Veterans Affairs committee  I may be wrong, but I don't think that VRAB is obligated to follow those Federal Court decisions. I think they can take them or leave them. I might be way out to lunch, but that's my understanding.

Veterans Affairs committee  I don't know.

Veterans Affairs committee  Well, I took the question slightly differently. To challenge the Veterans Review and Appeal Board is really the main avenue. I suppose court action of some sort could be taken at the federal level after the VRAB approach was exhausted.

Veterans Affairs committee  There is a review in process. One of the things that the Veterans Review and Appeal Board has just very recently done is that they've asked for the vision and mission value statements to be vetted by the veterans organizations and for them to give feedback, so there is activity going on in the VRAB to try to improve.

Veterans Affairs committee  I completely support what Andrea has said. We definitely need the military experience. Andrea, I don't know if you mentioned the medical aspect. One of our issues was that there's a marked lack of medical expertise on the board, and in some cases the board is second-guessing professional medical opinion.

Veterans Affairs committee  You're speaking of the original departmental decisions being sent for review.

Veterans Affairs committee  That is our understanding. We also had a tour of VRAB, and those were the numbers we were given.

Veterans Affairs committee  I think I should start out by saying that there seems to have been a growth of complaints more recently. Although these matters have been mentioned at various meetings—the stakeholders meeting, for instance—it never became a major issue at that time. There really has not been much of an opportunity to respond to anything, in my experience, but this thing has really taken on a life of its own recently.

Veterans Affairs committee  Mine would be to change the required aspects of VRAB and deal with those. We've listed the major complaints.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, in fact each veterans organization has a member on the stakeholders committee, which is, at the moment anyway, chaired by the deputy minister. Of course those other committees, now past, have had members from most of the organizations.

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you. Although we will not make any technical recommendations about procedures and organizational change or anything like that, our vice-president of research has some ideas we'd like to pass on.

Veterans Affairs committee  In my opening remarks I think I forgot to mention that John has a Ph.D. in personnel applied research. I'm now going to switch to reading directly from the last page. Conclusions: When the foregoing perceptions held by veterans are compared with the Veterans Bill of Rights, it is clear that the first article, the foundation statement, is not being respected or practised by the VRAB.

Veterans Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, committee members, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Ray Kokkonen. I'm the national president of the Canadian Peacekeeping Veterans Association. With me are two gentlemen: the patron of the Canadian Peacekeeping Veterans Association, retired Brigadier General Larry Gollner and retired Colonel John Eggenberger, vice-president of research for our organization.

Veterans Affairs committee  This is rather an awkward question for me. I am not a client of VAC.

Veterans Affairs committee  Would you state that question again?