Thank you, Ms. Moore, for coming in today and for bringing your three recommendations. Having sat through quite a number of meetings, sometimes I wonder exactly what we've been asked, but you've been quite clear on that, so thank you for that.
You've touched on the big difficulty: a lot of people don't realize the services that are available. That's one of the problems we have as MPs. You mentioned we can provide service for these individuals.
We do not know where the veterans are. There are ways we try to find out—members of the Legion, attending events, trying to build our own files--but we have no way of knowing exactly who the veterans are. It's through word of mouth and other veterans and other organizations that work with them and are willing to share with us.
I assume because of the privacy laws in Canada, we're not allowed to have a list of the people living in our ridings. I'm not even sure that the military, when they leave active military service, provide them with.... I'm sure they provide them with a list of services that are still available to them, but they probably don't go as far as to say their member of Parliament can help them in a lot of ways. It's a constant sticking point for us.
It's a problem in my riding—over 30% of the province of Ontario and only a very few people live there, a lot of separate, isolated communities—trying to reach out and trying to find out who's a veteran and who needs service and who's going to come in. You mentioned that a lot of people lead independent lives. They don't necessarily want to come and ask for help. They're living with a condition or a vision problem that something could be done about.
What would you say to that? As MPs, we know a lot of stuff that the general public doesn't know right now, yet we cannot find out who's a veteran in our riding. Does that not seem a bit strange? It seems a bit strange to me.