Madam Speaker, the thing is that there is a high demand for this as well and I find that it is almost like we get into a culture where a lot of it is falling through the cracks and a lot of people who are on the edge of eligibility, if I could use that term, get cut off. It is almost like the system that was intentioned to be so spirited and generous we tend to get binary code in thinking. What does that mean? It means that it is either black or white, either one qualifies or one does not. Unfortunately, the flexibility within that does not exist, so a lot of people fall through the cracks.
I agree with the member about what has happened. A good example is agent orange, where funding was provided, but so many people were left outside of that particular package of funding that it got a bad name. A lot of people think the government did not do anything about it. It did something, but, unfortunately, what was encompassed within the promise was not kept. It was always the way it comes back to them.
In order to fix this, despite the fact that it is a well-intentioned program but only few get to qualify, we should really consider providing flexibilities in the system to allow it to be nimble enough to allow some people who are just on the margins and unfairly ostracized by a program that was never meant to cut people off. It ends up gaining a reputation of being cruel in nature, which is unfortunate.
For instance, in my home riding there is the Forestry Corps that was basically involved in Scotland. It was a group of foresters who helped feed the war machine by cutting down trees in Scotland. It got a lot of recognition but there was no funding available to help bring the foresters through the later years. A lot of them are still asking for some kind of recognition financially.
It was only recently, meaning within the last 10 or 15 years, when the merchant navy had problems as well.