Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I thank all of you for being here today as witnesses.
Where I want to start is, first of all, by acknowledging how many veterans are in the audience today hearing from this committee. I want to recognize them and thank them so much for their service.
Before I get into the service delivery concern I think many of us share, I do want to acknowledge that it's a been a difficult period of time. We've heard stories from multiple veterans, some of them publicly and some of them anonymously, regarding their concerns about being offered access to MAID, which we know legally doesn't really make any sense.
We've heard that there have been letters that have been sent both to you, Minister, and to the Prime Minister. What I heard earlier is that if veterans want to come forward to VAC, there is an openness to that and an encouragement of that, and that if they don't feel safe, they can go to the veterans ombudsman. I understand that and I do hope veterans come forward. This is very serious.
I'm just going to come back to the fact that we still know that there is no recording by Veterans Affairs of conversations that happen. Right now what I understand is that a basic search for those discussions goes through case files.
I'm just wondering if there is any exploration of this and, if veterans want their conversations to be recorded, any consideration of looking at this. It seems to me we're getting into a position where it becomes very much “he said, she said”, and veterans deserve better. They served our country.
I just want to make sure we don't let this fall down. If there is a big concern we need to address, we want to see it done and we want to see it done well. Part of that is having something we can go back to in order to make sure this never happens again.
I'll leave that to you, Minister, to respond to.