Veterans Affairs committee  Veterans Affairs Canada recognizes the importance of the family and its significance in the health and wellness of individuals. Established best practices recognize the importance of involving family in treatment plans, as families are, in many cases, the first source of support for veterans and are integral to successful recovery.

Veterans Affairs committee  Correct.

Veterans Affairs committee  We do.

Veterans Affairs committee  Absolutely, and so, yes, at Veterans Affairs we do have an outreach strategy that we continue to try to improve, for the reason you state, that there are still individuals who are not getting the information when they need to. We certainly are participating in a number of forums where we can speak about benefits to veterans and to their families to ensure they know what those benefits are and how to access those benefits.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes. Certainly the resources that you're speaking of, we're still waiting for those details, but absolutely, the lion's share of those resources will be for the front lines where adjudication occurs, as well as in the area offices where we have that front-line connection with veterans, to ensure that the workloads are manageable so that they can access services quickly and that we're able to provide them with the services they need when they need them.

Veterans Affairs committee  Unfortunately, I can't give you the detail of that, but certainly we continue to try to improve and offer the best service we can.

Veterans Affairs committee  Anything that will simplify things for veterans and make our services more accessible, easily accessible, absolutely. I think that's an ongoing objective of ours. Certainly we remain open. The other point I think on those claims that are waiting for adjudication is that there is a triage that occurs of those.

Veterans Affairs committee  Absolutely, that is an ongoing challenge to ensure that the families are included in the work we do. An example of what has been done concretely and, you know, still needs to be improved, is the VAC employee or the case manager from Veterans Affairs, as well as a veterans service agent, being in the IPSCs, working side by side with CAF, with military members who are not even released, at that point try to engage the family as well as the member.

Veterans Affairs committee  Sure, absolutely.

Veterans Affairs committee  It's a very complex question. Certainly from my perspective—I'm a social worker, most of our staff are social workers—we approach the veteran as a member of a system. We never see the individual, but we see a person within a system. We're always, from our perspective, philosophically, approaching it as a systemic....

Veterans Affairs committee  To my knowledge, there are no targets that have been set. However, there are increasing numbers of veterans who are occupying these roles. We have a number of veterans playing a number of roles as employees.

Veterans Affairs committee  The veterans' perspective is an absolute invaluable one. They bring a perspective that we can't.