Mr. Chair, I would like to respond, because I think there are some clarifications that are really important here for the benefit of all members.
First of all with regard to the Veterans Review and Appeal Board, they do not hear any appeals for health: issues of health services, treatment, and benefits are not in the purview of the Veterans Review and Appeal Board. I want to very clear: there are levels of appeal, but they are not with the Veterans Review and Appeal Board.
With regard to the issue of adjudication, again I want to point out that 73% of the incoming applications for a disability award or disability payment actually get a yes the first time. There's a team of adjudicators, approximately 60 people, who are extremely well trained, and they are supported by a team of eight medical specialists. The law requires them to give the benefit of the doubt to the veteran; there is no question about that.
In some cases, unfortunately, there is no benefit of the doubt to be given. If the information is missing, or if in fact.... In the system that we have, we are never going to be at 100%, because there will be some claims that won't be valid. That's the reality of a claims system. I think we need to work to make sure that the veterans get every benefit and every service they are entitled to.
With regard to the lawyer, 73% get through, and actually with the help of a lawyer. The fact that the Government of Canada pays for a lawyer to make sure to go that extra mile, to make sure the veteran gets everything they can.... I think we as Canadians should be very proud of the fact that we are going to do that for our veterans.
Just as an indulgence, Chair, if I may, since we talked about.... I thank you very much for your comments about me. I missed the estimates meeting on Tuesday. Unfortunately, I had a medical situation. It was the first time in 14 years that I haven't been here for the estimates.
I may be dating myself.
I would just like to put things in perspective a little bit. My colleague mentioned that he gets a lot of his business from health claims. Last year we processed 13.5 million health claims through the system. As part of that, last year we filled 5,386,000 prescriptions. We processed 174,126 dental claims. I give you these figures to provide a sense of the volume.
The ombudsman fulfils a very important function, because sometimes things go the wrong way, one might say, but I wanted to give you a sense that we're in the business of hundreds of thousands and millions of transactions. I'd like to think that every one is done perfectly, but we don't live in that world, and we have an ombudsman who can come forward and say that somebody didn't get the benefit or service in the manner we might expect.