Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you for your invitation to come before the committee.
I would also like to welcome the new members of the committee. I look forward to the work that you will do on behalf of Canada's veterans and their families over the coming weeks.
I hope to be able to address the members' concern about an unfortunate situation that came up over the summer, when a Veterans Affairs employee brought up medical assistance in dying with a veteran.
The first thing that needs to be said, Mr. Chair, is that this was completely unacceptable. Our government places the highest priority on ensuring that veterans and their families have the support and services they need when and where they need them. This includes ensuring that encounters with Veterans Affairs Canada are conducted in a respectful and compassionate way.
Once I learned of the incident, Mr. Chair, I immediately ordered a thorough internal investigation into the matter and asked my department to ensure that something like this would not happen again. Thankfully, to our knowledge, we found that this issue is isolated to one employee and is not indicative of a pattern of behaviour or a systemic issue.
It is absolutely not our department's place to provide advice about medical assistance in dying, and it never has been. Our frontline staff have no mandate or role to recommend medical assistance in dying to our veteran clients. We have made that clear to all frontline staff, as well as that any conversations on the matter are for the patient to have with their primary health care professional.
Since the incident, our employees have received updated guidance about how to handle situations when a client brings this up in conversation. We have communicated specifically about medical assistance in dying with all of our frontline managers and employees to ensure that something like this does not happen again.
Again, Mr. Chair, this is a very regrettable incident and it was completely unacceptable, but the issue was isolated to one person.
On the whole, Veterans Affairs employees always strive to provide the best compassionate service to Canada's veterans.
I thank you, Mr. Chair.