Thank you, Mr. André. Again, that's a good question, because when you're looking at the lessened spending by the department, one of the things I can look you in the eye and tell you is that none of that will reduce the services we provide to veterans. And that's one of the things I have laid down as a marker. It's one thing we're not going to do, and we did not do that.
The $24 million that we've identified will be over the next three years. So if you're looking at the total department's spending, if you will, of $3.4 billion, that's less than 1%. But none of that will reduce services or benefits to our veterans communities, so I think most of us would take comfort from that. That's just one thing I didn't do. And some of that money is coming from what we call improved program efficiencies, from the way we manage cases within the department. That's one of the things that's going to take place, and there will be some changes to our remembrance activities. So that will be one thing that will change.
There will be some changes to long-term care for our veterans, giving them more choice—and I believe this will require regulatory change—because one of the things we're finding in Veterans Affairs, which is sometimes hard to believe, is that in some parts of the country it costs Veterans Affairs, or the taxpayers of Canada, about $100,000, and sometimes over $100,000, per long-term contracted care bed. The reason the veteran is in that bed is it is the only level of care they're entitled to under the complex set of rules Veterans Affairs administers. That's the abbreviated way of saying this, and it makes no logical sense.
So veterans will tell you—and I've been to Camp Hill in Mr. Stoffer's area, and in Judy's area, up to Sunnybrook Hospital—that they would rather have been home with their families if Veterans Affairs had paid for that service to keep them home. It doesn't make any sense.
So those are some of the changes that we're going to bring forward to actually realize that $24 million in savings. We're going to give the veterans, at the end of the day, better care and we're going to give them what they want. At the end of the day, we're going to save the taxpayers of Canada some money. That, in my mind, is a good way to do business.