Thank you very much, sir, for being here.
I've heard a lot today about standards, and that's so key to ensuring that what we're giving to our veterans is of high quality. You're dealing with the quality of the service to the veteran, and we want it to be the best it can be. Of course, we want the cost of that service to be the most reasonable it can be based on taxpayers being responsible for the funds we use.
You mentioned that you're working on standards for service dogs, which I think is commendable and very important. I have a daughter who trains dogs. I started looking into what's available in Canada right now as far as the standards for dogs, and it's all over the map, quite honestly. Alberta and B.C. are done through Assistance Dogs International, which is simply obedience training. The standards in Manitoba are through Manitoba Search and Rescue. It's under the department of health. In Nova Scotia, it's under the department of justice. We have to streamline this. We have an opportunity to set something up that would be really good, hopefully the first time around.
When it comes to those standards for our veterans, we are looking for service dogs who are not obedience-trained dogs. They have very specific roles to play. I know that they're coming out soon. I can hardly wait to see what we come up with. Is the focus on making sure, first of all, that they're service dogs? Secondly, I also see that you can be charged $30,000 for a service dog right now, and then there are others who are doing it through a different approach where the dog is free to the veteran.
How in the world do you come up with something, and will it be a standard that's set, or are we at the beginning stages of a voluntary commitment to those standards?