Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you for your question. Thank you. The issue of the lump sum being mismanaged in certain circumstances has been a concern for the department. About 18 months ago, the department looked at that question very seriously. We conducted a survey of veterans who were receiving th

Veterans Affairs committee  It would depend, I would submit to you—and my colleague Charlotte may have an additional comment on the service delivery side—on the nature of the disability. If an individual is pensioned for a condition that would give rise to a question of their competence from a legal point o

Veterans Affairs committee  Absolutely. Yes, it's certainly possible, and we'll provide it to you.

Veterans Affairs committee  I can't give you a time on the client surveys. But I can tell you that we are now very much engaged with what we're referring to as phase two of our outreach strategy. Family members are going to be part of that. We're going to be working through things like the military family r

Veterans Affairs committee  The enhancements to the new Veterans Charter are $189 million over the next five years.

Veterans Affairs committee  Absolutely. These are actual dollars in the pockets of veterans who are benefiting from the services. The accrual costs of that over the lifetime of the program are $2 billion, which has created some challenge for communicating the messaging around that. Certainly, that's the lo

Veterans Affairs committee  I'll perhaps commence the response by speaking about changes to the new Veterans Charter and our suite of programs and services available to veterans. In that context, Mr. Chair, I'll take you back a few years to 2006 and the implementation of the new Veterans Charter. It was a

Veterans Affairs committee  Perhaps, Mr. Chair, I will respond to the question. Stakeholder engagement is an area of great interest to the department, to try to ensure we are working with a broad range of stakeholders. There may be some confusion on this, but previously we had a number of advisory committe

Veterans Affairs committee  I have some metrics here.

Veterans Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, I have some metrics that I can share with you just briefly, based on forecasts. To put it in a context I think will make far more sense. If we look at our traditional veterans today, we see that we're serving about 63,000 traditional veterans. By 2015 that's forecast

Veterans Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, I might just add one quick one. It's on the area of policy renewal. Policy renewal is the foundation on which our front-line staff administer programs. As part of transformation, we are actively engaged in trying to fundamentally rework how we do policy and how we wr

Veterans Affairs committee  I can. The increases under the new Veterans Charter are a good example of where we are having greater uptake by the younger veterans. As you know, with the passage of the enhanced new Veterans Charter legislation in the fall, $189 million was committed to enhancements over the n

Veterans Affairs committee  Some of it would be new dollars provided by the enhancement. Some of it would be simply uptake on existing programming, like the disability award program. We have increased applications from new members for disability awards.

Veterans Affairs committee  I'm trying to find it here.

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you for that question. Yes, the committee has indeed been created. It has been established. It has now met several times. It is now in the process of beginning its literature review, and beginning to direct its mind to the question that has been posed to the committee by t