Thank you for your question.
The Merlo Davidson settlement was for women of the RCMP who had been victims of or who had experienced sexual misconduct during the course of their service. The settlement had six levels of claim, if you will. We received complaints from RCMP women veterans who were getting part of their disability pensions clawed back based on the settlement monies they had received. We did a review of this matter. We found that, in our estimation, for those who had received a level 1 or a level 2 settlement amount and who had also put in for a disability pension, those two things were not the same.
We all understand that government cannot and must not compensate people for the same thing twice. We understand that, but we found that for level 1 and level 2 it was not the same. They were not being compensated for the same thing if they had put in for a disability pension for, let's say, PTSD. For levels 3 to 6, we saw there may have been some overlap.
The recommendation we made to the minister was that for anyone receiving level 1 or level 2 compensation and also receiving a disability pension, anything that had been clawed back from them should be reimbursed to them fully, and that for levels 3 to 6, the minister should publish exactly how they determined what amount of clawback was being taken from their pensions based on the settlement amount. That is the letter I put in to the minister.