I found my car keys, by the way.
As well, for me, my wife is a separate human being, and yet Veterans Affairs doesn't have a separate card for her. We've heard witnesses testify that wives and spouses and family members, if they qualify, should be allowed to deal directly with Veterans Affairs and be provided with a ticket right in; they shouldn't have to go through my benefits. My wife should receive benefits and assistance on her own identification number, her own card, her own programs. She is an individual. She should be respected as such.
To get back to the 30%, that number is used because statistically, in studies of populations—and I'm not an expert on this—when numbers approach too low a concentration, the influence of that population on the culture is minimal. If it approaches 50%, there is too much clashing. So I think 30% is a good number to shoot for, roughly.
First of all, bringing Veterans Affairs or some of its major components to Ottawa would I think assist, because it would allow for an understanding of how Ottawa works: that general principles of oversight, once they're enhanced—for instance, in whistle-blower protection—mean they are under the watchful eye of you and the minister and the oversight agencies, the Auditor General. And we'd all be in one place. It can share the same pool of hiring, so that you get the same quality of people—or higher quality, perhaps from retiring CF members. Liaison with the Canadian Forces would be much easier, because the military gets things done, and we have to have some sort of stronger military link with Veterans Affairs to oversee them.
To get to the question of whether budgets would be more or less after the NVC, it was anticipated that the new Veterans Charter would cost $1 billion over six years, because of a lot of the lump sum payments that would be paid out as well as the initial start-up for some of these programs. They appear to be somewhat within that budget.
Curiously enough, they anticipated for a lot of their programs a certain amount of money, and as we heard, for instance, with financial benefits, only 1% of eligible veterans are accessing them. However, with the disability award they predicted something around a 17% award, which was going to be a lump sum somewhere between $35,000 and $40,000. Ironically, five or six years later, they're right on target.
That raises a very important question that we have to look at. Are the disability awards being managed to keep within budget, or are the disability awards being managed to care for the veterans and meet their needs with a compensation that reflects the degree of disability? I think that question needs to be answered.
In terms of--