Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, members of the committee.
Thank you, guests.
Hello from the heart of Reform country in Calgary, Alberta. As a severely injured veteran, I thank you for this opportunity to speak today. I'm sorry that I'm not there in person, but it would seem that there is a culture in today's society, in both government and with large corporations, that personal freedom and privacy of individuals are not important. But I digress.
Before I start, I would like to state that VeteransofCanada.ca fully supports the letter the Minister of Veterans Affairs received, dated February 13, 2012, that the member organizations of the Veterans Affairs Canada stakeholder committee sent to the minister.
I'm disappointed with the minister, with his posturing of late and his threats to disband this committee because of a 10-minute incident of a severely disabled veteran. This is 10 minutes in which the deputy minister and the associate deputy ministers had to see what a veteran goes through for his complete life after service and after being injured.
With that, I will go on to talk about my organization, Veterans of Canada. It's an organization that was founded in 2006, and it is an online social networking community, two weeks away from passing the 6,000-member mark. The community is a place where those who have served can reconnect. It's a place where members can make new friends through a common bond and keep informed. It's a place where members can post pictures to rekindle their old memories with other members. This is all done online, on the Internet. It's a veterans community only.
The world has witnessed rapidly changing ways in which communities of individuals can come together, especially since the introduction of the Internet. Although there will likely be a continued place for formal paid membership-based organizations, the reality is that communities are coming together in a more flexible and cause-oriented social network.
Veterans of Canada has capitalized on this new form of organizing individuals and creating real-time communities, which are just as or even more effective at reflecting the interests of the community as traditional paid membership.
VOC does not charge for memberships and does not impose dress codes or other behavioural restrictions on its community. So VOC is a more truly democratic community model, as everyone can express their own point of view and have it heard.
My job as founder and president is to compile these inputs and pass them on to the Canadian public, the media, Parliament, and the veterans community as a whole.
Mr. Chairman, I thank you today for allowing me this opportunity. I wish I were there in person.
If the committee has any questions for me, I would be glad to answer them for you.