Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Sherbrooke for his question and his comments.
We remind Canadians that the minister has once more accused the opposition of not supporting his measures. Some of them are good, perhaps, but burying so few good measures deep in mammoth bills is not the way to do things.
The minister said that they have spent more money,but if we look at the budget of the Department of Veterans Affairs, we see that it has been reduced by tens of millions of dollars. They tell us that they are pouring in more money, but that is not the case. They are balancing the budget on the backs of our nation's heroes.
We have certainly seen some shortcomings in the bill, as I mentioned. I am not sure that it is going to help a lot of veterans in the medium term.
We are in a climate of budget cuts; thousands of public service jobs are being eliminated. I do not see how this bill is going to help many veterans, at least in the medium term. When we come back in 2015, when we can start hiring again and stop cutting services to Canadians, perhaps this bill will help. Until then, it needs a number of improvements.
We must improve the situation of the veteran whose injury is not immediately attributable to service and who, after going to the VRAB, gets a ruling in his favour two or three years later. This is a shortcoming that certainly needs to be corrected because that veteran will only have one or two years left in which to get a job in the public service. That is one of the things that needs to be improved.