Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon, everybody. On behalf of my colleagues, I want to thank you very much for having us here. We certainly welcome this opportunity to be with you today. We are here to set the context for the upcoming weeks of presentations and discussions on

Veterans Affairs committee  Our ADM of HR and corporate services is Heather Parry.

Veterans Affairs committee  That's the associate deputy minister.

Veterans Affairs committee  That's correct.

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you very much for the question, Mr. Chair. I'm new in the role of director general of transformation at Veterans Affairs. I joined the department and moved to Charlottetown only last November. As for my previous experience, I came from another department completely. I ca

Veterans Affairs committee  I was very pleased on arrival to find that the transformation and changes the department was proposing were already well in place throughout the department. They didn't live in any one particular office. They were led right from the top by the deputy minister and associate deputy

Veterans Affairs committee  I was trying to share with the committee our view, Mr. Chair, that we are noting the decline in our traditional vets, and I was trying to make the point that the number of new vets is increasing, so it's just to talk about the change in the overall population of our vets.... But

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you.

Veterans Affairs committee  I don't have an end state figure for you. But you used the term “layoff”, and I should just point out for you that over the five years going forward, while we know that we're going to have to reduce the size of our organization by about 800 people, we are planning and focusing on

Veterans Affairs committee  I believe that during the same period we're talking about there is a total forecast of some 53 people who will be reduced at Ste. Anne's between now and 2015-16. I believe that's the number, but I might have to confirm that for you.

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this session. It's an honour to share this table with the senior leadership of the Royal Canadian Legion, and it's a pleasure for me. It's the first time I've met Mr. Moore. My n

Veterans Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, I might add two thoughts to the question. First, as the dominion president just shared with us a few minutes ago, the Department of Veterans Affairs has an extraordinarily complex group of veterans they're trying to serve, and not everyone fits one particular mould. W

Veterans Affairs committee  Sorry, I just wonder if this would be helpful to add. We're aware that a lot of people who use our services in the past have found the bureaucratic paperwork—submitting receipts and continually being in communication with the department—to be extremely onerous. They have other

Veterans Affairs committee  We're only 18 months into our five-year plan. But we've established service standards that are available on our website so that you can see what it is that we're measuring. We're going to look at those continually to see if we can improve our service standards. We do things lik

Veterans Affairs committee  You're speaking of “My VAC Book”?