Mr. Chair, I appreciate the admonition to be brief but I really do think it needs to be put on the record that this committee passed more than a year ago a resolution, a motion, that said that members of Parliament in positions that I have, being a representative of a smaller party, under 12, and independent members will be invited, or required depending on how you look at it, to present amendments to this committee 48 hours before they begin clause-by-clause.
In that case I need to put it on the record that I find it egregious that it meant we were not entitled to hear from a single witness in informing the amendments we presented and prepared. Had we been able to listen to witnesses I think it's also unfortunate that none of those witnesses would have represented veterans groups. This is after all the veterans hiring act and I think they had relevant experience this committee should have heard.
That said, I rely for this amendment, which you can see quite simply removes the words that are attributable to service so that the medical reasons for which a discharge occurs is not restrictive. We based this amendment on the blog that was posted by the Veterans Ombudsman, Mr. Guy Parent, who wrote:
I believe that all medically releasing Canadian Armed Forces members should be treated the same way, because there is an inherent service relationship for every Canadian Armed Forces member who is medically released because the individual can no longer serve in uniform.
I will paraphrase quickly with an ellipsis...to all medically releasing members regardless of the reasons for medical release should be able to benefit from this act.
That's the rationale behind my amendment.