Thank you, Mr. Chair.
It's very kind of my colleagues to grant me this right to speak.
I want to speak to you today about a situation that I consider urgent and that I've been grappling with for the past three days. One of our committee's objectives is to work on the services offered to veterans and to improve them, if possible, so as not to leave these members of the military who defended Quebec and Canada on their own.
Last Friday, I was made aware of an extremely serious situation that I can't ignore and that you will probably hear about in the coming days.
We all know that the wait time for services or benefits is not acceptable. Wait times have always been exceeded for decades. This committee has been working on this issue for a very long time, perhaps too long. Here in committee, we have heard about atrocities that have shaken us as human beings. We all have a responsibility as parliamentarians to intervene as best we can.
The Auditor General clearly said last year that the Department of Veterans Affairs was doing very little to remedy the various problems we've seen here in committee, which were identified a very long time ago.
Former deputy minister Paul Tellier very recently said that the public service doesn't work anymore and that the federal government no longer provides the services it is there to provide.
As I speak, a man in Quebec City, veteran and former master corporal Michel Marceau, is on day 6 of a hunger strike to alert us and force us to take action. This man, who served with honour, is now fighting the insane bureaucracy at Veterans Affairs. He's unable to get a family doctor and is constantly fighting for compensation that doesn't come or comes years later. He told me that he was desperate to find psychological support for himself, and particularly for his son. He's caught up in what looks like a remake of the film The Twelve Tasks of Asterix.
You will agree that each day we do nothing, in a way we're betraying those who have given so much for us. Michel Marceau is just one example, but he is pushing the envelope right now by going on a hunger strike that could be harmful to his health and quite simply threaten his life.