Thank you.
You talked about how what we ask Veterans Affairs to adjudicate is “directly linked with what happens during service”. I can't affirm that more. It's so true that everything that a veteran is experiencing after service is related to their service, and we need to know those parameters.
We heard from the AG report that VAC has failed significantly on measuring any outcomes of the programs it has, so it is a big concern to us that VAC can go and change things, but if it can't measure what it has done and whether or not that has made an impact, that presents a serious problem with trying to move forward, even for VAC itself in determining things.
I appreciate what you're all saying with regard to the success of the study being defined by what we and our colleagues decide to do with the evidence being brought by you. As a committee, we have been doing report after report after report with major recommendations to the government, so I would say it has to go further than here. It needs to be determined which of those recommendations, when they do say they're going to implement them, actually get done. That's something I've tried to encourage our committee to look at—responding to what has been asked already to see if things are improving. That is something that your organizations could be doing as well—looking at those recommendations, looking at which ones the government said they would work on, and then doing research to see if those things have been done.
Thank you.