Veterans Affairs committee  I'm not sure yet, as I haven't seen the new figures. They are usually released in May or June.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes. Essentially, it says that you choose between providing a survivor pension of 30%, 40% or 50% of your own pension. Your monthly pension is then reduced accordingly to the level of benefit that you choose. The greater the survivor pension, the greater the reduction in the pens

Veterans Affairs committee  No. We don't have any specific statistics. This is just anecdotal, but I've been told that it's fairly low. I've been at this job for about eight years, and every time I've spoken to someone about it, I've literally never heard of somebody taking this option. While it's good th

Veterans Affairs committee  Part of our brief is asking to look at this kind of data and see where we could find it. I'm assuming that the pension centre would probably have an idea of how many people do the take-up, but I couldn't speak for them. You'd have to ask them.

Veterans Affairs committee  I believe it would have been possible. I spoke to Eric Li. His research has been done. It's just never been published. Being able to pull up those numbers, I mean, it shouldn't be too.... We're not asking for these gigantic studies about how many people are affected, or for a qua

Veterans Affairs committee  I don't understand why the funds have not been doled out. I guess maybe there's some issue with identifying exactly who these people are. Again, I'm taking guesses, because, as Anthony spoke about, we need transparency here. We don't know what's going on. We don't know why they h

Veterans Affairs committee  It was in 1992.

Veterans Affairs committee  On page 5, we have numerous testimonies from some of our members.

Veterans Affairs committee  The U.S. has a very different system. It's more like a life insurance plan that they purchase into; I put it into the brief because it's a bit complicated, but it's not really a comparable system.

Veterans Affairs committee  I'm not aware of a study to do the comparison, but if I'm given some time, I can come back to you with an answer.

Veterans Affairs committee  I think that's exactly our point: we don't know. For the study by Eric Li, he tried to go out and find people, but especially because he was trying to do the study during COVID it was very difficult to find people. That's why he ended up with only about 10 people in his study, so

Veterans Affairs committee  No, there hasn't been a good explanation in the last few years, at least that I am aware of.

Veterans Affairs committee  There are a couple of things there. First off, for federal retirees and how that works, if you got married at 58 but it was after your retirement then it's after retirement. It's basically right after retirement, when you get your first paycheque as a retiree. That's very similar

Veterans Affairs committee  For federal retirees, no, it doesn't matter. You can be common law beforehand and continue, as long as you can prove the relationship existed prior to the retirement.

Veterans Affairs committee  I believe it does specifically state that it can be.... It literally says both same sex and—