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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
October 29th, 2012Committee meeting
Guy Parent
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,
October 29th, 2012Committee meeting
Guy Parent
Veterans Affairs committee You mean a liberal interpretation of the evidence in front of them?
October 29th, 2012Committee meeting
Guy Parent
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
October 29th, 2012Committee meeting
Guy Parent
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
October 29th, 2012Committee meeting
Guy Parent
Veterans Affairs committee I have the expert here.
October 29th, 2012Committee meeting
Guy Parent
Veterans Affairs committee I think we can start off with the Gilbert case. I'll let Diane address that aspect of it and then I'll talk about the board itself.
October 29th, 2012Committee meeting
Guy Parent
Veterans Affairs committee I'll take that a point further. Certainly the Federal Court cannot force the tribunal to review or to change decisions or anything like that. I'm not a lawyer; I'm just a simple SAR tech, but I would think there needs to be some kind of respect in a common law society where the a
October 29th, 2012Committee meeting
Guy Parent
Veterans Affairs committee Certainly. That's a good question. I mentioned a bit of it in my opening address. Basically, in the first recommendation we said that as a measure of performance the board was using the percentage of decisions returned from the Federal Court. I agree with you that 100% is a targ
October 29th, 2012Committee meeting
Guy Parent
Veterans Affairs committee That's a good question as well. We know that decisions are now published. Some cases of interest are now being published on the Veterans Review and Appeal Board website, which is a start. That's heading in the right direction. We know also that they're working with the Bureau
October 29th, 2012Committee meeting
Guy Parent
Veterans Affairs committee We are following up on the report that we published. It will also be a public report.
October 29th, 2012Committee meeting
Guy Parent
Veterans Affairs committee Most of the work on the first report was done by a private firm that was contracted by the office.
October 29th, 2012Committee meeting
Guy Parent
Veterans Affairs committee I will ask Diane to answer. She is working on the upcoming follow-up report, and she was involved in the publication of the first one, so she has those details.
October 29th, 2012Committee meeting
Guy Parent
Veterans Affairs committee It's a good question. Again, I think what's important here is transparency. It's not about increasing favourability but about informing the board, other members, of previous decisions and how they were arrived at. Everything goes hand in hand. If we made recommendations as to how
October 29th, 2012Committee meeting
Guy Parent
Veterans Affairs committee Not that we can see. Obviously, the cases are de-personalized—I guess that's the right word—so I can't see any, unless Diane has comments on that from a legal aspect.
October 29th, 2012Committee meeting
Guy Parent