Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'll be brief, which is sometimes difficult for me.
I saw this language today on my way here, and I found it musing. This is from John Mark Keyes's Executive Legislation: Delegated Law Making by the Executive Branch: “Languages, and the dictionaries and grammars that describe it, are not considered to have legal effect.” I found that interesting out of context, because language as such does not have legal effect; it depends on the source and where you find that language.
“Bill of rights” as a term, if you really think about it, is meant to just say some legislation that's giving effect to rights. Rights can be found in different legislation; if you look at the Privacy Act, for instance, you'll see in the scope and application part that rights are set out, and the right is the right of the individual to have the government treat the personal information of the individual in a way that's set out in the legislation; here too you could have the bill of rights, if you wanted to call it that, of veterans set out in the scope and application section of whichever act is appropriate for the scheme you want to set out.
Maybe it would be appropriate in the Department of Veterans Affairs Act. Maybe it would be appropriate in the act that is now being called the Veterans Charter. I think it can be a bit confusing, because we have the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which is a charter that sets out certain rights and freedoms in a constitutional setting; by contrast, what we're calling the Veterans Charter is an act that sets out a package of programs and so on. If you intend that package of programs to be delivered in a manner that meets certain standards, it may be appropriate for that act to have the scope or interpretation section saying that this is the bill of rights we intend the veterans to be able to have in a way that's enforceable by our ombudsman. If you put it in the preamble, though, it may have less weight, because it's more for the court to determine how that's interpreted. If it's within the section of the act, then it has more effect.