Thank you, sir.
With reference to the question about more bureaucracy, in government we must always be concerned about creating more bureaucracy than necessary. However, there is a misconception in some circles about what an ombudsman does--I've heard that comment before.
An ombudsman exists outside the bureaucracy, as a sort of mail clerk who's able to look at the volume of mail coming in and put it in the right spot, and to see from the outside the big picture, what needs to be done. So it actually increases the efficiency of the bureaucracy.
I can see real money savings, and I can certainly see the debt of dignity and respect for the sacrifice we owe our veterans will be upheld by ensuring more rapid response and systemic improvement.
As far as the existing system, the legislation, the Pension Act I find is a superior act. It's generously written to help support the veteran, to give the benefit of the doubt; the programs allow the veteran to be protected. Regulations and policies within the department are so written. The problem is they're not being followed, and there's no one to enforce the following of those regulations.
When it existed as a subcommittee, the committee heard that VRAB does not track any of its decisions. There's no ability to make systemic improvements to what is sitting at VRAB--right now I believe 7,000 files are backlogged. There's no way of understanding why so many files are going to VRAB. No one's sitting down and tracking that.
An ombudsman could track that. An ombudsman could make the recommendations at the departmental level and perhaps at the VRAB level, so that VRAB has the power--and I think this is open to consideration--to say to the department, “You know what? You should have ruled on this the first time.” And they could send it back, rather than cutting off the options of appeal and review by having the board review it. It's an expensive process to send it to VRAB when an administrative review at the department could solve the problem quickly.