Veterans Affairs committee  I wouldn't be able to offer an answer on that, no.

Veterans Affairs committee  If I might, I would only say that part of the reason the number changed and the commodore referred to a 10-year average is that some people didn't release during COVID. They weren't ready to release. Some of the services that would normally be in place to help them during that release weren't available because of restrictions and other things.

Veterans Affairs committee  I would completely agree. What we want to do is to make sure that the Veterans Affairs organization is in a position of opportunity and strength to help veterans. There have been a number of programs and services added. There's been increased staffing for us to be able to ensure that we can deliver services to veterans in need.

Veterans Affairs committee  I may just start, and then I'll ask my colleagues to chime in as well. First and foremost, we're talking about transition, the actual process of going from the Canadian Armed Forces to perhaps Veterans Affairs, but really, to a post-military life, releasing from the military. While we have a lot of people who release on an annual basis who come directly to Veterans Affairs, because they have identified medical needs or they know the challenges they may face from the interventions we have, we also have a lot of veterans who come to us six months later, 12 months later or 10 years later with issues that weren't identified at the time they released, either because they didn't accept it themselves, they didn't recognize it in themselves or they weren't ready to share those kinds of things.

Veterans Affairs committee  That's a wonderful question. We were just speaking earlier with some of the folks who are here in attendance around some new initiatives that have been set up within the department. We've had an office of women and 2SLGBTQI+ in place for a number of years now, which does direct outreach with those particular communities.

Veterans Affairs committee  Thanks very much. I'd offer a couple of things, since the question spans a couple of issues. First and foremost, I want to be clear that the money is not coming from Veterans Affairs to go to Infrastructure Canada. The money was awarded in the budget to Infrastructure Canada—which is leading on the national housing strategy—for it to use its expertise on homelessness.

Veterans Affairs committee  I'm unfortunately not responsible for that file.

Veterans Affairs committee  Many reports have been written about veteran homelessness. It's always a challenge to come up with specific numbers, and I'm sure we could get better numbers if veterans were identified during the census. It's a hard population to survey and, as one member of the committee just said, there are identification problems.

Veterans Affairs committee  I think there has unfortunately been an increase in homelessness in general, given the shortage of houses and accommodation. It's hard to say with any accuracy, but it's something we see in the population at large.

Veterans Affairs committee  Sure. Thanks very much for the question. I think there are lots of ways that research is happening on veterans. Within Veterans Affairs Canada we have a research division. It does not have extensive amounts of money to be able to go out and conduct large-scale research, so we want to be cautious about that.

Veterans Affairs committee  I'm not sure I'd be able to provide a lot of detail around it.

Veterans Affairs committee  I know that our local area director works very closely with them on all of their initiatives. I'll ask Mark in a second to chime in. He knows a little bit more about it than I do. I would say that's a great example of a community initiative that exists across the country that Veterans Affairs works with quite closely.

Veterans Affairs committee  The 10-second answer would be no. There are lots of good decisions. We've been making a lot more decisions. As part of making more decisions, sometimes there are more appeals that go forward to the Veterans Review and Appeal Board, but we've reduced the backlog, those files beyond 16 weeks, by more than 70%—and that's not by saying “no”.

Veterans Affairs committee  I can definitely provide the committee with the exact details. As for files that are backlogged more than 16 weeks, there are approximately 5,000. That’s a significant reduction from the 23,000 files we had three years ago.

Veterans Affairs committee  They're from the last quarter, which ended in December.