As I touched on in my submission, I put forward the supposition that we're always looking for a model. What is the model we should use to compensate our veterans? We had a Pension Act model, which had its strengths and weaknesses; we've had disability insurance, which has its strengths and weaknesses; we looked at workers compensation—I think this committee has looked at it—as another model. I don't know why we don't look at what the courts do.
I appreciate the question, because as I suggested earlier, we have general damages now—under the new Veterans Charter, coincidentally—which are about $50,000 short of what a court might award. We have sort of future care costs, because our health care programs and treatment benefit programs more or less cover the future care costs of our veterans. They could be improved, but this is a component that a court would look at.
And a court would look at future loss of income. That's what we do not have. Under the charter, we have a frozen income. If a young corporal or private is badly injured, he walks out of the service firstly with a 25% reduction of income; he winds up with a fixed income with a small cost of living increase maxed at 2% for the rest of his life until he reaches the age of 65, and then he's cut off.
The courts would not do that. The courts would look at future loss of income and project the career earnings of that young private or corporal and award that as part of the overall assessment of damages.
We looked at this in the new Veterans Charter advisory group, and our proposal was to use that as the model: use the empirical evidence, which could be very easily found, as to where a private or corporal would wind up if he lived through his normal military career. Give him that amount of money and increase his salary as it would have been increased had he stayed in the service, which is where he wanted to be in the first place.
So to answer your question, rather than going on at great length here, yes, I think the court model would be an excellent parallel, which would at least address this idea of future loss of income, which is missing from the charter.