Mr. Chair, I'll take the second question first. With regards to long-term care funding, like all funding, any lapse in departmental budgets is returned to the Consolidated Revenue Fund. So it doesn't stay with us—and that would be equally applicable in relation to the beds.
With regards to homelessness, that's a challenging file. I think it's safe to say that if there's one homeless veteran, it's one too many. But I think you have to put it in perspective, and I just want to talk about some of the issues with homeless veterans. Sadly, there are some veterans who are homeless who want to be homeless. There are people who are in fact receiving services and benefits from the department and are choosing a certain lifestyle.
To connect with these individuals, we're working through various social agencies. About 190 agencies have been contacted. We're actually working in Vancouver on the lower east side and doing a project with the Wounded Warriors Society of Canada and Veterans Affairs. We have a somewhat different project with the Wounded Warriors Society in Montreal. We're working with the Royal Canadian Legion in Toronto in a partnership with the Shepherds of Good Hope. In fact, one of our case managers actually goes to work every day at the Shepherds of Good Hope because you're quite right: we have to be able to reach out to these folks. These folks are probably not going to show up at our office and ask for help; a system of trust has to be created.
I can tell you that just last week I was in Halifax and I met with the executive director of Shelter Nova Scotia and I actually met with some veterans from an organization called Veterans Emergency Transition Services. I had a chance to meet with them and look at the types of things they're doing to help get veterans off the street.
Probably the key to this is getting to the veterans before they actually spiral to that, whether you call them couch surfers or others who are going through difficulties in their personal or professional lives, by working with the programs of the new Veterans Charter to get them into rehabilitative services. We can try to prevent the spiralling down to the point where a veteran ends up on the street, but sadly, some will be there. We're doing a lot of work to try to connect with these people through the various social agencies and veterans' organizations. When they make us aware of a veteran we immediately assign a case worker to try to work with that veteran.