Thank you, Mr. Chair, fellow parliamentarians and all of you here today, ladies and gentlemen.
I am pleased to appear before the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs to present the budgetary estimates for my department, Veterans Affairs Canada, for the last fiscal year and the upcoming one.
But before I get into the numbers, I would first like to thank the members of the committee for their work on Bill C-55. Thanks to your understanding and compassion, we have been able to move quickly towards the passage of this meaningful bill in the House of Commons. I thank you and Canada's veterans thank you.
Allow me to digress for a moment. We wanted to fast-track this bill through the Senate. But it seems that the Liberal senators would not let that happen, I have just learned. I am not sure whether you can intervene to help us at all, but we all know how important it is that we vote on the bill as soon as possible. There is talk of a vote of non-confidence in the government on Friday. At least we will have done everything we could on our end.
Once the bill known as the Enhanced New Veterans Charter Act has received royal assent, it will give our most seriously injured soldiers broader access to better financial support as they transition to civilian life. We can all agree that these changes are a step in the right direction.
As Veterans Ombudsman Guy Parent told the committee on March 1, this bill is a small but important step that should not be delayed to try to improve it at this stage. That work will continue as we go forward.