Veterans Affairs committee  I couldn't answer that. I think it's between 30 and 40, but I don't have the exact number.

Veterans Affairs committee  Certainly.

Veterans Affairs committee  No. With due respect, I would ask you to direct that question to the ombudsman.

Veterans Affairs committee  In the human resource files, in some cases people may or may not have indicated whether they had military service, but it would be inappropriate for me to access the files and provide information about employees.

Veterans Affairs committee  I don't know, because I haven't seen that. But let me respond in this way. First, staffing in the Government of Canada is based on the merit principle, and the watchdog for that is the Public Service Commission. Any time a job is open, all employees of the public service, within

Veterans Affairs committee  I don't know the number offhand. Some of these happen routinely. They're on a call and they switch the call over to an agent in a call centre. So I don't have a precise number. I know the 375 that were more formally transferred. In order to improve the service, we're moving to a

Veterans Affairs committee  I'll see what's available. I might be able to give the committee some idea of what they are, but it would be in an order of magnitude as opposed to a precise number.

Veterans Affairs committee  I won't respond to the first part of the question . My comments are really restricted to what's in the order in council. Whether the ombudsman should be going beyond that is not a matter for me to comment on. On the Veterans Review and Appeal Board itself, the order in council

Veterans Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, if I may, in responding to the honourable member I might note that my father also was a veteran. He served in the Second World War. I, being a Newfoundlander, note that my father served with the Royal Navy for a number of years and did a number of tours in some very in

Veterans Affairs committee  We don't have an identifier in our computer base that says a person is homeless. We do have clients who we feel are at a higher risk because they may be shown as “of no fixed address”, so they could be at risk of being homeless or maybe not. Those clients would be managed throug

Veterans Affairs committee  We do not have any studies of that kind.

Veterans Affairs committee  I don't, off the top of my head.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes.

Veterans Affairs committee  Well, the issue of homelessness was brought up by the ombudsman, I would say, probably--don't quote me--late summer, last fall, maybe September. He does make reference to that timeframe, when you look at it. He did say he felt there were some homeless folks out there, based on so

Veterans Affairs committee  That's right. The discussion paper that was referred to previously was a discussion paper that was put together by the department. As I indicated in my testimony, there were numerous discussions with the ombudsman. I shouldn't say the ombudsman himself; I think it's very clear to