Mr. Chairman, suffice it to say that in the early days of my tenure as Veterans Ombudsman, I encountered several members who shall remain nameless, several senior members of both the board and the department, who expressed to me that they have an obligation as public servants to preserve the public purse. I didn't hear that once or twice; I heard that numerous times from policy writers through to.... I'll just leave it at that.
I have to fall back on the benefit of the doubt. I know that my staff has been hearing about this for at least two years now. Not only were the interpretations wrong, but when we submitted observations to the department, we received letters back from the department, from the minister, basically just describing the process as it exists. Our aim in providing our observations to the department was to try to engage in a discussion to break down this legalistic balance of probabilities approach to treating our veterans.
So it's an accumulation of many of those kinds of encounters. I think the penny really dropped for me at one point. Well, I'll say at a couple of points. I was once told that it was Treasury Board that they can't get past. The conversation went on to the effect that there was a time when the department could go to Treasury Board and they would do anything for the veterans. Those days are gone. In one particular instance—this was the turning point at two and a half years where I said, “I'm not going to be able to break this culture”—I was talking with a deputy minister regarding the treatment of widows, and I basically said, “The department is cheating widows of World War II.” The response I got is that the department cannot go to Treasury Board to ask for more money for programs.
To me, if the deputy minister is not prepared to let these kinds of issues leave the department and in fact argue on behalf of our veterans, I dare say then it's clear that the senior bureaucrats are in that position for one reason, and one reason only, and I would say that's to enforce the rules that have the culture the way it is today.