One of the things I've always noticed is that financial help is a significant portion of mental health. My own cases, for example, have been going on for over four years. If there is some financial help, that helps. If there's some end of the road for vets where they can actually see that their cases are going to get solved, it helps a lot of other issues as well. So that's a helpful thing.
I do like the funeral benefit. Essentially, the way the funeral benefit was structured before, almost nobody could access it. That is a positive change.
The ELB going from 75% up to 90% is something of significance as well. Now, there was certainly discussion before about whether it should be 90% untaxed or 100% taxed, but at the end of the day, anything better than 75% is moving the ball forward. The ball did move forward on that one for sure. I'm certainly happy to see that.
I guess a concern that comes along with seeing things that are positive is that we're looking at other files on the government's table right now and seeing how quickly things can be undone—very quickly, in fact. When I look at the actual implementation bill for the veterans portions of the budget, some of the main portions will be kicking in this October, and some in April of 2017.
At the end of the day, then, we've yet to see them—but from what we have seen, the ball has moved forward, in my opinion.