I'm glad you brought up that point because this is an issue of unfairness that exists right now with the new Veterans Charter. In the past under the old pension plan or the pension disability, what used to happen then was that when you applied for benefits, and it took maybe nine weeks to get your benefits in place, any expenses you incurred during that time would be paid. In fact, it would be paid 90 days before your application. For instance, hearing aids or that sort of thing would be paid for even though you only got your decision three months down the road.
Now under the new Veterans Charter the expenses are only reimbursed to the time of decision not to the time of application. Now with the waiting times being 22 weeks instead of 12, people do need the treatment. Certainly what we're seeing now is that people are maybe not getting the treatment they should be getting because they can't afford it and they know they won't be reimbursed. That's a big area of unfairness.
The other thing is the simplified way of reimbursing people. I think that's a way that the department has gone right now. For instance, under VIP, expenses, the cost of house cleaning or groundskeeping are now grants instead of putting in your receipt every time, so that simplifies matters. It's things like that they need to introduce for other expenses associated with medical. There is more and more travelling to get their care because we know a lot of older veterans in cities like Vancouver and Toronto are selling their houses and moving to a rural community. Now they don't have access to immediate care because they have to travel and they have expenses. Therefore, that's why it's encouraging, and we need to encourage Veterans Affairs Canada to make it simple to reimburse people.