Thank you.
Welcome, Mr. Blackburn. I'm glad that we finally have you here before the committee. You've been the minister for quite a while and, for a variety of reasons, this is your first chance to come before us, so I'm glad that you're here. Thank you for coming and attempting to address us and for hearing some of the issues that we hear on a day-to-day basis from veterans and their families when they come before us.
We certainly hear from our departmental officials, with their desire to make a difference, but we also hear from many about the inadequacies and the large percentage of our veterans who are not getting their needs met. Given the fact that we have a lot of men and women coming home from Afghanistan in the next short while, I would expect an increase in the budget. I know you also referred to the fact that there would be a decrease in other areas.
How are you planning to ensure that your department will be sensitive to the many needs of the men and women who are coming home? How are you going to monitor the refusal rate of so many veterans, who come to us here and express their frustration with the department because of not being able to get satisfactory services, experiencing far too much red tape, and so on?
Regulation change could have been done instead of Bill C-55 on some of these issues. Why did you not choose to go that route, and why did you instead introduce a bill that will require a lengthy time to make these changes?