Finance committee  In a lot of cases, the serious mental health issues we're dealing with are trauma-based injuries—traumatic brain injuries, post-traumatic stress injuries, and operational stress injuries. All of those injuries cause significant loss of future earnings capacity. In VAC's defence,

Finance committee  In reality there is a international standard that is out there and recognized. It's called the Assistance Dogs International standard and it also runs in conjunction with the IGDF standard, that of the International Guide Dog Federation. Probably the most advanced standard on a p

Finance committee  What you're seeing with the annuitizing of the lump sum with a gender-based differential is what happens when you take a benefit from a defined benefit pension to a defined contribution pension. Once they make it a defined contribution pension by taking the amount of the lump sum

Finance committee  Thank you for your question. I regret that I'm not able to speak about this subject in French, so I will answer in English, if that's okay.

Finance committee  Part of the problem of whether or not we can clearly delineate whether the old benefit suite is better or worse than the new benefit suite depends on what some of the objectives are. Indeed, in the last question I answered, I mentioned the difference between defined benefit and d

Finance committee  The medical expense tax credit should be embedded inside the Income Tax Act and provide equality for a psychiatric service dog—and here I would suggest to the committee that we look toward dispensing with the use of the stigmatizing word “psychiatric”. “Veteran-assist service dog

Finance committee  The CRA doesn't have to go to VAC for those, because they're not going to any other department.

Finance committee  For example, they're not going to the health department to provide the credentialing for diabetic-alert dogs or seizure-alert dogs, and they're not going there for the Canadian National Institute for the Blind. In some cases, the Veterans Affairs issue is a little bit of a red he

Finance committee  Thank you, honourable Chair. Honourable parliamentarians, ladies and gentlemen, let me start by thanking you for the opportunity to speak to you today about the section of Bill C-74 concerning the medical expense tax credit for service dogs. I'm sure there are parliamentarians o

Finance committee  The media contacted me after budget day and asked what this meant in financial terms. My response was that it would be approximately $37.50 a month. Their incredulous response was, “You fought a five-and-a-half year war over a $1.23 a day?” No, I fought a war for equality and hum