Veterans Affairs committee  What I can say is that it is convoluted. Services are different for everybody, so it depends on what service you're talking about. Our Legion service officers deal with that every day—the command ones. Whether it's somebody who was denied the IRB, the critical injury benefit or a

Veterans Affairs committee  When I was working at the integrated personnel support centres, before I released from the military and got the job at the Legion, I used to go back every Wednesday morning, and I would help veterans there. We had a memorandum of understanding with the joint personnel support uni

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, absolutely. We work very closely with them. They refer people to us; we refer people to them. It would be nice to have a person from the Legion in a lot of them. Unfortunately, like a lot of organizations, we're a little short-staffed. Hopefully that will change in the futur

Veterans Affairs committee  I think automatically approving some disabilities would greatly help. There are certain conditions that are associated with certain trades, as the previous speaker was mentioning, and some of those should be automatically presumed to be related to service. That would greatly help

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Honourable chair and members of the parliamentary Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs, on behalf of the dominion president, Comrade Bruce Julian, and over 256,000 members, thank you for inviting the Royal Canadian Legion to speak with you today on your s

Veterans Affairs committee  DND and VAC have now created transition groups, which are for everybody leaving the military. It's not just the ill and injured anymore. I haven't become familiar with them yet. I'm just starting to develop something with them for our organization. However, they have to look at

Veterans Affairs committee  They are education, more research and gender-based analysis on everything. It has to start from the military from the time somebody enrols, with education concerning their own health and with doctors who understand that research. They must go through every stage of their life con

Veterans Affairs committee  The most common conditions should be granted almost on a presumptive basis, with just a few checks, at least on service and maybe on length of time and a few other things. However, it shouldn't take a year and a half to two years to hear back about whether your lower back is rela

Veterans Affairs committee  I hear that complaint several times a day, whether it's in an email or a phone call. The biggest problem we're having right now is with the wait time tool. Veterans will go on there and it will say it's going to take 23 weeks for a common condition. Now they're sitting at 40-so

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, it is. I agree.

Veterans Affairs committee  An application is the first time a veteran comes forward and wants to put a disability claim in. If that's denied, the next level is sometimes a departmental review, but that is also with Veterans Affairs Canada.

Veterans Affairs committee  In the last couple of years, I've probably seen almost half come forward with claims.

Veterans Affairs committee  With the military sexual trauma lawsuit, a lot of them came forward at all levels of appeal. Two of us at the Legion do reconsideration levels. We saw a dramatic increase of claims that had been denied because there wasn't enough evidence, or perhaps the police found it unfounded

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes.

Veterans Affairs committee  Absolutely. We did the same thing with the hearing loss policy when it changed, and also with all the partial entitlements.