Veterans Affairs committee  It's a little too much inside baseball for me. It's a very big system there. We're a little system. We can make changes quickly. Where we are on the board, we can respond quickly when we see things. I can't speak to VAC, but I certainly think the sooner we meet the veterans with

Veterans Affairs committee  We certainly comment on their work. It's a bit problematic for us. The board does not endorse their work because we interpret the final product and maybe not the way it's intended. Obviously, there's unintended.... But, yes, we do. Certainly the BPA would be more heavily involved

Veterans Affairs committee  We certainly have done that training across our board and staff, and we have certainly done that type of training as part of a larger component of responding, so being more empathetic, being more...“sensitive” is the wrong word, but basically it's ensuring we're serving the veter

Veterans Affairs committee  I think no matter what, there will always be appeals. People are dissatisfied.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes. I come out of the criminal justice system, and I come out of a system where there all kinds of individual parts to that system. Everybody has their individual independence, but the system has to come together and discuss these things within their independent roles to open th

Veterans Affairs committee  Again, I come to this work from a background in restorative principles. Often, I think it's how you meet the person at the door, their first contact, in a way to restore their trust. These are people who have served their country. They have a very deep trust. I think those kinds

Veterans Affairs committee  Of course it would be helpful. Our plan with this funding is twofold. One, the minister has the power to appoint what's called temporary members to the board, so we're in the process, for the first time, I think, in the history of this board, of appointing temporary members. I

Veterans Affairs committee  That is a VAC question, because, by the time they get to us.... What I can tell you is this: We do not see many entitlement claims for mental health. What we see is the extent of the disability argument. VAC is granting entitlement on the front end, but they may say the disabil

Veterans Affairs committee  What that project does.... It's more about the case. I'll tell you a story about a brother who is a veteran. He recently had a departmental review application. It's no secret. He had a near-drowning incident in basic training which resulted in a claim. That case finally came tog

Veterans Affairs committee  No. I would say not. I won't say it's judicial notice, but as a country, we have paid significant settlements in recognition that both women in the RCMP and women in the military suffered sexual violence. That's not a question anymore in front of our panels. That's a fact, so whe

Veterans Affairs committee  We would agree.

Veterans Affairs committee  That wouldn't be my experience. My experience is that the documents don't exist. For example, when veterans apply to VAC, they don't have access. When they go to BPA, the BPA tells them they need x, y and z. They get those documents at the front end, but they're not there now.

Veterans Affairs committee  We're tying to understand their experience and adjust our approach to that experience, recognizing that the system is not necessarily the same.

Veterans Affairs committee  We don't have those stats. I can't give them.

Veterans Affairs committee  We have francophone stats primarily because we have francophone hearings or English hearings. Gender has always been collected, but we don't always have collected. I'm sure if you dug down deep enough into some of the records, they're probably there if they self-identified. We ar