Thank you, Chair.
I'm glad you pointed out, sir, that the old pension was non-taxable and the new one is taxable.
I'm going to pick up on Mr. Rafferty's point about the closing of the VAC centres. There are going to be 27,688 vets who will be affected by the closing of these centres. We are told that there are all kinds.... I mean, for My VAC—this portfolio, I think, is what you or some people referred to—people can actually go online, use phones, go in person, use mail, and whatever else there is.
With the closing of these centres, how would the older vets, vets who are 80 or 90, be able to get assistance? We get from the department that there are 600 points of reference and that they're going to do this.... You even mentioned that you're going to train personnel in service centres. But there is a feeling out there that you can't trust VAC. That was certainly obvious when it was mentioned to them that 27,388 boxes of medical records were destroyed, and they kept saying, “No, no, nobody was affected.” Then vets were coming up and saying, “We've lost our records.” That was proven.
My question is, how can the department be trusted when time and time again it has shown that their methods and their figures, as well as what they do, are incorrect? I mean, breaching personal files of Dennis Manuge, Harold Leduc...I could go on ad infinitum. How can the department be trusted? I know you might not want to answer this, but you are even reporting to the minister that you, your shop, should be reporting directly to the department.
I'm going to put it out there. I don't think that what you get from the department is something that you can take home and say, “this is it”, you know, it's firm, because time and time again they've been caught not saying the truth. They've been caught misleading and even doing stuff to members of their own board, such that in the private sector they'd be fired. I mean, for breaching somebody's medical records, you would be totally fired. I'm just wondering if you have a comment or any thoughts on that.