Veterans Affairs Committee on March 27th, 2007

[Michel Rossignol]

Yes, and there's a body of text that was the original draft. On the second page, there's a list of the rights: “Veterans have the right to...”. That was the original draft, with comments added into the Word document by veterans, although I'm not sure exactly who made those comments.

[Brent St. Denis, Liberal, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

If I may continue, Mr. Chair, where does this draft end? Is this list of rights part of it?

[Michel Rossignol]

Yes.

[Brent St. Denis, Liberal, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Okay, so it's the full two-page document.

[Michel Rossignol]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

I'm going to let the clerk say something, because I think he wanted to add to this.

[The Clerk of the Committee]

With the committee's authorization, I could propose to redraft this and have my office rewrite it all, without the formatted “Draft” across the page. It would be a readable version, if that's what they'd like. I can send it out to all the members, if they would enjoy that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

I'm fine with that.

Mr. Shipley, and then Mr. Valley is on deck.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

I think that would be good, taking in all the comments. It obviously has to have “Draft” on it, and there are other ones that we've seen with the highlighting that you just read through. I believe there's a bit of a mission statement that lays out what it is about.

Clearly, this is a veterans' committee, and I think each of the others will have their own opinion. If we're going to call it a bill of rights.... Actually, in here somewhere, someone was asking whether it is actually going to be a bill or whether it's basically going to be a policy. We need to do that in order to know what we want to have done with this. If it's going to be a bill of rights, would that bill of rights then be complementary to the ones in the other emergency services, whether it's the RCMP or DND?

If we're going to redraft it, we should just give our clerk some direction on that. Clearly this is the veterans' committee, and I think this should deal only with veterans at this time. We can get some clarity with respect to some of the comments that have been made here, and we need to take some of those into context when we're developing the content of the bill of rights, if we're going to call it that.

I also think that if we have other suggestions, today is the time to give them to the clerk, so that he doesn't have another ten to consider putting into it when he comes back. I would just open it up, Mr. Chair, for that kind of discussion. If we're comfortable with using this as a format to delete and take away from today, maybe we can use it to get a draft that he could put together for us for our next get-together.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

We have a few others. At some point, I think it might be worth focusing mostly on the part that comes on the second page, after “Veterans have the right to...”. Maybe what I can do later is read through that, and then we can try to focus on that. For most veterans, that's operationally what's going to matter anyhow.

Mr. Valley.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

You'll notice that I generally speak around here, but I was sitting here confused about where this came from and what we were going to do with it. These are obviously comments on our draft document. Did we see this in June?

[The Clerk]

Yes, I sent it around.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

I'm known to lose stuff.

[The Clerk]

Maybe it wasn't in June, but around November.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

I think it needs to be sent out again.

[The Clerk]

I did so yesterday evening.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

Does anybody else have it? These are comments on a document. Is the full context of the document in here?

[The Clerk]

I don't think we have access to that.

[Michel Rossignol]

I believe the original draft is part of the document here, where you have “Veterans have the right to...”.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

So everything is here then, not just his comments.

[Michel Rossignol]

Yes, but those comments have been added to the Word document.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

It's obvious that confusion is reigning here, because I'm still confused.

Everything is here. These are the comments of one group of stakeholders.

[The Clerk]

Yes.

[Albina Guarnieri, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Excuse me, but is the document four sheets or two sheets?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

It seems to be two.