Veterans Affairs committee  From a homeless perspective, what's in place right now—from a departmental kind of view and structure—is that in each of our Veterans Affairs locations and in another location to start with, we have one VAC staff member who has become better experienced or trained in the homeless issue.

Veterans Affairs committee  I'll be very quick. I'll only be ten minutes.

Veterans Affairs committee  On the prevention side, we're working with the Canadian Armed Forces to ensure that if we see that someone might be homeless or might have a mental health issue, we are be able to provide that support.

Veterans Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, when you look at the issue of the closure of offices...the decision has been made to close offices, so we'll kind of put that aside. The next question is, what do you say? At the end of the day, if an individual crossed the country, as the minister mentioned and noted, if they do have challenges, if they're old, if they're 95 or 90, they can still call the Veterans Affairs number and get assistance and help on the phone to do what they have to do.

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you.

Veterans Affairs committee  No, I don't. I serve the public like you do as well—which is an important point. Remember, we all serve the public, but legally we have different monikers. That's an important nuance there in the question that you posed the other day. At the end of the day, when you take a look at it, it's a suite of programs.

Veterans Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, I think it's a great question. I would answer that question very simply, like this. If recruiting in the Canadian Armed Forces is a reflection of how well Veterans Affairs is looking after its soldiers, then the answer is outstandingly yes. Recruiting in the Canadian Armed Forces was at its highest levels between 2006 and 2011.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, and I think it's very important, Mr. Chair, to say it has the best potential. Clearly, as we've said, and as I believe personally, the new Veterans Charter is a solid, sound foundation to build on. You'll see that we've had a number of individuals even support that, if you've read the paper in the last couple of days.

Veterans Affairs committee  We'd be more than happy to get those answers back to the committee. As you said, Mr. Hillier might have those. If I may, Mr. Chair, I'd like to provide a number of comments that might add some kind of support and understanding of part of it. Part of the danger—I just throw this out to the committee—is the challenge that the new Veterans Charter has been kind of labelled or designated “the lump sum”.

Veterans Affairs committee  When you look at it, I think it's important that the committee look at the wide range—

Veterans Affairs committee  Am I supposed to stop too?

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes. At the time, clearly, the understanding from all those involved was that this was not something that we needed to stop and put on a shelf and walk away from. It's something that we need to continue to look at. That was the department. As a result, people such as Janice, who works in the policy group, have a mandate to always be looking at the NVC, not just now, not just last year.

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you very much for that question. Before I turn it over to Ms. Burke, I want to remind the committee that as we parse out individual issues that come to the table, which I think are extremely important, I would say, Mr. Chair, that if there's anybody in this room who has veterans who have issues, they should just call the department.

Veterans Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, let me build on that. What I'm unaware of is whether the Province of Quebec provides, as we do in this program, up to $75,000 for retraining as part of that vocational rehab, whether the Province of Quebec allows those who are injured to also go to university, or whether the Province of Quebec also allows that within that $75,000 someone who is a carpenter can buy three or four pairs of boots.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes. We had laid out a synopsis to bring it all together. From 1996 to about 2000, there was a lot of work done within the Department of Veterans Affairs because the department was receiving signals from many people that things had to change for a lot of reasons. One reason was that, given the increase in the operational tempo, given what we were hearing from veterans, and given what we were hearing from stakeholders, we had to change what we were doing in the programs at the time.