Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Walsh and Ms. Mortensen, for being here. It's a very helpful beginning, and there will be lots of questions.
When this idea was batted around and discussed at the last meeting, there was no disagreement that a statement to that in some form, of a level of service, a level of commitment, a level of bureaucratic care and oversight, would make sense.
The concern was, on the one extreme, could a bill of rights be seen more as sort of a statement of departmental principles or as a mission statement, a statement that in these areas we will do the best we can to help you, Veteran, without an implied legal obligation should a bureaucrat make a mistake or an expectation by a veteran not be met? At the other extreme it could be seen as an absolute, that you shall have such and such type of a service, which could then lead to the potential for lawsuits, presumably, if somebody felt they were aggrieved by the process.
In wanting to be helpful to veterans, I think we wanted to be responsible, too, and what was it that we were getting ourselves and this and future governments into when it came to these things?
In the example, Ms. Mortensen, of the provincial nursing homes act, where they incorporated a bill of rights into an act, was it an amendment to a previous act or was it a whole new act? Would you know that?