I can answer a question that Mr. St. Denis asked. I'll try to make it as clear as I possibly can.
We as a government made it clear that we were going to put an ombudsman and a bill of rights in place. The decision from the minister was that if we were going to do this and have the cooperation of the House of Commons, then it needed to be dealt with at the committee level. We needed to give the committee the right to make recommendations as to how this was going to proceed.
So that's what this is all about--listening to all of these different witnesses and listening to all of these different veterans groups so that we can come together as a committee and make a recommendation that the minister's going to consider.
I don't think there's a person in this room who hasn't had a heartbreaking experience with a veteran in their own riding. I've been part of this portfolio for more than three years, and I have heard some things that I can't believe are actually happening to people who fought for this country. So I would like to make certain that when we do it, we do it right.
I know that the charter was a well-meaning piece of legislation put forward by the previous government. I think it was done fairly well, but there were flaws in there that needed to be addressed before it ever went in. It is a living document, fortunately, so we're able to change those things as we go along. But I'd like to try to avoid those kinds of pitfalls when we put this position together.
I'd love to have nothing but time so that we could look at every single model all around the world, but that's simply not possible. We're going to have to look at what we've had in front of us. We're going to have to assess what the witnesses have told us, make the best decision we can possibly make as a group of people, and put that recommendation forward. Hopefully we're going to have, in very short order, an ombudsman position in place and a bill of rights position in place.
These are things that can't be ignored. They've been needed for a long time. We're going to move forward on them, preferably with the committee's consent and with input from the committee. We have passion from Mr. Perron, we have passion from a number of members sitting directly across from me from the Liberal Party, we have passion from the Conservative Party, and we certainly have passion from the NDP. Surely we can make this happen and make this work.