Thank you.
I have a gentleman in Halifax named Captain Earle Wagner, whose wife passed away last year. He applied for VIP but was told that he was too wealthy and too healthy to receive it. He lost his primary caregiver, his wife. He was told by DVA that because his wife had passed away they would provide him with the care, but that he would no longer be eligible for VIP service because of his income and his stability.
I have a widow in St. John's, Newfoundland, whose husband passed away. He was one of those World War II guys who never thought about applying for DVA or government services, because people just didn't do that. They didn't ask government for help. He passed away. She was told that she has to have a disability tax credit or have a low income in order to qualify for VIP, and she doesn't have either. She was told by the 1-866 number that if she could get a doctor to give her a disability form that she could use to claim a tax credit on her T4, then she would be eligible to apply for VIP.
Why would you good people, with all your good intentions, make an 82-year-old widow go through that process? All she wants is to be able to stay in her own home. I have dozens and dozens of examples of this nature—people who are turned down by VIP even though their husbands or spouses served in World War II or in Korea. It's frustrating for a member of Parliament to tell them no.
So I'm asking you, as an MP, even though most of these people aren't even my riding, what we can do to improve this situation so that these people can receive the VIP service. I don't think the government did this intentionally, but they have developed a two-tier widow and a two-tier veteran. Yet when they landed on Juno Beach, there was no two-tier system in place. When they landed in Korea, there was no two-tier system. They served their country. We owe them. I don't think we should be putting them through this rigmarole.
My last question has to do with payments that some have to make. If you get long-term service done, you pay $45 or whatever. You pay the contractor, and then you send the receipt to the insurance company and you get it back within 30 days. Some elderly veterans are forgetting to submit all the proper forms. In order to assist them, why doesn't the contractor just charge the government directly and bypass having the veteran do it?