Currently the structure with the case manager model, who is the one-on-one with our most seriously injured.... Unfortunately, as in anywhere, it's a bit of a crapshoot. If you get a good case manager—and God help my family if I lose the one I have because, as I say, I will tell you right now and I've mentioned it before, she has been the best thing that's happened in a long time. But there are others who are not as fortunate and you will hear those horror stories. I don't know how we deal with the human shortcoming that some are better than others. I'm not sure.
But the model has flaws also, because there are customer service agents you deal with on the front lines. Last fall, as the committee may be aware, I did a little bit of a walk, 1,065 kilometres over 50 days. A customer service agent phoned my house in the middle of that walk and found out I wasn't there, and cut off one of my benefits because I was not there. My case manager knew where I was. When I returned and talked to my case manager, it took her about two months to get it sorted out. At that particular point in time my observation to her was, “You knew where I was, but the grass didn't stop growing at my house.” That was an unfortunate circumstance.
Now how that happens, I don't know. My case manager is supposed to be the prima facie, the one—she's God—and somebody else on the other phone just turned stuff off on her. How does that happen? I don't know. That's a problem within Veterans Affairs that needs to be addressed.
The service delivery standard, when it works well, it really works. The problem is that those are exceptions rather than the rule, and that's unfortunate.