Veterans Affairs committee  No, as Brigadier-General Tattersall indicated, I would defer this one to Treasury Board Secretariat. Veterans Affairs Canada has no jurisdiction over any of the superannuation acts that have been referenced.

Veterans Affairs committee  Absolutely none of the funding has been used to date. The funding for research came from within the department's reference levels. We have not accessed the $150 million that was put forward in budget 2019.

Veterans Affairs committee  Absolutely. Thank you for the question. Essentially, where a veteran passes away as a result of a service-related disability—for example, they're on an overseas deployment and unfortunately killed during that situation—that would be considered a service-related death. Therefore,

Veterans Affairs committee  I also referenced the disability pension, which is the monthly amount. If we look right now, from the veterans emergency fund in last fiscal year, just over $1 million was provided in support to 574 veterans and survivors. We also have the veterans independence program, which pr

Veterans Affairs committee  I do not have that number right in front of me, but I can get it for you. That was the challenge. When budget 2019 was announced, the only administrative data that we could access with any level of certainty was the number of individuals in receipt of the optional survivor bene

Veterans Affairs committee  Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for the invitation to be with you today. I would like to begin by acknowledging that the land I am speaking with you from is the traditional and unceded territory of the Abegweit Mi'kmaq first nation. I welcom

Veterans Affairs committee  Based on the tax credit, the expansion that was provided in 2018 is where the dog is provided by a person or organization whose main purpose is to provide this special training and, second, the dog is specially trained to perform specific tasks to assist an individual in coping w

Veterans Affairs committee  I would like to ask Dr. Heber to provide some context around PTSD and effective treatments, and some of the other bigger considerations that we also look at from a veteran's perspective. Dr. Heber.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes. The United States, as noted, is very well advanced in research and the benefits related to service dogs. Currently, the United States Department of Veterans Affairs service dog veterinary health benefit provides service dogs to veterans for issues relating to hearing, vision

Veterans Affairs committee  The focus of the work was looking to develop a national standard. Consensus was not reached, as Nathan indicated earlier, because of the various complexities across the country with some of the groups providing service dogs, what standards to meet, the international standard and

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you for the question. As we went through the work on service dogs, we looked at what the different provinces are doing and their levels of maturity. As I mentioned, we have British Columbia with a very advanced legislative framework, which is not necessarily the case in ot

Veterans Affairs committee  I'll provide a couple of introductory comments. Then I'll ask Dr. Heber to speak to some of the considerations from a mental health perspective. That really was the reason we engaged the board—to develop that national standard. When there was no consensus, we moved forward with

Veterans Affairs committee  Certainly. Thank you for that clarification. I'll ask Nathan to speak to the areas that created some challenges in coming to a consensus by the board.

Veterans Affairs committee  Certainly, and thank you for the question. I'm going to ask Nathan to respond to it. He has a lot of the context around the service dogs versus emotional support dogs. This was actually the key comparison group that was used in the recently completed United States Department of

Veterans Affairs committee  I've been with Veterans Affairs Canada now for over 15 years.