Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, we have a special unit in our office called the special ombudsman response team; we call it the SORT. It's a small administrative unit to conduct field investigations. Mr. Jones, the director of SORT, is here this afternoon.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes.

Veterans Affairs committee  Well, for 2,400 complaints, who is more efficient?

Veterans Affairs committee  The budget was between $5 million and $6 million. I believe it was $5.5 million.

Veterans Affairs committee  I would strongly advise looking at the provincial models. The U.K. model I'm very familiar with because I've had dealings with the U.K. ombudsman and her office. I'm aware of their constitution, and it's an excellent office. I would encourage you to look at that model. There are other international organizations, such as IOI and the USOA, that provide extremely good resources on where to go with the Veterans Affairs ombudsman.

Veterans Affairs committee  My submission here is not to tell you that these people have no value to add to the system. If you want to follow your bank, and your ombudsman helps you, God bless him or her. The problem is that they're not ombudsmen in the classical sense. Some of them are more classical than others, and they're all very useful in our system, but when you're dealing with an issue involving Veterans Affairs and the pension review board, you want somebody who can dig a little deeper than these kinds of ombudsmen.

Veterans Affairs committee  It's 85.

Veterans Affairs committee  It's 55.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes. You know what really consumed a lot of our resources at the military ombudsman's office? It was constantly fighting with the brass because we didn't have the tools to do the job. We'd make a request for documents, put in an ATI. “Well, we don't respond to ATI. I don't know about that; send it to JAG.”

Veterans Affairs committee  There's no doubt that whoever occupies that position adds value to the system. I don't necessarily see that it would affect their jobs, but they're not a classical ombudsman. They call themselves an ombudsman, but to be truly a classical ombudsman, you must report to somewhere that's outside your oversight ability.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes. The United States Ombudsman Association, which is the third organization I mentioned, publishes ombudsman standards. I don't have them with me, but they're available from their website, which is USOA.org. Actually, I do have them here, so I would like to table these with the committee.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, the International Ombudsman Institute, the IOI, states very clearly in its constitution--again, available on the Internet--how to qualify as an ombudsman, and there are different categories of memberships. The IOI carefully reviews ombudsmen's offices around the world to decide which ones qualify as ombudsmen and which ones don't qualify, and which ones have mid-status.

Veterans Affairs committee  No, absolutely. As I mentioned in an earlier response, your best resource, really, is a Canadian one, and every single province in Canada has an excellent model to look at. The USOA publishes standards; the IOI provides accreditation and reviews characteristics for ombudsmen's offices.

Veterans Affairs committee  On the workload, in my former job I believe we were dealing with about 2,500 cases a year. I think that's probably a good indicator of the caseload you would expect at veterans affairs.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes. We're dealing with 24,000.