Thank you.
Thank you, Captain Bruyea, and thank you, Carolina, as well for being here. You create lots of work for us, which is good. I thought we had done it with 40 recommendations. Now we have 55, which we'll take very seriously. I will; I'll make sure we go through them all.
In your remarks you've raised three sets of issues: one with respect very directly to the new Veterans Charter, one with respect to the office of the ombudsman and his independence, and the third around the reprisals that you have experienced in your advocacy work.
This morning I'm going to focus on the first one primarily. I think there's going to need to be another forum with respect to the review of the office of the ombudsman, which I will want to be pushing for our committee to work on.
Then the third one, the reprisals.... I don't know the venue for that one. I want you to know that we're going to take it very seriously, but I'm not sure that today I'm able to deal with it. Maybe others will raise it.
I'd like to focus on your recommendations, which are related to the new Veterans Charter. That is our study at hand.
I recognize also that even though you come as an individual, you're really broadly briefed. I see Perry Grey here as well, and I know there are many veterans that you speak to regularly. I recognize that your now 55 recommendations with subsets are more than Sean Bruyea's: they come from a broad base. Your chart is also helpful on the comparison of the new Veterans Charter and pre-pension benefits.
I want to pick away a little bit about that and give you a chance to highlight, out of the 55 recommendations, what it is you think we need to do. Part of it is the principle of the new Veterans Charter and then the program of the new Veterans Charter.
The principle has to do with an effective rehabilitation program. Yet we also have to deal with catastrophic injury. In the principles, there's a little bit of confusion at times about whether catastrophic injury really is being well met by the new Veterans Charter, which has a focus on rehabilitation.
There's a question on principle; then there's a question on program and program delivery. I wanted you to have a chance to comment on whether you agree with the principles of the new Veterans Charter; not the outcomes and how it works, but the principles of rehabilitation, reintegration, independence. It's okay not to agree. And then we can get into some program ideas that you have.