Veterans Affairs committee  I concur with Mr. Fraser.

Veterans Affairs committee  I don't know because I haven't read the report.

Veterans Affairs committee  I'm saying that the over 200 recommendations have to be considered and discussed. If this new Veterans Charter is truly living legislation, then changes have to be made, and the attitude has to be that this is not a perfect piece of legislation.

Veterans Affairs committee  When I was an officer, a part of my responsibilities was to make sure that the personnel under my command had financial counselling if they needed it. One of the problems within Veterans Affairs Canada is that the caseloads of the area counsellors, the primary service-givers to the clients, are just too heavy to allow the counsellors to do financial counselling on top of everything else.

Veterans Affairs committee  You're not the only one. I am too. What I said at the beginning when I was making my first comments is that originally this was supposed to be a modernization of the Pension Act. It then mutated into the creation of a new piece of legislation, but it didn't bridge, it didn't continue the old charter material.

Veterans Affairs committee  Sir, I also agree that you cannot treat everybody the same, but there has to be some standardization, and that's the problem: things have to be applied objectively, not subjectively. What we're seeing is that there's too much subjective application, which results in constantly wearing the veteran down as they grieve that they didn't receive it for this and they didn't receive it for that.

Veterans Affairs committee  Like Louise, I represent the veterans who are not represented by formal organizations, and I'd like to remind everybody on the committee that the majority of veterans do not belong to any formal group.

Veterans Affairs committee  For example, VeteranVoice.info, which is a website, has over 100,000 subscribers. Even that is only a fraction of the total veterans community, which numbers in excess of 800,000, and family members.

Veterans Affairs committee  Not on hand, because that number of 100,000 is veterans and non-veterans. As I said, the number the committee should be considering is the number of veterans in Canada, which, as I said, is 800,000-plus.

Veterans Affairs committee  I want to make one comment about what happens from one district to the next. The problem is a concern that was raised by a number of veterans and other groups. All the programs may not be applied equally across Canada, and the interpretation of policy, doctrine, and legislation, whatever you want to call it, may not be applied equally across Canada.

Veterans Affairs committee  I just want to make two points. First, when we consider the old and the new, there have to be similarities and things passed on. One of the problems is that the language in all the legislation is not the same. That comes down to the terminology, to the words and the definitions.

Veterans Affairs committee  Do you mean to me personally?

Veterans Affairs committee  None, because I'm not covered by the new Veterans Charter. Between 2005 and 2006, 35,000 people applied to VA for benefits, so they would not be covered by the new Veterans Charter. The RCMP, which is also a member of the veterans community in this country, rejected the NVC. I pose a question to you, sir: do you support discrimination?

Veterans Affairs committee  There's another problem. Regardless of how well the legislation is written, it's overly restrictive in its administration. This is the bureaucrats' fault and it's a misunderstanding. Time and time again, you will hear people say that they don't understand the military culture. We say that's because Veterans Affairs has turned its back on veterans in many different ways.

Veterans Affairs committee  I'd like to respond to your comments. The modernization task force and the development of a new Veterans Charter was supported in principle, as we've stated. However, it was an exclusive, restrictive, narrowly focused, non-transparent development that did not give appropriate time for full discussion within the veterans' community and did not reflect the stated concerns of veterans and Senate and Commons committees and subcommittees.