Mr. Speaker, my colleague for Cardigan asked the minister a question during question period. The minister answered what my colleague just said: Dial the 1-800 number. That is not adequate. What we are talking about here is the loss of services to veterans.
In today's Charlottetown paper, The Guardian, there is an article about two Veterans Affairs caseworkers handling files from Charlottetown, and they say that they are completely overwhelmed by the workload. They are not working in Charlottetown now.
Ms. Bradley, the employee, outlined how bad she felt, because she could not provide adequate services, since she has 1,100 files. I will quote what she said:
We've already taken on files from the Charlottetown office. The impact that I have seen already is that the wait times are increasing for veterans. They are waiting weeks for phone calls back. We just don't have the time to service them the way the Charlottetown office did.
I ask my colleague what kinds of measures have to be taken to overcome this difficulty the cutbacks by the Minister of Veterans Affairs are causing for the reality veterans calling in for help have to face.