Veterans Affairs committee  I would like to make a plea to the committee, in any way that you're able to do it, to free up some of the bureaucrats, particularly at the front line. I realize that crossing political-public service lines is difficult, but I would urge you to free up the people from the front lines who know what should be happening to enable them to make those kinds of decisions, and move forward.

Veterans Affairs committee  The good news and the bad news is, not many of our current caseload of veterans, but that's what will quadruple that number. Type 2 diabetes is hitting people in their fifties now, and a quarter of those people have some type of retinopathy already. Of that group, a quarter will develop vision loss as a result of diabetes.

Veterans Affairs committee  No, the leading cause is age-related macular degeneration. The macula is the centre of the eye, a very rich area in terms of blood vessels and oxygen flow. That's the area of your eye that allows you to do fine work: read, sew, write, that sort of thing. Your risk for AMD, as we call it for short, age-related macular degeneration, can be reduced by following the same health regime we advise people to follow to reduce the risk of diabetes, etc., because it is another vascular illness, essentially.

Veterans Affairs committee  No, I'm not aware of that.

Veterans Affairs committee  It's my understanding that there remain spousal benefits, but again, not across the board and not consistently.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, that they be across the board and that they be consistent. I would roll your two questions together. I would recommend that if it's armed service, whether it was in peacetime or wartime, the person be considered a veteran, and that their spouses continue with their benefits should they have health issues that require those benefits.

Veterans Affairs committee  I'm not so much aware of that as I am aware of a tug of war that sometimes delays the delivery of service, between a provincial jurisdiction or a Veterans Affairs jurisdiction. It's more in those cases. I'm not aware of income affecting vision loss services.

Veterans Affairs committee  I guess you're giving me an opportunity to repeat myself. A case management system would make their lives easier because it would give people a voice. I don't want to sound agist and talk about the poor frail things in the corner, because I think that's very disrespectful. But the fact is that when you're 80 years old and you're looking at some hearing loss, and you're looking at vision loss, and you're looking at some mobility loss and you don't have your licence, etc., there's a big thing that this human being is already coping with every day.

Veterans Affairs committee  We don't distinguish. People come to CNIB because they are experiencing vision loss to the extent that it is interfering with their life. For us, there is not a worry about eligibility, because people sort themselves out. Nobody wants to be blind. Nobody wants to admit that they're blind.

Veterans Affairs committee  What I mean is that at this point there is a review, which obviously you've all been involved in, that has been going on for the last three years. The difficulty is that within Veterans Affairs at this point, to my knowledge, there is not a mechanism for an ongoing consultation with the community organizations that are also directly tied to veterans.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes.

Veterans Affairs committee  Absolutely. We are experiencing the same shortages in terms of rehabilitation people that other health care professions are experiencing. It's not as chronic as the shortage of doctors, but the availability of trained home care workers and of community workers is an issue. We could do better in terms of training people.

Veterans Affairs committee  The best guide dog school is in Montreal, sir.

Veterans Affairs committee  Exactly. I'm sorry, but my French isn't up to par. Since you don't have much time and I speak slowly in French, I'll speak in English. Guide dog schools and the availability of guide dogs in an innovative school like MIRA are available to veterans at an advanced age. There is no cost, but one of the issues is that many guide dog schools in the rest of Canada feel that after a certain age it's not appropriate to have a guide dog.

Veterans Affairs committee  No, generally not. That's not to say that if it were repeatedly requested, it would.... And I'm not being facetious here. That tends to be a chicken and egg thing in the sense that quite often the veteran doesn't know they're entitled. All departments have a commitment through Treasury Board policy to provide materials in alternative formats upon request, but the reality is that generally information, letters, etc., will come in regular print and will often be inaccessible to somebody with vision loss.