I'll follow up on that.
One of the issues we have with homelessness, first of all, is that homeless people, whether they're veterans or not, can be transient in nature. They can be hard to find. They're at one shelter one day, and they're out on the road the next.
That's where the current square peg in a round hole concept is difficult to deal with through VAC. For any benefit I want to access at VAC, first of all I need a âKâ number for the individual. I need a case manager, there will be a form to fill out, and there'll be an adjudicator who has to say yes or no. After days or weeks or sometimes months have gone by, try finding that person.
I have helped homeless vets. We do have a couple out in Surrey from the Afghan conflict, and three I've dealt with myself. It can be very hard to find them.
The other thing is that before they were in Veterans Affairs, they were in a department that made them adept at handling adverse situations. It does make sense that people who can survive in the desert and the Arctic and hostile environments are quite good at finding a way to survive out on the streets. When you look at the Vancouver situation, due to our decent climate out here, often they wind up migrating out here just because of the survivability.
The homeless situation in Vancouver is big in society as a whole, and it's certainly strong in the veterans' community, even though we don't have the mega-bases of Edmonton and Gagetown out here.