Veterans Affairs committee  Good afternoon, and thank you. My name is Heather Parry, and I'm the assistant deputy minister of human resources and corporate services at Veterans Affairs Canada. I'm here with my colleague Charlotte Stewart, the director general of the Service Delivery Branch, and Bernard But

Veterans Affairs committee  I'm sorry.

Veterans Affairs committee  I would like to walk you through some of the key aspects of our 2012-13 report on plans and priorities and provide context for the report. Is it all right now?

Veterans Affairs committee  The report on plans and priorities is our opportunity to report to you as parliamentarians. This forward-looking document outlines organizational priorities, plans, and expected results for the current fiscal year and the two following years. This report is a planning document.

Veterans Affairs committee  There has been regular consultation with veterans organizations and other stakeholders. I'd just like to bring a little bit of history to this. In the early 1960s, Veterans Affairs Canada actually had 18 facilities that provided facility-based care and long-term care services t

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes. There's a chart that is very key in terms of showing the actual spending. On page 17 you see a chart that actually shows what the budget expenditures have been over the last number of years. This year, as I said, there is an increase of $44.8 million. VAC programs are quas

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes.

Veterans Affairs committee  That is absolutely correct. Again, the supplementary estimates allow us to come back during the year. Our forecasts have actually been reviewed by a third party, which has found them and our methodologies to be sound. We were actually within a variance of 1.3% of our budget on av

Veterans Affairs committee  I'm sorry, the increase—

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, it's a $44.8 million increase over last year's budget and is made up of changes relating, in large part, to the new Veterans Charter program benefits being increased, and some decreases in benefits in our traditional veteran programs. Bernard, did you want to speak to the i

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, I think this was the first year that the community program was included in the main estimates. That is probably where that difference comes in.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, we'll come back.

Veterans Affairs committee  There's a process. It's called the selection for employee retention and lay-off. Basically, as you indicated, all of the client service agents received a letter in April advising them that their positions were affected. We then have a process that all client service agents will

Veterans Affairs committee  They're not reapplying for their old jobs. What we're doing is determining which jobs are going to be retained as a result of the reduction of 75 positions.

Veterans Affairs committee  Since there are a couple of things in that question, maybe I could provide a list of the statistics that show all of the numbers of all of the various groups. It might be more helpful than my reading them out. Then we could talk about your questions about risk and what we're doi