If you go to the public accounts, you'll see clearly the amount of money spent by the department on all of its programming. I think you'll find that about 93% of of our annual expenditure is directed to programs in support of veterans. In other words, it's flow-through money to veterans.
At the end of the day, it is a sizable investment that the Government of Canada makes to veterans and to supporting all of these programs. I don't have a figure in front of me for the program expenditures on disability benefits, which I think is the one you're alluding to.
It's interesting that if you look at our legislation, you see we're dealing with the Pension Act, legacy legislation that dates to 1919. That essentially set the framework, the same framework that guides most other countries, although we see a little movement away from it. The basic framework is service attribution. In other words, the philosophy and underpinning of this is that benefits paid to veterans are based largely on the premise that if you have a service-related disease or disability, then you should receive support for it.
In the new Veterans Charter, the disability award benefit is similar, in that you need to show a service connection to receive it. As soon as you impose that standard, that eligibility criterion, on a benefit process, you automatically require a fair amount of administration to make that determination. It's a very complex piece that all of our allies experience too.
It's interesting in that the public tends to focus on disability benefits. In the current programming, the new Veterans Charter, it's the disability award. That's what people focus on when they consider the administrative burden: timeliness of processing, accessing service records, and so on. All of this is essential to satisfying eligibility criteria. I would ask the committee to bear in mind that the disability award program is only one element of the vast array of programming that the Government of Canada provides through the Department of Veterans Affairs. There are multiple programs that nobody ever focuses on but that are very important in supporting wellness and the re-establishment of veterans. The basis of the new Veterans Charter is our rehabilitation program, which focuses on wellness, re-establishment, and reintegration. Applications for access to our rehabilitation programming and our income support programs take a few weeks to process, because the eligibility criteria are somewhat different. The thrust of that is to get members and their families supported so that they can be rehabilitated, get employment, find a sense of purpose, and move into civilian life.
I think it needs to be positioned in that context before we can understand and appreciate it.