Mr. Stoffer, the Royal Canadian Legion's view on the moral obligation is that the government has a moral obligation to look after our veterans and their families, right to their last moments.
The government of the day has put them into harm's way, whether it happened 20 years ago or whether it just happened recently with them being in Afghanistan. The government has to understand that you're the one who asked them to sign the dotted line; you're the one who paid to have them trained; you're the one who paid to send them overseas; and you're the one who said, yes, you're going to go and fight for democracy, in Afghanistan, or wherever they had to go. Yes, the government has that moral obligation and they will.
As I stated in my report, there are three acts that state that the government has the moral obligation. When the new Veterans Charter was written, the moral obligation was kept out. That's the only place. No one at the time caught that. That's very unfortunate because it was something that came across that it had to be put into place because we had men and women serving in Afghanistan, we had to make sure that we were prepared back here, and this is how they sold the bill. We had to be prepared back here when our soldiers returned. But we had to be ready in how we're going to look after them, on the short term and also in the long term.
Mr. Stoffer, they've been looking after them in the short term, but they haven't been doing a good job on the long term. The moral obligation has to be there all the way through.