Mr. Chairman, it is most unfortunate to see that coming from a party that purports to want to do things a little differently. Now she leaves after not giving consent. She might want to stay because I might want to ask a few more times.
I appreciate the opportunity to participate in the reviewing of the estimates of the Department of National Defence.
Back in the latter part of 1997 the minister asked SCONDVA to travel across the country and visit various bases around the world where we had CF members to review quality of life. Throughout our review we talked to literally hundreds and hundreds of people. We talked to members of the armed forces in Esquimalt, Cold Lake, wherever there was a base.
When we first started out a number of the CF members, quite frankly, were a little apprehensive and a little skeptical that another committee was going to study their quality of life. However as we began to proceed I think they realized that we had a genuine interest in working with them to resolve some of the quality of life issues.
The minister will know that as a result of our very indepth review of quality of life SCONDVA made 89 recommendations on quality of life.
For members of the House who perhaps were not here at the time that we were doing that, I would point out that we divided it into five general areas. We called them the five pillars of support for quality of life. One was pay and allowances, which was compensation for work. We looked at the housing accommodations. We looked at concerns with respect to injured or retired veterans, the care of air injured personnel, the military family and then we looked at the recognition work, expectations and conditions of service.
As I said, we talked to not only members of national defence at headquarters but we talked to the enlisted men and women. We talked to their spouses, we visited their homes and we talked to their children. We spent hours and hours making certain that we met everyone and that we gave everyone an opportunity to be heard.
Throughout our study of this the minister and all the commanders made certain that each member of the armed forces knew that they could say anything they wished and that they could put any concern before us. Some were still reluctant so,as individual members, we would visit afterward to talk. We had some very frank discussion.
As I said, as a result of those discussion we made 89 recommendations. Throughout our recommendations we added an additional proviso that said that there should be an annual report.
The minister has made several annual reports as a result of our quality of life report. I wonder if he perhaps could tell us where we are with the 89 recommendations, how many recommendations we have fulfilled and how many are still sort of a work in progress.