Veterans Affairs Committee on April 8th, 2014

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

There's an idea.

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

Thank you.

As I said, the government and the official opposition are going to lose their last question, but Mr. Hayes has time for one. The last member on each side won't, so you have to be succinct.

[Bryan Hayes, Conservative, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

I will be succinct. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Leonardo, you're the founder and national president of Veterans of Canada. Are you here today as an individual, or are you here representing the group that you are president of? The reason I ask is that one of your recommendations was the elimination of the Veterans Review and Appeal Board. You have 7,400 members, as you pointed out to us. Do they share your concerns? Have you undertaken a methodology to vet what you've brought here by your membership?

[Donald Leonardo]

Thanks, it's a very good question.

Yes, I did. This idea of a new adjudication system was written because of the feedback of our members. A couple of years ago when we had 6,000 members I put this out to them, and I got instant feedback. I can show you the spreadsheet going back to when I did it. It was over two years ago because of the review you had on the Veterans Review and Appeal Board a year and a half ago.

I wrote the plan with Sean's help in changing words around to make sense and then put it back to the members and the members' comments on this system were all positive.

[Bryan Hayes, Conservative, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Thank you.

This will be a short one too.

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

Make it really short.

[Bryan Hayes, Conservative, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

I still have the time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

I'll decide that, but you get one more short one.

[Bryan Hayes, Conservative, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Mr. Thibeau, you had mentioned that you agree with many recommendations, but there are some concerns unique to aboriginals. In your opening statements I'm not sure if you captured all those concerns. If you did I accept that and we will use that. If you did not, if there are other concerns that are unique to aboriginals that we should be considering, I would ask you on behalf of the committee to please put those in writing for us.

[Robert Thibeau]

I will.

What I have given you is what I sent to my membership: the first nations veterans of Canada, the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, and the ITK, and the response I got was that's the start, so we're digging.

[Bryan Hayes, Conservative, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Okay.

[Robert Thibeau]

There may not be that many more, but we have to make sure we try to capture as much as we can.

[Bryan Hayes, Conservative, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, I appreciate it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

You were very cooperative. I'm leaving on a happy note. Remind the members that we're convening at 3:15 on Thursday to do the business before we get into the other. We agreed earlier that we would do it on Thursday.

I want to thank the witnesses not only for excellent presentations, but for putting up with the confusion for a while and getting back. So thank you very much for being here.

The meeting is adjourned.