There are a lot of important points there, and I touched on a couple of factors in my opening comments.
Perhaps it is easy at this point to look back and think that somehow it was better, but at the time we were designing the new Veterans Charter that was certainly not the case. A lot of work had gone into the up-front research. We had undertaken studies through things such as the review of the care needs of veterans, which led to an extremely comprehensive look at the existing programs through the Veterans Affairs and Canadian Forces advisory group. There were many experts involved--experts in disability management--who looked at it.
What we were seeing with the pension program at the time was that expenditures were going up. It wasn't that the expenditures were increasing that was so troublesome; it was that they were increasing without a corresponding increase in the outcomes that clients were having. In other words, the Government of Canada was spending the money through that program and clients were not succeeding. They were falling through the cracks. We were hearing that the pension program simply did not provide adequate support. It was not needs-based, so there was not a strong correlation between the needs the individual had and the level of support provided; it was provided irrespective of that.
We also recognized, as I mentioned earlier, that it was a gateway program. Historically it had taken up to two years in the past--we're much better than that now, I'm glad to report--to actually rule on disability pensions. While that was happening individuals had no availability for support from Veterans Affairs. Because it was the gateway, they had to have that eligibility before we could provide anything else. Well, we knew from a disability management point of view that the further out people are the more lost opportunity there is for people to actually recover.
In relation to that, I also want to point out that people were very much focused, understandably, on their disabilities. They were focused on that because they didn't have enough support, and the only way they could get more support out of the system was to demonstrate they were more disabled. What experts in disability management said was that they needed to focus on getting better, not on the disability and on how unwell they are.
So that is some of the backdrop that I think is very important to understand. I've stressed, and I'll stress again, that the approach is needs-based. It provides the right level of support at the point in time it is needed. But it provides support not just in a different way, but to a broader audience. One of the audiences that was a real gap group were the individuals who had been released some years ago and were still dealing with issues--or will deal with issues into the future--and there was no support for them. That was a very significant and major piece. There was inadequate support for the survivors. With the new death benefit plus the provision of the EL to survivors of CF veterans, that's a substantial piece of support.
There are many things, but I would point those few out to you.