Thank you, Chair.
I trust that I won't go into the areas that you're trying to articulate we shouldn't move into. However, my first comment to our witnesses is to say thank you to Mr. and Mrs. Bruyea for being here. We can see that you're a highly decorated veteran, and I want to thank you for your service to this country. I say that with utmost sincerity, because we wouldn't live in the country we have unless we had individuals like you who are prepared to lay their lives on the line for our freedom.
As a new parliamentarian I have not been involved with the past development of the new Veterans Charter, but we have done a lot as a committee to get various opinions. We've been to Charlottetown. We've had a lot of people come here. We've studied the delivery models of other countries and compared what they provide for benefits, etc.
My observation from the start is that everybody looks at issues from their own frame of reference. You're a very strong individual, and very competent and capable as an advocate. I sense that your presentation is highly emotional, and you're also making some very strong allegations and accusations about the way the delivery system works today. As well, you're providing us with recommendations to move forward with a model that is vastly different from what currently exists today.
As I frame and drive to my question here, I have to say that in the visits and discussions with the bureaucrats who run this department now, I don't believe I had any sense of there being anything disingenuous about what they were doing. I didn't sense, as you commented on several times here, hidden agendas, or that they're bureaucrats obsessed with cost-cutting. In fact, I will lead into the first question this way: on doing some analysis--because I treat things from a business point of view and try to remove emotion from it--since the new Veterans Charter came into being, we've increased the funding, and hence the spending, to improve benefits for vets by $1.93 billion. Are you aware of that?