Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, that would be common in the small areas. Just to make certain that I'm not misstating the case, I will double-check on that and get back to you.

Veterans Affairs committee  I'll have to look into that, sir, and get back to you to determine what the success rate is on the reserves. I will get back. We'll do an analysis and get back to you. In the department we've basically been attempting to have better outreach to those communities. We've established an outreach coordinator for each of those communities.

Veterans Affairs committee  We have done analyses of this over the years. Our best guesstimates at this point--and I'll come back to why we're calling it that--are somewhere in the order of one-sixth to one-eighth of the cost of going into a long-term care facility. I don't want to say that's the definitive figure because there are policy analysts who will say that those are just our costs; maybe there are costs that accrued in the province we were dealing in that we're not aware of and that we actually haven't counted.

Veterans Affairs committee  I can't give you precise numbers at this table, but we'll get those numbers for you, sir. What I can tell you is that we had a small unit with an administrative job to do. I think there were about a dozen people in the unit. Their job each year was to ensure that those who were receiving benefits were actually still alive and in need of those benefits.

Veterans Affairs committee  The proactive screening unit is ongoing. It has a program of phoning out to people under certain criteria. But I don't want to leave you with the impression that we cover all our veterans that way; we cover as many as we can within the resources.

Veterans Affairs committee  It began, I would say, about three years ago.

Veterans Affairs committee  That is one of the things we will look at in the health care review. The question of complex eligibility is writ large within our various health care programs, so we definitely will be looking at that aspect of it.

Veterans Affairs committee  We don't have the precise details, but we will definitely get that information and get it back to you.

Veterans Affairs committee  No, it's clearly not.

Veterans Affairs committee  We did introduce an eligibility around frailty recently. Actually you made quite an interesting observation--that as individuals age, not every one of them needs care--

Veterans Affairs committee  --and some people age differently from others. There may be an area that we.... We have been examining the impact of the frailty issue; all I can say at this point is we're not far enough down that examination yet to include it in any kind of assessment, but we are factoring it into the review itself.

Veterans Affairs committee  Certainly. I think it goes back to something Mr. Stoffer and Mr. Perron said. Canada is in the midst of a major demographic change, with an aging population. We're certainly experiencing that with the age of our veterans, and the impact on them and on their families is quite significant.

Veterans Affairs committee  I might add, Monsieur Perron, that in the study under way in Ontario, there's a specific emphasis on assisted living arrangements. Admittedly the data collected will be relevant to the Ontario experience, but I think it will be very useful in terms of a dialogue on the kinds of changes possible under the health care review.

Veterans Affairs committee  We certainly will do that, sir. I don't want to leave you with the impression that we don't have any interaction at all with the CLSC. We certainly do in the province of Quebec. Our area counsellors and district staff work quite closely with them when we're dealing with veterans.

Veterans Affairs committee  Ken, did you want to take a crack at that? I could answer generally, but if you wouldn't mind...?