Certainly I appreciate the involvement of the critics and obviously of members from our side as well...at the first briefing, we wanted to be sure that the coming into force of the act did not preclude those who may have had claims prior to the day when the bill came into force.
Taking those concerns into regard, we wanted to be sure that no one was left behind, and so the government will propose to amend the bill to ensure that the new measure would apply to all eligible Canadian Force members who had a newborn or who adopted a child less than 104 weeks prior to the act's coming into force. The essence of it would be that the benefits would not be shortened by virtue of the time that they were deployed.
We will work to ensure that those amendments are made at third reading in accordance and in line with the discussions we've had with the critics and Mr. Beauséjour.