I would look at improving the holistic outcomes in terms of rehabilitation. I would suggest you consider, at the very least on a pilot basis, entering into a relationship with one of the workers' compensation boards. The level of service, the caseload that individual case managers in the current system have, is absolutely unsustainable, and in my view having caseloads in the hundreds, if not higher, does very little for the individual. So I would look at that as one strategy.
The other thing is that I would absolutely revisit the whole question of being able to accommodate disabled veterans within the federal government, within some of those departments of the federal government.
The other challenge you have as well--and this is a third opportunity--involves those individuals who have been out of the workforce for a long period of time and have in fact moved to the margins of society. You have to look at what type of rehabilitation strategy you might be able to apply. One of the challenges you have is that the longer you are out of the workforce, the less likely it is you will ever get back into the workforce. The evidence is overwhelming.
We also know that if somebody's been out of the workforce for two years, there is a 10% or less chance that he'll ever go back to work. There is some significant global evidence and some individual case studies that unfortunately support that. Nevertheless, that does not apply universally.
We have been able to get individuals back to work when they have been off work for 10 or 12 years or longer, because their circumstances have changed and the opportunities that exist have changed. The trouble we have is that when you have somebody who goes off on long-term disability, they're out of sight and out of mind. They're forgotten. You're out there, somewhere in the system, and it's really the individual and the individual's family who have to deal with that.
If I may make one further suggestion, I would seriously look at something like the Canadian Council of Chief Executives as a way...because they represent, by and large, large organizations that have the capacity to hire individuals with disabilities, as a way to promote these individuals as a whole new pool that might go there.