Madam Chair, I thank the member for his speech.
I want to remind him that on the question of a criticism published in the media in the last few hours, stating that there was a report saying we were trying to save money at the expense of our veterans by adopting the new charter, that all happened in 2005, before our government took office. That was under the previous government.
That being said, what is important is to look for any flaws and take action to fix them.
What are we doing at this time? First, we are in fact going to make improvements to the New Veterans Charter. We are going to incorporate an entire new chapter of improvements. Among them, and I would like to remind the member of this, the earnings loss benefits will be improved. The minimum income that a veteran will have, if they are in a rehabilitation program, is $40,000 per year. The second improvement is the permanent monthly allowance. There will be an additional $1,000. That will mean, in a way, that with these two measures the minimum veterans will receive if they come back from Afghanistan severely injured and are not able to go back to work, or are in a rehabilitation program, is $58,000 a year. As well, we are preparing to make improvements, sir, to offer options regarding the lump sum payment. The other thing is that we are fixing a problem that arose when the new charter was implemented under your government. There were only 16 people who were able to access the permanent monthly allowance. We are going to fix that. Now, 3,500…