Veterans Affairs committee  I know what I read in the transcripts here, and if he has not completed his report, then I take it he hasn't completed his report.

Veterans Affairs committee  The relationship between the ombudsman and the minister is very clear. He gives a report to the minister. I or other officials do not see it. It goes to the minister. Then it will be published. The officials of the department are not involved with vetting, nor are we involved with saying “that shouldn't be in the report” or those sorts of things.

Veterans Affairs committee  I would agree.

Veterans Affairs committee  There are a couple of things. First of all, I don't know the exact levels, but I can tell you that there is a difference in the classification levels between the DND ombudsman and the Veterans Affairs ombudsman. As to whether one is classified at level 2 or level 6, I couldn't give you that fine a sense.

Veterans Affairs committee  No, it's not a decision of the minister; it's a government-wide decision. The minister doesn't get involved in the classification. That's the administration of government, and the minister is not involved with setting the levels of compensation.

Veterans Affairs committee  Not necessarily; the access the ombudsman or any GIC—or anybody in the department, for that matter—has is determined by a memorandum of understanding or by what their contract is. In the case of the veterans ombudsman, there is an order in council that very specifically gives him certain authorities, and it very specifically outlines things for which he does not have authority.

Veterans Affairs committee  I can't speak for the ombudsman. All I can tell you is that I'm not aware of any information that he or his staff has ever been refused, with the exception of items that are cabinet confidences or matters of solicitor-client privilege. From my standpoint, if he is being refused information or access, it would be news to me.

Veterans Affairs committee  The general direction is to make contact with the shelters and/or the individuals who are responsible for the shelters. The issue of homelessness is not an easy issue, and the way of dealing with it may not be the same in every particular city or every particular province. If you look at things such as shelters, soup kitchens, etc., many of them are organized differently.

Veterans Affairs committee  The two initiatives were developed somewhat in parallel, as you will recall from my previous testimony before this committee. One of the roles of the ombudsman is to ensure that the department is upholding the Veterans Bill of Rights. That's really to make sure veterans are treated in a fair and equitable manner, they get the services they need on a timely basis, and the department is providing them with benefits and services in accordance with the law and its various provisions around access to information, and so on.

Veterans Affairs committee  I hope so, particularly since I'm the assistant deputy minister responsible for service to veterans. In a perfect world we may not need an ombudsman for individual complaints at some time, but at the end of the day we probably will. If you look at the Australian experience--and they have had an ombudsman for quite some time--they saw an initial surge.

Veterans Affairs committee  I'll respond in two ways. First of all, you have to bear in mind that we do about 56,000 transactions a day. If the ombudsman has gotten 5,000 complaints--actually one complaint is too many, and we would like to be perfect--the reality is that when you're doing 56,000 transactions a day, there are going to be some cases where the people may disagree with the position we've taken, because unfortunately sometimes we can't give a veteran everything they may feel they should have.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes. We provide the advice, we provide the technical, and we provide the infrastructure. If I could, I'd just like to explain the reason for that. If you look at various ombudsmen's offices, wherever they may be, they generally tend to be a small number of people. They're not huge organizations.

Veterans Affairs committee  From my standpoint, when the government was elected and Mr. Thompson became the minister, I was asked to be the executive responsible for actually putting this forward. There have been people in the past who have said in the media that I was not in support of an ombudsman and VAC had put an executive in charge to find a way not to do this.

Veterans Affairs committee  From what I have seen in the testimony, he does have a lot of cases. I don't know the complexity of the cases. Not all cases are equal. Some cases can be resolved in 30 seconds with a phone call. Others may take longer. But he does have a significant number of cases. I believe that when he was here last week, he testified to having cases in the thousands.

Veterans Affairs committee  First of all, the ombudsman does report directly to the minister. That is quite clear in the order in council. Issues related to human resources and executives are actually the responsibility of the deputy minister. So it's clear that the ombudsman can make any recommendations he wishes.