Along with everyone else, Mr. Ethell, I suspect you haven't been that successful in your retirement, listening to what you've been telling us. I think you're very active and continue to carry on with the best interests of veterans at heart, and we all appreciate that as we enter today into veterans week. I appreciated seeing you there this morning at the service.
I wanted to go back to our discussion about the appeal board, just for some clarification. There were some comments made by Mr. Perron regarding the appointments and how those have maybe been made for political reasons. I want to be really clear that this government is working to make a go--regardless of whether or not they are all Conservatives--of appointments that are based on merit and qualifications.
There's been a lot of talk at this board about the Veterans Review Appeal Board and about how there needs to be a balance there, that it not be all political people. There's a high percentage--over 50%--of those on there now. Those are not the right people to have on it. I think we need to have the balance of those people be with the military, and certainly from the medical and legal areas, and have probably very little political influence in it.
So when we see that, and we have this continued backlog because of some of those things that are there, do you see that the ombudsman, when disputes do come up--and we hope there would be fewer of them because of the right design for the appeal board--would be there only for the awarding of the last resort, or would they be able to intervene if something started to go off the rails?