Essentially, under these legislative amendment proposals, one will simply say that under the War Veterans Allowance Act there will no longer be a deduction made for disability pension benefits. In other words, the references to the Pension Act will be essentially removed. So it will not be taken into account when the department calculates what is allowable income for the purpose of the WVA.
On the Pension Act side, there would be sort of a similar type of adjustment to the act to make it clear that benefits paid under that program, because they're not going to be offset any longer, have to be managed in a slightly different way than they have in the past, particularly as it relates to withholding disability pension benefits when they are awarded back in time.
Under the Pension Act as it's currently constructed, you could make application today for a disability pension. If you were a traditional war veteran, as an example, you could actually be paid back in time up to three years to the date of application. Under the act currently, there is a withholding provision to avoid overpayments of the war veterans allowance. Those will now be removed because there will be no need to do that. So these are simply adjustments to the legislation, all focused at removing any reference to withholding of disability pension payments and calculating it for purposes of WVA benefits.