Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member outlining all the different VAC offices that are closing and the distances. Those distances will now be travelled by the assisting Veterans Affairs officers. Much of the service is done by phone or over the Internet, but for those who need one-on-one service, we will now be going to them.
More to the point, when the member's party was in power, the Veterans Affairs committee travelled to Base Petawawa. We had a group of people who were transitioning out due to operational stress injuries. I will always remember the last person who spoke. He came back from Afghanistan. All his buddies had been blown up in a transport carrier. He was the only survivor. He begged for a year for a psychiatrist to meet with him. It was not until that day, a year later, that he received his first psychiatric appointment.
If something like that were to happen today, it is either immediate or within two weeks that a person who requests a psychiatrist would get one. We have gone miles ahead of where the old government could not be bothered to tread.