—ex gratia payment.
Again, that was an issue that was.... I shouldn't say it was more of a DND issue than veterans, because obviously it does impact on veterans, but it was one of those complicated cases that lay around for a number of years, and successive governments didn't deal with it. An ex gratia payment was something we came out with I think last summer or last spring. I think it was very fair. There were no conditions attached to the payment, as you well know. It's one of those issues where men and women were asked to do something, and I guess you could argue that if it were done over again, they would never have been asked to do what they had to do. You could argue that the $24,000 was highly justified. It was a tax-free, one-time payment.
On top of that, that has never stopped...because we don't want to confuse the ex gratia payment with the ongoing disability pensions that are awarded by Veterans Affairs. We have awarded those and continue to award those, so this was on top of the pension. That pension process still can apply to those individuals if, for example, they served and have a disability that can be directly related to their service. We do have a list of those, which I actually went over today just to brief myself on what some of those conditions might be—certain skin cancers, lung conditions, and so on.
Those pensions, Ms. Foote, are still being recognized and still being awarded by Veterans Affairs on top of the $24,000 ex gratia.