Thank you, Mr. Harris, for your kindness.
Again, I'll get right to the answers. In terms of the money, because you mentioned $21 million, that would be all DND money, so that wasn't part of our expenditures. Again, these centres do apply for all ranges of military, those still serving and the veterans community as well.
I think the term I used in my opening remarks—and I know you're coming in late to replace Mr. Stoffer, and I appreciate your coming in—is the seamless delivery of service. That was actually a question I've heard in the House of Commons more than once, that sometimes veterans get caught up in that set of circumstances where you're dealing with two bureaucracies. You're dealing with DND and then you're dealing with Veterans Affairs, trying to get the benefits that would flow to you as a result of your service.
I did miss the event in Halifax because of weather the other day, when Minister MacKay rolled this out. The parliamentary secretary, Greg Kerr, missed because of weather as well. But the interesting thing about this is when we hear of men and women leaving the military as opposed to retiring, we often forget that some of these people are leaving the military but it wasn't their choice to leave. Because they're wounded in Afghanistan or injured on one of our bases, or just a medical condition where their career suddenly is.... It's just sort of like a freight train runs them over in the middle of the night. Their whole life turns upside down. One day they're a soldier, the next day they're not a soldier.
So for those who plan their retirement and things go according to their plan and they have planned to leave the military after 20 or 25 years, that soldier usually is not the one who gets caught up in this bureaucracy, if you will, between the two departments. It's always and most generally the soldier who didn't plan his retirement, who just happened to get wounded in Afghanistan, where his life is suddenly turned upside down and for all the obvious reasons sometimes finds it difficult to work through the system. We want to make it truly like one-stop shopping. That's the term I used the other day on a call-in radio show, and I'm thinking, well, I don't know if that's the right term to use, but now I see the term is used quite frequently, even among DND folks, because that's really what it is.
When you're coming in for help and your life has suddenly been turned upside down, the last thing you want is be bounced from office to office to office and have no results. So that $21 million.... My people this morning told me that means around 200 positions, which are going to be additional positions with DND, to really focus on that seamless transition for our soldiers, our men and women, and identify how we can help eliminate some of the frustration that's out there. I think we're doing a good job, but I think the job can be done better and to a higher level of satisfaction for our men and women if we coordinate those actions between the two departments. That's what we'll be doing, because they'll be in the same building, the same office, so that we're not....
In terms of—