Veterans Affairs committee  I was not aware, no, but probably I was not interested at that time. I would pay more attention now.

Veterans Affairs committee  It's a pleasure to be here today to contribute to the important work that your committee does to ensure that Canada faithfully repays the debt owed to our veterans of the Canadian Forces and the RCMP. They have served with unlimited liability, and we should repay them with fairne

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. First of all, Gary Walbourne is the director general of operations and also the deputy ombudsman. He accompanies me any place where there are going to be some hard questions.

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you for the question. I believe you are talking about the annual report...?

Veterans Affairs committee  Okay. I think the distinction to be made there, and in fact a clarification, is that a reservist injured while on duty in Afghanistan on that type of deployment is entitled to the same benefits as a regular force soldier. What concerns us is the people who fall into the other cla

Veterans Affairs committee  Not necessarily. What has happened in that context.... We've actually had the meetings with, first of all, Veterans Affairs Canada, which said that it was the responsibility of DND. We subsequently met with the chief of military personnel in DND, who said it was a Veterans Affair

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, we were instrumental in moving the department to simplify its correspondence. Even recently, in the report that we released, “Reasons for Decisions”, we indicated that it's not only the language but also the content that's important. I'm glad to report that there is some imp

Veterans Affairs committee  No, I would certainly support the idea of a non-taxable payment, since, in its present form, it is non-taxable. I can't see how just making it a lump sum, instead of a series of payments, would introduce a tax addition.

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you, that's a very good question. As you probably are aware, we were instrumental in getting this clause in the enhanced new Veterans Charter reviewed in two years. What's important is that the new Veterans Charter, which was supposed to be a living document, was on life s

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you for the question. What's important to realize is that we do keep track of all the complaints we receive, and this provides the basis for systemic issue review. In general, we get about 9,000 calls or contacts a year. We categorize them. At this point in time, most of t

Veterans Affairs committee  The categories haven't changed at all. Health care remains the top one. The application for benefits remains the second, and the third one is other jurisdictions. That remains pretty well constant.

Veterans Affairs committee  We have an outreach campaign. In fact, this year saw me starting in Quebec City, to the Maritimes, Northern Ontario, out in B.C., and then to Saskatchewan, where I met also with the RCMP units out there. Our outreach campaign includes having some town hall meetings with veterans

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you. Mr. Chair, that's a good question. Certainly, I would expect that any work being done by any organization toward improvement of the new Veterans Charter should be reviewed by the committee. As far as organizations are concerned, we will be following up on all reports

Veterans Affairs committee  From both serving and veterans, and people who are retired from the forces and the RCMP, yes.

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you. That's a very good question. I'm going to try to hit all the answers, but certainly I think I'll start off with saying that our concern—I've expressed this, I believe, to the committee before—is with the fact that a lot of people are suffering in silence. Some of them