Veterans Affairs committee  I'm receiving both.

Veterans Affairs committee  Only from SISIP, yes.

Veterans Affairs committee  Sometimes it's yearly, sometimes it's every few years. Because I'm a reservist, this is a whole other complicated ball game that I don't know if I'll have time to get into, the way that our benefits are done. Because I was permanently injured, I'm still on SISIP, but because of the changes that occurred last year with Bill C-58 and Bill C-59 , I'm also receiving financial benefits from VAC.

Veterans Affairs committee  The initial part works out to $2,050 a month, 75% of the old deemed salary of $2,700. That's coming from SISIP. The increase as a result of Bill C-58 brought reservists up to the equivalent of corporal basic, the base minimum that regular force personnel get. There was an argument between SISIP and Veterans Affairs over who would handle that.

Veterans Affairs committee  When it was being set up, yes. But at that time, when I had that initial interview with the person who was going to be the peer support coordinator for it, they tried to find people. I was the only one who came forward, saying, I could use this. Six months later they finally had a few other people, but at that point, things had become so rough for me that I could not attend.

Veterans Affairs committee  When I was being released, they were toying with the idea of studying an OSISS unit up here in Toronto. For a variety of reasons, it was decided it would not be the most beneficial place for me. I have a lot of concerns over how that unit is being run. But at the same time, it does work well when it works.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, for the back injury. For the operational stress injury, the lawyer assigned to me by the Bureau of Pensions Advocates advised me that, given how VRAB was working and how their decisions were coming out, it would be a waste of time to ask for an appeal at that time. You get only a certain number of appeals, and if you use them, that's it.

Veterans Affairs committee  The way that a service provision is dealt with in National Defence, or at least the way it was done when I was serving.... It may have changed since then. Six years is a long time, and a lot can happen. But while I was serving, if you were a reservist on a class A contract, which is what most of us were, and you were injured, it was not a medical doctor who was your primary care.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes. Class B and class C get some care through the military medical service, but even that, especially for follow-up, once you're injured your class B, pseudo-fulltime, contract tends to end. The class C guys who went overseas, if they got injured badly enough that they needed a lot of care, were being repatted here.

Veterans Affairs committee  In the end, for the back injury, yes.

Veterans Affairs committee  We finally got approval through VRAB after a long fight in 2007. The injury occurred in 2003.

Veterans Affairs committee  That's when I was finally released. I served for quite a few years with a back injury. It's one reason I was never deployed.

Veterans Affairs committee  Here's the funny thing: the documentation was signed by my case manager. This is a case manager that because of the overload that each case manager is handling, I hear from maybe once every six months. Previous case managers broke the rules by actually providing me with their phone numbers or their email to make it easier for me to contact them when something was happening.

Veterans Affairs committee  If I could have contacted her immediately by phone or by email and actually been able to get an immediate reply instead of spending a weekend freaking out. I say this because I believe the letter arrived on a Friday, so good luck actually getting someone then.

Veterans Affairs committee  Had the case manager signed it, it would still have been a disaster having that happen.