Mr. Speaker, it means a great deal to me to be able to stand in this place today and speak to the issues that are impacting our veterans and, specifically, this one issue.
As the previous speaker mentioned, I had the privilege of being the deputy shadow minister for Veterans Affairs when I first came in as a brand-new member of Parliament, and I was able to travel with my colleague across Canada to ensure that we were really learning and hearing what veterans and what Canadian Armed Forces members had to say. That was in 2015, following 10 years of the previous Conservative government.
I remember being told a great deal about new veterans. They are new veterans, not modern-day veterans, as they hate being called that. The next generation of veterans was very upset with the fact that they came back from Afghanistan to a whole new set of rules around care for them with the new veterans charter, which was created just before the Liberal government fell and was adopted by the entire House without the proper oversight.
Since then, it has been a challenge for veterans to appreciate what the new veterans charter did, and now it has been changed more and more. Conservatives say, if we are going to spend a dollar, we have to take a dollar from somewhere else, but this is just a pile-on of one program after another. It is very confusing for our veterans, and they deserve better than they have.
I can say, as my colleague did, there are things here that need to be put right. I have been on the veterans affairs committee for a decade now. I am into my 10th year. My colleague was absolutely right. We have studied transitioning to death and given recommendations. Witnesses have come and talked about what needs to be done to make this means of taking care of our veterans smooth, transparent and fast, but nothing has changed. If anything, things have gotten more difficult. It shows partially the inability of the National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces to work with Veterans Affairs through a seamless transition.
In the government's response to this very issue, it says that the Government of Canada agrees with most of these recommendations. However, it then goes on to explain that:
The Minister of National Defence, under the CFSA, is responsible for the overall management of the pension plan.... In support of the Minister’s role, the Department of National Defence [and] Canadian Armed Forces...are responsible for the oversight of the pension plan, contribution calculations, financial analysis [and all of that].
Then it says the Minister of Public Safety is responsible for the RCMP part, and here is what it says about the Minister of Veterans Affairs: “The Minister of Veterans Affairs has no authority over any superannuation acts.”
The minister has no authority, even though the government made a big to-do about making this a seamless transition and that the departments were going to work well together. The government made the Minister of Veterans Affairs the Associate Minister of National Defence, yet, somehow still, nothing seems to be able to be done to solve a lot of these issues.
I can appreciate the fact that, as the member from the Bloc said, this reflects something from, my goodness, decades ago, when the average age of a man, in general, was 60. Today, I am way past that age. I can tell colleagues that 68 is the new 50, just saying. The truth of the matter is that we are functioning in an archaic environment and not taking care of our veterans the way we should be. As a matter of fact, there is proof of that in the way that veterans are feeling about how they are being cared for.
I have the supplementary estimates that we discussed and spoke with the minister about just recently. This is really important. The government asked for an additional $942.5 million in the supplementary estimates. That is a lot of money.
The bulk of the requested appropriations, the Liberals said, was for pain and suffering compensation applications. It represents an increase of 51.6% compared to what was in the main estimates, so it is a huge jump in funding for pain and suffering. The explanation was that the additional funding is needed to respond to an increase in the number of benefit applications, which includes the pain and suffering, but also higher than expected numbers of veterans who are opting for a lump sum instead of monthly payments.
Huge numbers of veterans are saying, “I'm leaving. I'm getting my pain and suffering. I want it all and I want it now.” They no longer have confidence because of the way the government has treated our Canadian Armed Forces and treated our veterans over the course of these last nine years.
Since the Liberals came into power, what we are seeing and what I hear quietly said over and over again by our veterans is, “Here we are in another decade of darkness.” That is what they called it the last time the Liberals were in power and decimated the Canadian Armed Forces. There is no way that the government is taking care of our veterans. Right off the bat, the government said the veterans were asking for more than it could give, but there is this slush fund. The Liberals have their friends to take care of.
The confidence of our veterans and our armed forces in the government is pretty well nil. As my colleague asked, do we have work to do when we form government shortly? We absolutely do. Do our veterans know that we have not done everything right in the past? They absolutely do, and we are open about that. At the same time, our veterans are facing the same challenges that every Canadian is.
There are veterans' food banks that cannot keep their shelves full because of the need that is out there. There are more veterans who are homeless now, because they cannot afford rent. They cannot afford a home. There are veterans now who are on the street or couch surfing, because they do not have the ability to take care of themselves or their families. They feel guilty, so they have left their homes and their families.
There is no question that our veterans are not being cared for the way they should be. I have had the privilege of being part of the women veterans study, reflecting on the largest study that has ever been done, actually no study was done until this one was done, on our women serving within the armed forces. It is frightening what they have had to go through.
We have a great deal of work to do to improve life for our armed forces, but I can assure members of two things: We will care for them while they are serving, and we will provide what they need to go to war, something that this government pretends it does not have a role in. We will care for our veterans in ways that meet their needs, and when there is a situation where something cannot be done the way that they would want it to be done, we will have our conversations and we will do our best to come to a consensus. There will be true conversations, rather than organizations of veterans groups set up that the government rarely reaches out to, but claims to have that relationship.
I am so pleased to see that we could have the opportunity very shortly to give credence to what we are saying with what we will do.