Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for his question. He is quite right. If we want to talk about partisanship, I do not know the people who served in those positions, so I am not in a position to comment on their partisanship or otherwise on the floor of the House. However, I can tell the hon. member that it is the policy of the government to appoint well-qualified people to any boards or commissions that require appointments in the country, and the level of appointments to the various veterans boards will indeed be of good quality people.
The other thing that has to be considered is not just their qualities academically, but they also have to have humanitarian qualities. They must have an understanding and a feeling for what they are doing. If you do not have a feeling for what you are doing when you deal with people's problems, that is when you run into difficulty.
The hon. member probably hit it on the head when he mentioned partisanship. Anybody can talk about partisanship when they are in opposition. We used to do it ourselves. We are hearing the same thing today. However, I do not want to get into that, because it is a non-winner for everybody. The only thing that is a winner for the veterans of this country is that they get speedier service and that the people who are making those decisions are indeed qualified to make them, both from the understanding of the case before them and their feeling for the subject with which they are dealing.
Sometimes cases are held up because all of the information is not there. I have dealt with cases myself where if I had had the information that was given to me several days or months
afterwards I could have had the case pushed forward much more quickly for the veteran. Everyone along the line must have a real feeling for veterans issues. The appropriate information must be in the hands of the decision makers.
I could not agree more with the hon. member that the quality of people making the decision is extremely important. That is why any appointees in that area of decision making or any other area of decision making in government, in the public service, on boards or commissions, must be of the highest calibre of both personal and academic qualities.