We receive a lot of complaints every year, and I must say that we have received very few complaints on this matter. We have received some, though, I must be honest. For us it's an issue of compensation and not fairness, because the court case dealt with an insurance company and its clients, quite different from the government program.
In the case of Veterans Affairs Canada, according to legislation, money was taken back from these allowances in the earnings loss benefit. When the government decided not to carry on with the clawback, our biggest concern at the time was that the government didn't move very fast in coming up with an answer that would actually...because there were a lot of expectations out there. Certainly we thought it took too long to come up with a decision, and then, once the decision was made, it took too long to come up with the details.
We are satisfied that it actually meets the principles of fairness. There's a saying in the ombudsman world that you must be careful not to pursue fairness in such a way that you disadvantage the others. In this case, for us, fairness is to use the money that's available going forward to fund the programs that are now lacking, such as no income after 65.