The idea of having the soldier transition once he's transferred out of service and automatically having a VAC case file opened doesn't mean he's accessing services. But it could be as simple as sending them a questionnaire every six months or once a year. I'm going to give my supervisor at work credit. He's calls it “the steady drip”. If they need the services, it's better to have...prompt and proactively before it becomes a crisis. So, I think that idea is an excellent suggestion. Right off the bat, they have a caseworker. It doesn't mean they're costing lots of money.
There's a second thing I want to point out, because I haven't heard it in the discussion we had today. In Great Britain, they actually look at some of the issues with their reservists versus their regular force members. They actually peg it at 1.5 times more than the regular force. The reason for it is that on the regular force bases, they do have those big support centres there. But when you think of the soldiers who served in Afghanistan, one-fifth of all the combat personnel—and most of these people were the ones outside the wire—were actually reservists. But when they come back, only two or three of them in that unit go back to their hometowns, and they don't have those multi-million dollar services like they have in Petawawa, Valcartier, and Edmonton.
So there is a disconnect between the reservists, who took the same risks as the regular force personnel, versus the regular force personnel, and they are still back with most of their comrades who served, at least for a time before that transition happens.
When you think of the veterans who are the reservists, please don't overlook them in that new Veterans Charter. I honestly think they're some of the most at risk. I talk about the disconnect. They go back to these home communities and people don't necessarily recognize them. It's not like one VP just came back to Edmonton, or one RCR just came back to Petawawa, and the whole city knows or the whole town knows. But for Corporal Smith or Master Corporal Jones who just went back to Guelph, not everyone knows that. They can get lost in the system very easily.
So, somehow in the new Veterans Charter, please do not allow a discrepancy between the regular force members and the reserve force members, because they took the same risks.