Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Minister and your staff, for being with us in your morning and our afternoon for the study and analysis of what we're doing across veterans affairs departments.
I'll list three or four questions and let you respond to them.
You talked about information not being collected or handed out well. I'm assuming you're talking about some of the medical and personnel records that come from Defence that shift across the line when people become veterans. I'm wondering what you might be thinking about as future solutions.
Secondly, in Canada--and we have found this in discussions with other countries--there's the issue of red tape and the complexity of the forms individuals have to fill out when they need benefits or services. We're still looking for ways to simplify them and yet be efficient and effective. If you can give us some help on that, it would be wonderful.
You've included a very short version of a budget with some explanatory notes. We've asked Michel, our analyst researcher, to help out through the summer by comparing budgets of different countries. This will benefit not just us, obviously. Things have to work both ways. Hopefully other countries will benefit, as we do some sort of analysis of budgets on a comparative basis of services supplied, dollars spent, efficiencies, and those types of things.
I would like to be able to thank you in advance. Hopefully we can generate some information from you and return some information to you.
Finally, you mentioned that you have cemeteries. I'm wondering about the services provided and how long you have provided them.
There are a number of things there, but I would appreciate your response. Thank you.