I know Mr. Johnston very well. He's a wonderfully charismatic individual, as I'm sure you will have noted.
I think the earnings loss benefit is a wonderful expression of how the government has provided an extra safety net for those people who are ill and injured due to service and unable to work. Their first safety net is the SISIP long-term disability vocational rehabilitation program that I spoke about, which is government sponsored. All members of the public service and the RCMP and the Canadian Forces have a general Government of Canada insurance disability program in some form; what people in the RCMP and the public service do not have is the second safety net, which is the earnings loss benefit.
If people complete the SISIP long-term disability program and go back to work and subsequently are proven unable to work, that's when they qualify for the earnings loss benefit. That happens as a matter of course every year. I don't have the statistics here about how many people qualify for the earnings loss benefit in that situation, but Veterans Affairs could certainly provide that information to you.
The other way people qualify for the earnings loss benefit occurs when people who voluntarily release are found, subsequent to release, to have a service-related illness or injury that causes them to be unable to work. They would no longer be eligible for the SISIP long-term disability insurance program. They automatically get caught by the Veterans Affairs earnings loss benefit piece, which from a benefits earnings support perspective is an identical parallel with the SISIP long-term disability piece.
I have full confidence that the earnings loss benefit is a useful tool for those people who have problems.