Mr. Chairman, first of all, I would applaud the sense of urgency with which the elected government addressed some of the issues. I would certainly express a great deal of gratitude to the Canadians who expressed their outrage at some of the revelations that I had to make in order to get some of the new Veterans Charter issues on the table.
On the $2 billion, from my perspective, sir, once again, if we don't change the culture within the department and the Veterans Review and Appeal Board, I have absolutely no confidence that the money will get to where it's intended to go. I would submit that in my limited understanding of the terms and conditions of the amendments--once again, I say “my limited understanding” because I get my information on this from the media and I don't receive any privileged information internally--I would say that there are too many terms and conditions.
There are too many definitions that leave a huge amount of latitude to the writers of the regulations, policies, and practices to tighten down the screws such that the intended effect or the desired effect of these announcements will never be satisfied, let alone satisfied in time and in being retroactive to those people who have been severely disadvantaged because our government knowingly brought in flawed legislation. I would understand if all of the filters and screens of government had been used with the new Veterans Charter and our parliamentarians could put their hand on their heart and say, “We did our best for our veterans and on a go-forward basis we'll make changes and fix it for the future”.
But we knowingly brought in flawed legislation, and the people who are suffering are the people with missing legs, missing arms, and lives that have been completely disrupted. I'll go back to one of the principles that I feel should be addressed in this: retroactivity should go right back to the introduction of the new Veterans Charter.