Veterans Affairs committee  Absolutely.

Veterans Affairs committee  I don't know right off the top of my head. I know just in health care, for example, we spend close to $35 billion. I seem to have in my head $80 billion. I could find that answer and give it back to you, but it's in the tens of billions for sure.

Veterans Affairs committee  That's absolutely a fair comment. We did have that experience with a provincial ministry, and we had to meet the senior echelons of the public service in that ministry in Ontario and advise them of the need to set up their own internal complaints resolution mechanism. We are there as a last resort.

Veterans Affairs committee  I'd have to look back, but what you're saying sounds like the ballpark figure. I stand to be corrected on that.

Veterans Affairs committee  It has evolved over time. I think it's a little larger now. My current budget is set by the Legislative Assembly every year. I have to present a business plan with initiatives, and that's weighed against other budgets, such as the Auditor General's. The Ombudsman of Ontario is one of the officers of Parliament in Ontario.

Veterans Affairs committee  I'm not aware of that. It would certainly be relevant, I would think, but I'm not aware of a precise formula tying it together.

Veterans Affairs committee  Do you mean if you had a general ombudsman, federally?

Veterans Affairs committee  Absolutely. And there is protection against reprisal built into the legislation.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes.

Veterans Affairs committee  No. It's my decision as ombudsman. It's not in statute. It's self-imposed, but we pick really big ones. We just conducted an investigation of property assessment in Ontario. There are 4.4 million properties in Ontario, representing trillions of dollars. Our intervention created a freeze on property assessments in Ontario.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes. I'll give you one example from my former job. We investigated the treatment of--

Veterans Affairs committee  The number of cases--

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes. It's hard to say, because sometimes there have been individual lawsuits that were also dropped. In my former employment as military ombudsman, I was involved in a case in which the Suffield guinea pigs--the ones who were sprayed with mustard gas during World War II--had been fighting the government for 50 years.

Veterans Affairs committee  The Ontario ombudsman's office has been around for 30 years, and it's developed a very sophisticated triage method. As well, you have to remember that in Ontario, because our field of oversight is so broad, people call and complain about a lot of small issues. For the military, usually for someone to come to our old office there had to be something serious, whereas here in Ontario we'll get complaints about someone who had qualified not receiving their driver's licence, and then we oversee the driver's licence.

Veterans Affairs committee  That's correct.