Thank you for your support, sir.
From what I've heard from my veterans—I'm calling them “my” veterans just because that's who I talk with a lot—they are not really getting the outfits to listen. I'm talking about VAC and I'm talking about the military.
You've got two different releases. You've got your medical release and you've got your normal release. When the medical release happens, that should be automatically kicked over to VAC. Let VAC start with all the medical requirements, the doctor's notes and stuff like that. When they get out from the regular service....
Now, I know that earlier you had a bunch of outfits that are helping veterans. Thank them very much for me, but the veterans I've talked to were never told about them. When I got out in 2009 medically, I went through all the seminars and everything else. Nobody told me about Helmets to Hardhats. I'm not even sure if they were around back then. There were outfits out there that we didn't hear about. I never heard about any of them when I got out.
Fortunately, again, I was lucky. Well, you can call it lucky or not, but I was a medical release. I had to do all my retraining package myself. I had to contact them and do all the footwork myself. Nobody was there holding my hand. I had to learn it all and do it myself. I lucked out, because I'm like a dog with a bone: I'll go after it and keep at it until I get the answers I want.
Some veterans out there are getting the help they need, but others are just walking out the door. When I hear about them, that's when I call VAC and say, “I have a veteran here who's almost homeless. He needs help.” When they call, they're not getting a lot of what they should be getting. They're not getting the people who will actually help them.