Veterans Affairs committee  Yes.

Veterans Affairs committee  It could be two things. It could look at all the problems that are coming from administration and it could set up in the ombudsman's workhouse a system that would allow him to be able to tell us whether these complaints are justifiable or not. That's the way I would look at it, rather than having another committee.

Veterans Affairs committee  I have to say no. My strong belief on the matter is that the defence ombudsman has a set of rules under which he's operating, and that's it. With regard to keeping the two separate, it takes a long time to become familiar with our pension system. Once somebody is familiar with that, he should not have a foot in another camp.

Veterans Affairs committee  No, not at all. It's a question of keeping everything simple, above board, and non-political, if that's possible. That's not a criticism, of course. I would like to answer the question this way. After two years, Mr. Forbes and I began appearing before the Pension Review Board, not always with success, and we had to ask for interpretation hearings.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, that is correct.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes. The 55 organizations represent approximately 400,000 traditional veterans.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes. In fact, I couldn't have said it better myself.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, you would find parts of them that you would have to put together and make the jigsaw puzzle make some sense, because we looked at various ombudsmen. Basically, if you go to Mr. Garner's report, which I included, you would realize that in there is the situation we were faced with, and we're still faced with--that is, he really can't overstep.

Veterans Affairs committee  Naturally I think the level of comfort is very important. What I'm seeing is that if an ombudsman were to come about, then the two-year period would be very important. Having said that, is the ombudsman out there to make certain that the system is fair? What if you had a situation where the adjudicator had messed things up pretty badly, and the applicant was very unhappy?

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, terribly.

Veterans Affairs committee  Mr. Chairman, may I refer this case to Mr. Forbes, because he's the lawyer?

Veterans Affairs committee  He's the one who is in close contact with the people, and he handles all those naughty cases for us.

Veterans Affairs committee  Absolutely.

Veterans Affairs committee  I think the review would be primarily of the job the ombudsman was doing. If there were flaws in the system he would have to accept responsibility, and there would have to be another study to decide how it would go. The committee was so strong an alternative to the ombudsman because they said that veterans had had enough.