Veterans Affairs committee  Of course, that extends to all the application processes, from initial adjudication all the way to Veterans Review and Appeal Board appeals.

Veterans Affairs committee  We are working with the board staff and with Mr. Larlee to solidify any improvement that has to do with our recommendations for our report. We're engaged with them. We will be putting out a full report. Any systemic review that we do is normally followed six months later with a f

Veterans Affairs committee  There has been an action plan, which we thank the Veterans Review and Appeal Board for putting forward in a very timely manner. It covers the recommendations that applied to them as a tribunal, as opposed to the ones that were to the minister. We are confident that they're moving

Veterans Affairs committee  The board is an important and critical aspect of the application process. There needs to be an independent organism. If you follow the history, there have never been any questions about whether the board was needed or not, but as with any other tribunal or any other organization,

Veterans Affairs committee  You mean a liberal interpretation of the evidence in front of them?

Veterans Affairs committee  By law the act demands that they liberally interpret the evidence in front of them. It's there; it's the law that guides their work, so I don't see that it would impair them. It should be the culture. The culture is a big aspect. People should assume from the start that military

Veterans Affairs committee  That has to do, maybe, with the culture and collegiality of the board itself. I met somebody on the road in one of my outreaches, a previous member of the board who said that what she missed was that people were never together, and there was no chance to develop an organizational

Veterans Affairs committee  As I mentioned earlier, a plan remains a plan until it is put into action. One of our recommendations was the publication of board decisions. The publication of noteworthy decisions is already under way. But transparency requires that all decisions be published. Something else I

Veterans Affairs committee  Our recommendations targeted two areas. The first is the liberal interpretation of evidence. A section in the act states that the evidence must be construed liberally. At the court level and even during the adjudication process, application of the benefit of the doubt has always

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members. I will first introduce the people who are with me today: Gary Walbourne, director general of operations, as well as deputy ombudsman in my absence; and Diane Guilmet-Harris, our legal counsel at the office. Thank you for inviting me t

Veterans Affairs committee  No. Thank you. It's a very good question, Mr. Chair. In fact, I think it goes back to what Mr. Harris was saying before. Eventually over the years the programs become complex. The administration of the programs become so complex that changes are made to facilitate the administra

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you. It's another good question. Obviously, over the years the program was never well explained. It's a new concept to go from dependency to transition without barriers to psycho-social and medical.... It's a new concept and very hard to understand. People have had a tende

Veterans Affairs committee  They come to talk about access, and the quality of health care and the cost of travelling to access it. So the overall administration of programs is involved.

Veterans Affairs committee  Let's just say that there are a lot of differences from one province to another. The provinces do not all have the same health care network nor the same administrative structures. This does cause problems for some veterans.

Veterans Affairs committee  No, but that is a good question. Our first level of intervention consists mainly in providing information and helping to guide people to where they need to go to have their complaints resolved. As for access to private information, if that is an issue, we refer complaints to the