Mr. Speaker, today the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled that the government had a legal obligation to invest or pay interest on the money it managed on behalf of severely disabled veterans. What the government actually did was take money from disabled veterans and use it for its own purposes.
Since the 1970s the minister's own staff, the auditor general, an Ontario superior court and today the Ontario Court of Appeal have all said that the government was wrong to do this.
In the past 30 years the government turned its own mistake costing millions of dollars into a debt today of $1.5 billion. The Minister of Veterans Affairs has a moral and legal responsibility to settle this issue as quickly as possible out of court.
The government pays interest on money it manages in trust for prisoners, but will not pay back the money it owes to our disabled veterans. That is not only shameful, it is despicable as well.