I had a meeting with the Minister of Veterans Affairs on February 24 before I flew to Charlottetown for some additional meetings. I raised concerns about the wait times, the backlogs and the case management numbers. Unfortunately, I left there not really feeling positive that he's really going to do stuff. It was disappointing, in my opinion, that one of the comments that was made was that he doesn't really control the department, yet if we look at the mandate letter from Trudeau, we know that he does have a responsibility to oversee. I'm going to continue to push.
I met with previous ministers of Veterans Affairs as well and raised the same concerns. It's not like it hasn't been brought up many times before. Unfortunately, we haven't heard from the department in regard to any changes or options for plans to get rid of the backlog.
We meet with senior management twice a year as our union group. We haven't had any discussions there, although we've raised all of our concerns on the caseloads, the morale and the backlogs. We're still waiting.