Veterans Affairs committee  The cornerstone program of the New Veterans Charter is the rehabilitation program. This program was not available under the previous legislation, prior to 2006. What the rehabilitation program offers veterans with a service-related disability or rehabilitation need is a combinati

Veterans Affairs committee  The vocational rehabilitation aspect of our rehabilitation programs has, as you mentioned, undergone some regulatory change whereby participants in vocational rehab can obtain services up to $75,800. Previous to that, the regulations were a little more restrictive; it was line-by

Veterans Affairs committee  Absolutely. Our vocational counsellors who work directly with veterans over and above the case managers will look at the labour market situation in the area where the veteran is or plans to locate to ensure that the vocational direction is going to have a positive outcome. So obv

Veterans Affairs committee  We have a value in terms of our expenditures over the past number of years for the rehabilitation program, and in the most recent fiscal year, 2012-13, our expenditures on rehabilitation were $18.4 million.

Veterans Affairs committee  It would be. Five years ago we would have spent $7.9 million, and that is for the entire rehabilitation program—medical, psychosocial, and vocational.

Veterans Affairs committee  There are different models of case management. As Mr. Hillier has said, our case managers ensure that there's coordination of service. We don't provide the direct service. In terms of informing our case management practice across the country, we rely on the research and the best

Veterans Affairs committee  It would be similar, but in other countries the case management model is a little different than ours.

Veterans Affairs committee  The medical reports that Mr. Hillier mentioned earlier in relation to supporting a disability benefit are critically important. In the case you describe, those medical reports for injuries or incidents during service or work-related repetitive-strain injuries on the veteran's fil

Veterans Affairs committee  The benefit of doubt provision means that, in weighing all of the evidence presented for a disability claim, if the evidence for favourable or unfavourable decision is equal, then the benefit of doubt goes to the veteran. So it's very much an adjudicative process that looks at al

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes.

Veterans Affairs committee  Good morning. Thank you very much for the question. Transition interviews have been administered by Veterans Affairs Canada for a number of years now. It's in excess of two years, actually—I think they started back in the early 2000s—but we have invested more aggressively in t

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, I think it would be fair to say that the transition interview enables us to direct the releasing member. In some cases, the releasing members will need case management services, in which case they are assigned to a case manager. In other situations, if the members are functi

Veterans Affairs committee  For the process that we've put in place for that follow-up after release, we usually have the releasing contact information. If the member is moving to a different part of the country from the base from which he or she is releasing, we try to obtain that information during the tr

Veterans Affairs committee  We make our best effort to reach them, but if we can't do it with the contact information that we have, then....

Veterans Affairs committee  I don't have that figure with me today. As I mentioned earlier, we started this process in October. We had roughly 380 or so veterans in that category who had released, and to date we've contacted 280. For some of them, we are still in the process of trying to contact them.