Mr. Chairman, when we moved to the new Veterans Charter, it was a deliberate choice by the government of the day to move there, with all-party support in the House of Commons. It is a living charter, and there are parts of it we have looked at and adopted as we went along. But in my mind the system we have now does work, and I'll tell you the reason why it's working better than the old system, why I would really hesitate to suggest even for a minute that we're going to go back to the old system.
We have these comparisons, which I'll provide, and I'm not sure if we have them here today, but we have them where it's the old system versus the new system. When the member is referring to the lump sum payment.... We have a hard time getting this out in the public domain and to those who really watch this whole issue. If an individual cannot work and returns, they would get that 100% disability, which today, with inflation factored in, I think is right around $270,000 tax free. In that, they would have ongoing support payments based on what their salary was in the military, for those who cannot possibly entertain going back to work. So we have a system that gives them the moneys necessary to help them re-establish their lives with the $267,000 tax free, but also ongoing support for them and their families as they need that.
When we get down to taking a look, and this is one of the areas where I think we have to work at a little harder, Mr. Stoffer, to explain.... One of the things that in the past drove the department to look at this and the previous government to entertain bringing in the new Veterans Charter was...for example, let's take a look at a veteran who's getting a 10% or 20% pension. It starts out at 5%, 10%, 15%, up till you're getting 100%. The average age of a veteran coming into our system is about 36 years of age. Many of those have made the deliberate choice to retire from the military with a military pension.
Those veterans who are coming out—and even in the past this is what happened—many of them are young men and they would get a 10% or 15% pension. That was it. You're on your own, kid, here's a 10% pension. I know this is an exaggeration and it might be a crass way of saying it, but basically it was a prescription for poverty. You're saying here's your 10% pension, and not providing them with the educational and medical benefits, rehabilitation, and all the other benefits we offer under the new Veterans Charter. In the past it was, “Here's your pension, go away.”
The new system is that you'll get the support you need from us. And if you're getting a 10% disability pension, that might work for some people, but the average soldier who was getting that 10% spent the rest of their lives trying to ratchet up the pension to the point where they could support their families. They didn't actually provide that veteran with the counselling needed to move from being a soldier to being a civilian in civilian life, to help them or provide them with the tools to make a living for them and their families. That's where Veterans Affairs and DND fell down over the years, I think. It was, “Here's a pension, go away, get out of our face.”
I do know, Mr. Stoffer, that you understand the new Veterans Charter, but when you look at the educational benefits that can go to the veteran or his spouse, on top of the tax-free disability they will get, there's also a wide range of other programs they get ongoing, that never end, including rehabilitation and retraining.
This is interesting, too, because I spend a good part of the day looking at some of these statistics. A lot of these veterans who are coming out today are in a position to contribute to their families in an ongoing way, provided they get the tools from us, and that's what we're doing.
As you well know, when a veteran leaves the system today--let's say, for example, he goes out with a 10% disability--I think the wrong thing for us to do is to say, “Listen, guy, you're on your own”, as you would have been under the old system, Peter.
Today, we're not going to say that. We're saying you have skills that are marketable, and if you want to change direction in terms of what you are doing and you think you want to be something other than an aircraft mechanic, we'll provide you with the training to do that. You will have that little bit of a lump sum to help you through it, but all the time that you're getting retraining from us, we'll provide you with that steady flow of income. When you're through that training and you get your job, you'll have exactly what you wanted, a career to lead you and your family through the next 10 years, 20 years, 30 years.
The working life of an average veteran coming out is 30 years, so I really believe that we've given them the tools to carry on and continue to contribute. Canadian veterans have no trouble getting hired, as you well know. If two people are applying for a job and a veteran comes in and says he's applying too--guess what--he's going to get the job because veterans are deemed to be the best workers in the world, the most trainable people in the world. They're very disciplined. They commit themselves to the mission 100%. He's the kind of guy or woman that I want working for me.
The new Veterans Charter, Peter, helps us do that. I don't think we want to go back there. I do know that when we were in Washington last year meeting with the big five nations--Britain, the United States, France, Australia, and New Zealand--they actually looked at our charter. They knew the ins and outs of it. They knew all the moving pieces in the charter. They said you guys have the best system. I'm not just saying that because I'm sitting at this table. They'll look it up and say, you guys have the best system because you really honour and respect the men and women and the family unit. In the past it just always seemed to be about the veteran. It was never about the family unit.
The other reason, Peter, that I'm very strong on this is that if something has happened to the veteran, say, for example, he is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, which is another big issue within the military and within Veterans Affairs, which I think we're doing a pretty good job of addressing, if he can't get the training but his wife says she wants the training and she wants to go to university--she may want to finish a nursing degree or do something else--we'll say go for it and we'll help pay for it. We will help, and we have helped. It's made a huge difference in those families. Sometimes it's the reverse, and it is the wife who is hurt or injured or whose career has come to a screeching halt as a result of injury or of being wounded in Afghanistan, and her husband can be eligible for that service, or vice versa.
I think we have a pretty good system, and it's one we can be proud of.
Regarding your bigger question, when we identify those areas where we can change it and we can tweak it, we're open to doing that, and we have done it, Peter, and we'll continue to do that. We do know we have an issue now with some of them coming out in terms of.... I shouldn't show my hand, should I, and tell you about areas of difficulty that I've already uncovered myself? I'm just sort of playing into your hands as an opposition member in the House of Commons. Sometimes we're too helpful in identifying our warts and flaws.
The truth is that I've identified some of those myself early on. We improved some of those, and some of them we improved without any public discussion. We just identified that it wasn't working and we fixed it. We want it fixed before you hear about it.