Veterans Affairs committee  Each team has a client service team manager who guides the team's activities. They have area counsellors who are there to interact with our client base as much as possible, face-to-face, in the area. Generally they would serve somewhere over 4,000 clients. They have client service agents who support the area counsellors, and there is a division of work between area counsellors who are trained social workers and client service agents, so that they can work with the veterans and their families to do this case planning that we've talked about.

Veterans Affairs committee  I think you've identified an important issue. Again without getting into where the ombudsman and the bill of rights will land, I think you've made an important observation, sir. I would be interested if you're not violating privacy—not at this committee, but separately—to find out more information about the particular case, if it's not too late to help.

Veterans Affairs committee  No, you wouldn't be a client of DVA.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes.

Veterans Affairs committee  I'll answer it a little bit more completely. They're considered clients in our database if they've passed through the process and are officially receiving support or benefits from us. If they aren't there, any time they come back to the department to get...we provide everybody with the basic support, even if they're not clients.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, I'll look into that for you, sir.

Veterans Affairs committee  I believe it is, but I'll have to double-check that.

Veterans Affairs committee  We strive to make it happen within the limits of human endeavour. In other words, you may have a priority area where you're focused in on improvement at a particular point in time and have to find time later on to deal with another problem. That's what you're faced with as a management challenge in a large institution.

Veterans Affairs committee  We try to encourage that kind of culture and ethic across the department. One of the things we ask is, for example, when the employee surveys are done—we also have employee surveys that are done—when we get those levels of results, we seize that opportunity, go back and talk to employees about changes they would like to see made.

Veterans Affairs committee  You're quite correct. I had neglected to mention that, and it is an important element. I talked about it in client terms, but you're quite correct, it puts a heightened onus on the department. I accept that point; it's a good one too.

Veterans Affairs committee  Are you referring to cases in front of the Veterans Review and Appeal Board?

Veterans Affairs committee  This is really an area that's sort of arm's-length from the department as well. Unless, Ken, you had some information about that—

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes.

Veterans Affairs committee  It's going to be very difficult to do in one sentence, sir. Going back to what I said earlier, the content of the bill of rights is still being worked on. There's a process under way to formulate that, and as I understand it, it's going well. I'm not really here to talk about the outcome of that process, other than to say to you that the kinds of things we're striving to do in terms of service to our veterans would be well served by a bill of rights.

Veterans Affairs committee  I think that's a fair comment. Everybody probably has in their own mind what they might see that to be. Certainly there are probably a lot of different definitions of what a service standard would look like, what the content of a bill of rights would look like. I have my own ideas, but it isn't—