Veterans Affairs committee  You've opened the door on that one. I believe we're in a constitutional monarchy and the Constitution is, in some respects, unwritten. I believe that the government can act within the constraints of the Constitution. I believe that the social covenant is a constitutional document

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, you are, because you asked what Parliament could do. Parliament can act according to the law and the Constitution.

Veterans Affairs committee  It depends on the promise.

Veterans Affairs committee  You're bringing in the typical slippery slope argument thing. I'm arguing that there is a fundamental constitutional issue created by the social covenant. I'm not arguing that a tax break is constitutionally protected or that all sorts of other things have that same protection.

Veterans Affairs committee  No, I'm not talking about moral obligation either. We haven't even gotten into the bureaucracy of this because a lot of the problems here are created by a mindless bureaucracy just saying that things anybody else would deem to be a disability aren't a disability. What we have is

Veterans Affairs committee  The political reality of different policies and political ideologies coming forward is not offended by the position we're advancing, because we say that the social covenant goes beyond a mere political statement. The social covenant was not a statement of a political party—althou

Veterans Affairs committee  I take the positions of lawyers with the usual grain of salt. The government lawyer's position, which has not been reflected in statements of government ministers or others, was that they are respecting the social covenant by the existing legislation. Now that's a position that

Veterans Affairs committee  As I said, this was on a motion to dismiss, and nothing has been decided other than that the case can continue. The argument was that the new Veterans Charter fulfills the social covenant. That's the legal position that was taken by that lawyer at that time. One of the premises

Veterans Affairs committee  It involves Mandela, so I think it's timely. In 2000 I went to a conference in South Africa. I presented a speaker's pole to Nelson Mandela, and I got to spend some time with him before that. He heard I was from Canada and his eyes lit up and he said, “We owe a great deal to Can

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you. I'm Don Sorochan. I'm the lead counsel in the class action that flowed from the visit that Jim made to my offices, in which he told me of the various cases that had come up. I became aware of it because one of our neighbour's kids, whom I've known since his mother ca