Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The length of our title can be considerably reduced. We just call it CAVUNP.
CAVUNP certainly appreciates the opportunity to address this committee, because we believe this committee can be very influential in how Canada treats her veterans.
Our association was formed a little over 20 years ago, when we felt that there were some needs in existence that were not being met by the organizations of the day. Most of our membership, which is spread through 22 chapters across the country, spent their military service involved in the Cold War, in peacekeeping, or in both. The Cold War did not produce a lot of casualties. Peacekeeping did produce some casualties. Thankfully they were small in number.
But today's efforts are concentrated on considering one veteran: if a person served, they're a veteran. As such, they are part of the social contract that exists between the people of this country and the people who we sent to suffer and serve on behalf of us all.
Regardless of the type of service you're talking about, the military is a very structured, very institutionalized, way of life. It is a way of life where the rights of the individual place second to the rights of the organization.
The adrenalin produced by war serves but to reinforce the tremendous differences that exist between civilian and military ways of life. That understanding—the understanding of what is required of those who serve—must be in place if the needs of transition to civilian life are ever to be met. The transition that is required is made more difficult by what has been experienced. Those differences also tend to indicate the amount of understanding that has to exist on the part of the front-line people.
I notice that your definition here of front-line work says that it's work carried out by individuals who are in daily contact with veterans. That is extremely important to all of us. If those people are not there, then the service to veterans is either denied or delayed.
It's for that reason that last October, veterans organizations approached the Government of Canada and asked the government to follow the lead of our British and American counterparts in declaring that government spending, being faced by all countries, would not affect veterans.
The minister has assured us that the money legislated is there and will not disappear. But we are concerned, desperately concerned, about the front-line staff. If those front-line staff are not there, then veterans will be very poorly served.
We ask of you, members of this committee—a committee that can be of tremendous value to veterans, a committee that has the power, should it choose to use it—to ensure that harm does not come to veterans from partisan political approaches. We ask you to be united in standing and doing the right thing by those who have done so much for us when their country called and they answered.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.