Veterans Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, that's way outside my marching orders. I'm here to troubleshoot the problems. I am a veteran, and I acknowledge the work and the importance of the department, but I really focus on where the gaps are and where our veterans are being let down. My clientele are the veterans who are not being well served by the program, so I would have to defer the question to another study.

Veterans Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, I certainly acknowledge the excellent efforts the department makes towards our veterans. Once again, my concern, for example, is the young trooper who served in Bosnia in 1994, who came back home and became a Calgary City police officer, but was troubled. His wife couldn't understand why he was troubled or what his problems were.

Veterans Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, to clarify the situation with those 6,000, many of the people who come to our office are simply seeking information or referrals and are not coming to us with issues that need our immediate attention. The number of 6,000, I dare say, were satisfied customers and there is not investigative work pending on those.

Veterans Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, I write what I write; it was just whether or not you would call it an annual report. We're now actually calling it “A Year in Review: An Introduction to the Veterans to the Office of the Veterans Ombudsman”. The information is intact.

Veterans Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, I can't comment on what I have seen. I've visited homeless shelters and spoken with homeless veterans. Until I actually assign investigators to a project to get the evidence, I'm sorry, I cannot comment.

Veterans Affairs committee  I'm sorry, Mr. Chair. That's a very broad question. I don't know if it's as it pertains to addiction, homelessness, or incarcerated veterans. I have said that the OSISS program is revolutionary in the western world in dealing with our people who are so afflicted. If you could narrow the discussion down—

Veterans Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, on May 1 of this year, after some toing and froing over, I would say, the past eight months--which included getting legal advice from outside the government as well as from my current legal advisor, who's on my staff--the department came back and actually published the policy.

Veterans Affairs committee  At this moment in time, I can only think of two instances of where we were specifically denied certain documents. It started when we were seeking the legal opinion that was being used in a manner...and this was about eight months ago. This was during the toing and froing on the definition of “to review”, as it's presented in the order in council laws.

Veterans Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, that's one of the things that has been problematic over the last year and a half--namely, identifying exactly what types of information the minister's office is in need of. We are bound by the order in council to provide an annual report, which we did last December. When I met with the minister's office, it was decided that what I had produced--as I wrote this, the audience I had in mind was the veterans I serve--was perhaps inappropriate for the parliamentary audience.

Veterans Affairs committee  No, Mr. Chair, perhaps I can clarify. With regard to the information contained in it, other information was more appropriate for the annual report in terms of our office accountability. So it was agreed that.... The difficulty we encountered was that in producing our annual report by December, we were out of sync with the fiscal year.

Veterans Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, I'll walk through the couple of situations where I've met up with them. Personally, this is my approach. I would not qualify myself as an expert on homelessness in any respect, but we're certainly proactive in trying to meet these people. As soon as I've heard of a case--and we are only now building the capacity to actually have investigators--I've taken it upon myself to meet with these individuals.

Veterans Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, I would like to offer, first of all, that I share the same opinion of the employees of Veterans Affairs Canada. I have spent a lot of time in the district offices, and the people I have met, without exception, are truly committed to looking after our veterans as much as the system will allow them to.

Veterans Affairs committee  I would have to say that there's a lot of reading between the lines in my mandate. For example, I draw reference to my meeting with Machinery of Government in the Privy Council Office, and the message was quite clear that I was accountable to the deputy minister. This was always intended, despite the fact that in my mandate, in the order in council, it is clearly specified that I am accountable to the minister, to whom I'm supposed to report.

Veterans Affairs committee  With respect to recognition of my independence, I view myself as being independent. I am functioning independently, regardless of what might be read between the lines. With respect to support, the Office of the Veterans Ombudsman needs access to information so that we can make a balanced, unbiased assessment of the issues that we are confronted with from the veterans.

Veterans Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, I'll answer the question. From my research into the events that led to the establishment of this position, I understand that the position of a special adviser was actually administratively convenient; it was something that could be expedited to get somebody into the chair in a timely fashion.