And in the process of responding to this challenge, we embarked on the most extensive consultations ever undertaken by the department.
That's a decade of review and consultation, not a year, and not two years. I'm very passionate about this, because when I read in the paper that people are saying there was very little consultation, if any, I find that hard to understand when I actually take a look at what's on the record, which is what we're going to lay out for you.
During the development of the new Veterans Charter, several rounds of consultation took place with men and women of the VAC-CFAC, as well as representatives, as I've stated, from the six major veterans organizations, including both traditional veterans and peacekeeping groups.
Feedback from the sessions was fed directly to the design team. Then those who were consulted received feedback on how these suggestions and comments were considered and/or factored into the design. This is an important point, because when you hear the presentation, it sounds like it was very linear. It wasn't. Actually, it was a loop-back mechanism, whereby ideas were worked on, developed, and brought back to men and women in uniform and to veterans to say, “Look at this: what do you think about this?”, before we moved ahead to say, “Here's where we landed.”