Veterans Affairs committee  I'm sorry, Mr. May.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, super. Just to clarify, Monsieur Desilets—and thank you for the question—are you talking about parliamentary committees?

Veterans Affairs committee  I apologize, Mr. Desilets. I'm just wondering if you're talking about the parliamentary committees or the advisory groups.

Veterans Affairs committee  It's an excellent question, Monsieur Desilets. Thank you. I think what happens is that we have a lot of committees, studies and voluntary organizations being established that are set up to try to address the problems. I think those are all reflections that the system is not work

Veterans Affairs committee  I did submit it to the committee and the clerk.

Veterans Affairs committee  Can I go first, Allan? Mr. Davidson, those are excellent questions, excellent points. First, with regard to the call centres, that is a perfect example. It seems like such a minor thing, but it's a perfect example of how the bureaucracy prioritizes statistics instead of results

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you, Ms. Blaney. I'll quickly give another anecdote of what happened with my son when I went in for the heart procedure in the hospital. My son can't be away from me. At 4:30 a.m., as I'm lying in the hospital bed, I get a call. It's my son and he's crying. He can't sleep.

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you, Ms. Blaney.

Veterans Affairs committee  Mr. Doherty, I've long written about the huge gap between the rhetoric and the actions. What happens, especially with veterans with mental health illnesses, is that when they hear government say these words but the actions show something different.... When they show up at Veter

Veterans Affairs committee  Mr. Amos, I really appreciate your question. I just wanted to speak to the paradigm by which we have to compliment the bureaucracy so that they let their guard down and do the right thing. It has been my experience over 20 years that when you compliment them, the bureaucrats imm

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you very much, Ms. Blaney. What happened was that Craig Dalton—unlike the previous ombudsman, Guy Parent—thought it would be, and I agree, an excellent plan to have a more expeditious process of having recommendations acted upon. What was happening under Guy Parent previo

Veterans Affairs committee  I think fundamentally that we have to take away this interdisciplinary care team they have at Veterans Affairs. It is a policy interdisciplinary committee that rules on files of veterans they've never treated. It provides a sort of fake front that Veterans Affairs really is using

Veterans Affairs committee  I'm sorry, John.

Veterans Affairs committee  Let me emphasize that the culture at VAC has nothing to do with the people themselves. The people are all well intentioned. They're all working very hard, but they're working hard on the wrong paradigm. At Veterans Affairs, we have a frontline staff that is completely ignored b

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Brassard. To that end, I submitted a 40-page report with 53 very substantive recommendations. Why? We've been looking at this problem.... For me as an advocate, not much has changed in 20 years in the way the department deals with veterans with psycholo