Madam Chair, the hon. parliamentary secretary from the great province of Nova Scotia is absolutely right. The Conservatives did deal with agent orange, but they said, in opposition, that over 300,000 would be covered, and just over 3,000 got the coverage.
The hon. parliamentary secretary for Veterans Affairs does a good job on the veterans affairs committee representing Conservative interests, and I agree that he and I work quite well together on these issues. We try to reach agreement where we can and disagree when we cannot, but he knows as well as I do that one of the biggest problems facing veterans when they go to the appeal board, or when they face the government, is the benefit-of-the-doubt clause.
He just said that many files were no longer there, thus the government could only do what it could do when it came to agent orange. But we ought to do more to apply the benefit-of-the-doubt clause, which more or less means that the tie goes to the runner. It has often happened that a veteran, RCMP member, or a military family member calls the 1-866 number looking for help and submits medical information from his or her doctor that says there may be evidence that the injury or the illness in question is related to his or her service. It is that word “may” on which many appeals have been denied.
He knows that this is a problem and in my more than 13 years of working on behalf of veterans, RCMP members, and their families, I have yet to see the benefit-of-the-doubt clause applied, though it is enshrined in legislation.
With great respect to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Veterans Affairs, who I believe does a very good job, when will this benefit-of-the-doubt clause be revamped so that when members of the veterans community, including RCMP members, call in, they will actually be believed by the Veterans Review and Appeal Board and have their cases adjudicated in a speedy and timely manner?