There has been a wide variety of frustrations since day one.
In the first instance, learned advice was given to me by people who had opened a similar office that I should keep the doors closed for a year and open them up when I was fully staffed and had my procedures in place. But because the veteran community had been waiting for a veterans' ombudsman for some time, I decided we would go ahead, continue taking complaints from the veterans, and do whatever we could to facilitate change while we were setting up the office. I would say, as a metaphor, we were changing the tire on a moving car.
We learned as we went along. I encountered all sorts of goodwill among the rank and file of Veterans Affairs Canada. We've been very successful at resolving what I would refer to as lower-level issues--mediating decisions at the lower levels among the decision-makers in about 500 cases.
We are only now starting to venture into the onerous process of hiring within the public service, and that is the cause of another one of my frustrations. We are only now starting to venture into some of the more complex, systemic issues that impact a wide number of veterans in the community. By correcting them, we would be effecting long-term and enduring change, to the benefit of our veterans. This is where we are still carving out our territory and identifying what processes we're going to use to effect change in the most timely manner.
Just to qualify that, I'm very cognizant of the relationship we should have with the department. In establishing our procedures, I do not want to put the department in a position where our workload slows down the progress they're making in programs that don't need to be addressed by us.
So the frustrations have been many on all sides.