Mr. Speaker, I know that the member for London—Fanshawe knows the file well. The historic Royal Canadian Regiment and its museum are in London, and I hear from my friends that she has a lot of interactions with veterans.
The member is absolutely right. This is about leadership or the absence thereof. The Prime Minister of Canada and his cabinet make choices. It was a choice in the first 100 days of his government to spend billions of dollars on a variety of programs, much of them outside our country. It was his choice to settle with Omar Khadr for $10 billion. It is his choice what goes into the budget and what does not. It was his choice not to keep his promise to veterans.
The question I asked in a funny little debate we had a few weeks ago was whether the Prime Minister knew the cost of a return to the pension. The vast majority of the injured who leave the Canadian Armed Forces have sustained low injuries to their knees and backs. Combat arms NCMs or officers leave injured, beaten up, but not all of them will need transitional help. To return to the pension, with people living to 100, and the $30 billion was for low injuries generally, its lump sum top-up was bad policy, because the Liberals spent over $1 billion for people suffering from hearing loss who might be lawyers on Bay Street. The smarter thing is for the retirement income security benefit to go to the people who need it, the moderate to severely injured.
With respect to the enhancements to the permanent impairment allowance, I wanted to see the family caregiver benefit go to all PIA recipients. Those are the people that Talbot Papineau alluded to. They should not want if their future has been harmed serving our country.