Evidence of meeting #10 for Veterans Affairs in the 41st Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was pension.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Ted Opitz Conservative Etobicoke Centre, ON
That's part of the reason and the things this committee will come out with, the various courses of action that may be available to us. There are enough veterans on this that we kind of understand the process.
Sir, the new Veterans Charter was designed to support wellness, and it was designed to encourage independence over dependence. Would you agree with those principles overall?
President, Equitas Society
Reintegration of our members back into civilian life is very important. It is top priority. We support that.
Conservative
Ted Opitz Conservative Etobicoke Centre, ON
Okay, on the disability award, can you expand on what your thoughts are, and do you think it should be indexed?
President, Equitas Society
Oh, the issue with the lump sums is that you have a series of lump sum programs.
For the partially disabled, like my son, it's just a lump sum; that's it. Then you have lump sums in the cases of people who are discharged from the military and they get some earning loss and some training. Then you have the severely disabled, as we were talking about, who have ongoing benefits. In each of those categories the lump sum is a different payment, so what we're doing here is calling lump sums one term when in fact it has three different meanings. The lump sum for my son is the only payment he gets. A lump sum for a moderately disabled person, say 40%, is part of a program of reintegration into society. A lump sum for a severely disabled person is just part of an expanded benefit program.
When you say “indexed”, I'm not 100% sure what you mean. Is it to increase the lump sum as it goes up? The issue is whether you want to have a lump sum, for instance in the case of my son, that is equal to what the court system would give out for a liquidation and liability and then apply that to a severely disabled soldier and then add on your other streams of income on that too.
You're going to run into problems here, because you're going to have double the compensation. That's the problem with the lump sum payment. It doesn't work in some cases, and if you make it too big, it's going to be too much in other cases.
Conservative
Ted Opitz Conservative Etobicoke Centre, ON
Just based on your answers, in some areas nomenclature—that is, what we call some of these programs—might be an issue and lead to some misunderstandings.
President, Equitas Society
You have basically three streams and you're trying to say it with one term: “We make lump sum payments”. That's the biggest criticism of the new Veterans Charter. Lump sums are sometimes the only form of payment, and sometimes they're part of an extensive benefit package.
NDP
NDP
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you all for being here, and thank you for your service in so many ways.
We've talked a lot about Robert Borden's promise, and we've acknowledged it's not covered in the Constitution or the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It's a promise from the heart. It's promised with the honour of the crown, so to speak.
Mr. Sorochan, we all accept there's a social responsibility. I don't think that's in question, but on the technically legal side, do you think the government should be elected to bring in new programs, to change programs as it sees fit and as the electorate elects it to do?
As an Individual
You've opened the door on that one. I believe we're in a constitutional monarchy and the Constitution is, in some respects, unwritten. I believe that the government can act within the constraints of the Constitution. I believe that the social covenant is a constitutional document.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
I'm not getting into the honour of the crown in this case or the obligation—
As an Individual
Yes, you are, because you asked what Parliament could do. Parliament can act according to the law and the Constitution.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
Do you think that this government should be bound by the promises that Paul Martin made?
As an Individual
You're bringing in the typical slippery slope argument thing. I'm arguing that there is a fundamental constitutional issue created by the social covenant. I'm not arguing that a tax break is constitutionally protected or that all sorts of other things have that same protection.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
That's your argument and I appreciate that argument and I don't disagree with it. There are some fundamentals of democracy that say a government has the authority granted to it by an election to bring in legislation, to change legislation if they see fit. I'm not talking about a moral obligation here.
As an Individual
No, I'm not talking about moral obligation either. We haven't even gotten into the bureaucracy of this because a lot of the problems here are created by a mindless bureaucracy just saying that things anybody else would deem to be a disability aren't a disability. What we have is a law that says this is the end result. In a way it wasn't passed by Parliament. The framework is passed by Parliament and then the details of how it is put into effect are created by orders in council by various bureaucrats.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
So there are fundamental issues here of constitution and legality.
