Veterans Affairs committee  Mr. Chair and members of the committee— thank you for allowing me to testify before you today. Veterans are grateful for the attention you have given to their needs and your work in addressing a number of shortfalls in the Canadian Forces Members and Veterans Re-establishment an

Veterans Affairs committee  My wife would object.

Veterans Affairs committee  We are really encouraged. These are steps in the right direction. We hope that it will continue because there are a lot of things left to do but, frankly, we are encouraged.

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you for asking. The membership of my association would prefer to see the bill pass quickly, and then we will continue to work toward our objectives in the future.

Veterans Affairs committee  I don't believe we should amend the bill at this point. The membership of my association would like to see it pass speedily.

Veterans Affairs committee  I would prefer to keep the current terminology and actually make it a caregiver benefit because many of the families don't have just a 30-day respite and then the problem goes away. It's with them oftentimes for an extended period of time.

Veterans Affairs committee  Without the benefit of the regulations, it's very difficult to say because you have to be able to see how it's going to be applied.

Veterans Affairs committee  I personally have distributed to the membership a balanced view both of what was in Bill C-68 and in this bill, and it has gone down to every last person.

Veterans Affairs committee  We usually use figures from Statistics Canada for that.

Veterans Affairs committee  What amounts are you referring to?

Veterans Affairs committee  We don't have information on that yet.

Veterans Affairs committee  As I mentioned, it equals a gross amount of about $15,000 a year, which is well below the poverty line. I can't imagine how someone receiving that amount alone could have an acceptable quality of life.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, but we would like the bill to be passed quickly. We could then make the necessary changes. There would at least be the start of a solution, which didn't exist before.

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon. Thank you for providing me with the opportunity to address you on this topic. The Canadian Association of Veterans in United Nations Peacekeeping is, not surprisingly, composed of veterans with peacekeeping service in both milit

Veterans Affairs committee  I see it as having quite a bit of value because, as you rightly point out, it is simply the school of hard knocks, and it is the same for the veteran as it is for the health practitioner. A lot of the forms are easy to understand if you're a bureaucrat, but quite confusing to tho