Veterans Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, members of the committee, I am pleased to be here today to talk to you about the Enhanced New Veterans Charter Act. This fall the minister announced four changes to the new Veterans Charter programming. The first change was to improve the earnings loss benefit. As has

Veterans Affairs committee  I think that if there's a risk, it obviously would be a concern, but I can tell you that with the lump-sum benefit, there are a number of considerations that I think you should address. First of all, we do offer financial counselling. It's part of the package. If there's an indiv

Veterans Affairs committee  It wasn't just a pretext.

Veterans Affairs committee  This bill speaks to enhancements to the new Veterans Charter programming. It's targeted to the financial benefits payable under the bill. There's nothing in Bill C-55 that would speak to those issues you're raising, Monsieur, in this regard.

Veterans Affairs committee  My understanding, Ms. Sgro, is that by protocol and convention, legislative drafting has basically evolved such that the word “may” is used and interpreted as “shall” in circumstances where the context dictates. So as I understand it, this is not a major departure from use of l

Veterans Affairs committee  What you're raising is a technical-legal issue from a legislative drafting point of view. From my perspective, this has been subject to legislative drafting by the experts in that law, and this is what they've proposed. I would say that this is how we would see it going forward.

Veterans Affairs committee  If I might endeavour to respond to that, Mr. Stoffer, this is a classic example, I would argue, where it would be inappropriate to have the word “shall”. Why? Because this section is simply saying that the minister may on application provide rehabilitation services and vocational

Veterans Affairs committee  Under the Pension Act, pensioners who are assessed at 100% disability and who have exceptional care needs are eligible to receive the exceptional incapacity allowance. That's under the pension legislation. Under the new Veterans Charter, another allowance was created called a pe

Veterans Affairs committee  Not directly, no. This would not. (Clauses 8 to 12 inclusive agreed to)

Veterans Affairs committee  I assume, Mr. Lamoureux, you're referring to the time of the new Veterans Charter adoption and implementation in 2006. There certainly were broad-based discussions and consultations that occurred at that time, which basically led to the development and the adoption of the new Ve

Veterans Affairs committee  There certainly were discussions with vets' organizations, and as may be sort of indicative of the discussion here even today, some agree with it and some disagree with it. So I wouldn't purport to suggest to you that there would be a consensus on it in terms of this as a solutio

Veterans Affairs committee  The 31% we referred to would be those who had some concerns in terms of the amount they received, or it may have been concerns around what that meant to them in terms of how they were using the funds. The majority of ones polled said no, they've used it wisely, they like the way

Veterans Affairs committee  That is precisely, Mr. Stoffer, one of the drivers for the bill. It was not an intended consequence, but the way it was structured, it was limiting access. With Bill C-55, our forecasts are that over the next five years there should be an additional 3,500 veterans gaining access

Veterans Affairs committee  We do.

Veterans Affairs committee  One additional point that is quite important is that under the legislation, under the new Veterans Charter, these lump-sum awards are payable at such time as the condition has stabilized. There is actually a provision in the act that if you had an unstable mental health condition