Okay, I'll skip the salutation, and I'll go right here.
Don't try to repackage already failing policy as new policy. Don't try another series of expensive half measures. We've already seen the Department of Veterans Affairs try to sell their plan to us at the stakeholders meeting, but we aren't naive, we do talk to each other, and we have communication coast to coast. When you deny my friend in P.E.I., I hear about it in Vancouver. We know what's going on with each other.
While some benefits are being delivered, the constant reality of a negative opinion on a reassessment essentially requires veterans to remain sick to receive care. It disincentivizes recovery. It is the opposite of what's claimed, which is a wellness model.
As soldiers, we weren't perfect, but we always saw missions through to the end. There is no break until it's done. You taught us that, the Government of Canada taught us that, that we needed to do that for you to accomplish the security tasks of the nation. Now I move forward with that same tenacity to make sure my brothers in uniform are cared for, to make sure that they can count on the oath of allegiance that they swore to having meaning from the nation they swore it to.
We're not going away until this unjust compensation is fixed. I do believe you will fix it. I also believe the day will come when a financial assessment will be done, and the result will, of course, be the realization that by far the cheapest course of action would have been to fix this years ago, which of course you can't do.
Please fix it now. The finance department should endeavour to produce the funding in 2017's budget to once and for all fix the discrepancy in care and compensation between the different benefit schemes for Canada's wounded sons and daughters.
I'll close with this point.
This is Canada, and we do big things here. There is currently a robotic arm with a maple leaf on it. It is moving hand over hand in space, and it assembled the space station. Insulin was developed here. More recently, in two months you found the funding, the planning capacity, and the ability to conduct a mass migration of 25,000 war-ravaged refugees to this country—I support you in that, by the way—and that effort had the support of the Canadian Forces. You used Canadian service personnel to do that.
You must be able to see the cruel irony, then, when we suggest that it takes 11 years of consultation to provide those same Canadian Forces members with the benefits originally promised to them when you've already done it before, and you continue to do it now with our brothers injured pre-2006. For it to have taken this long, let alone continue, means the Department of Veterans Affairs has had to actively work at not finding the proper solution. That needs to end.
Thank you for your time and consideration.