge task of demonstrating that he is entitled.
If we were drafting a bill for this committee, Mr. Chairman, we would lay out all these options. The committee would then look at it and decide which way it wanted to go.
