Yes, there's nothing I can really disagree with there. I think you're right. That's one of the things we attempt to do. We have a number of community beds and contract beds in Newfoundland, as we do in all the provinces.
We all have our own individual cases. We're talking here in this room about ombudsmen, but I often say the veterans' greatest ombudsmen are individual members of Parliament. I don't think there's any other department of government that has as much correspondence with individual members of Parliament as Veterans Affairs, because everyone has veterans. As I said, it's one of the things we all agree on, the treatment of our veterans. We'll disagree on certain things, because we're all politicians, but they truly do unite us. We want the best for them. Those families will not hesitate to contact an individual member of Parliament to come to their defence because you'll walk a letter across to me, as all members do and will always do regardless of who the minister is.
I get those kinds of letters too. This is interesting, Mr. Anders, because I had a veteran's family, a woman I went to school with and her dad now in his eighties, and he's in a hospital and has to go into a veteran's bed. They want to keep him as close to home as they possibly can. There's a bed available now in another community, but they don't want to go there for obvious reasons, because it means his wife, who is also in her eighties, will not be able to travel that 20 or 30 miles. So we're hoping against hope that a bed becomes available, which winds up being in my home community, so he can in fact go to that particular bed. That's really the point you're making: making every effort, so these veterans can have as much comfort and be as close to home as possible. That means the veteran's wife can stay in her home town.
I often say that. In Saint John, New Brunswick, we have a 102-year-old veteran, a woman, and I grew up in the presence of this woman in my community. Most of them do want to stay as close to home as they possibly can in their closing days, because of friends and relatives and all the comradeship and the social activities that come with this. They still want to be close to family and friends, so we make every effort to do that.
We'll see what we can do in your particular case. Hopefully, it will help.