Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Desilets. Research gaps definitely exist, as they do in other fields. Canada isn't the biggest country in the world, so the pool we have to draw on for research can be very small in some areas. Even though Canada clearly has research gaps, that does not mean our counterparts in the United States, England, Australia and New Zealand do not have relevant experience we can leverage.

Veterans Affairs committee  Perhaps I could start. When I was the chief pensions advocate at Veterans Affairs back in the nineties, we were dealing with backlogs back then, so it doesn't surprise me that we were dealing with backlogs in the twenties as well. Basically, if you want to talk about a normal claim that could be decided reasonably quickly, you would be talking about a claim where you had “adequate” evidence of a disability—I put adequate in quotes, because to a certain extent adequate is in the eye of the beholder—that you were able to link back to military service or, in the case of the RCMP, RCMP service.

Veterans Affairs committee  In the nineties, when I was at Veterans Affairs Canada, that was more or less the practice. Veterans were granted disability pensions according to the extent of their impairment expressed as a percentage. The department also determined the extent to which the impairment was attributable to military service.

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Desilets. As a matter of principle, we are in favour of a process to automatically approve benefit claims, which would certainly have advantages, but also drawbacks. Keep in mind that the first goal is to help veterans reintegrate into civilian life, so every effort must be made to make that transition easier.

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. The National Association of Federal Retirees is the largest national advocacy organization representing active and retired members of the federal public service, Canadian Armed Forces and Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and retired federally appointed judges, as well as their partners and survivors.

Human Resources committee  I think it's probably premature to say with any great degree of certainty, although entries into long-term care have been restricted in many instances over the last little while, and perhaps the doctor would be in a better place to speak specifically to that. I think the whole situation has shown the cracks, the challenges.

Human Resources committee  I think it would be up to ESDC and the provinces to come up with those standards, informed, obviously, by health care experts. We do not pretend to be health care experts, but we would support national standards. We represent seniors from coast to coast to coast, and it's very difficult for us to explain to our members why they might be subject to one level of care in one province and a different level of care in another.

Human Resources committee  Thank you very much. Thank you for giving me your time. Thank you for permitting me to speak on this important subject. I don't think I should take the six minutes. As Mr. Soulière has noted, the consequences we have seen in many health care settings, particularly in long-term care, are tragically unsurprising to the seniors organizations and advocates who have sounded the alarm on the state of senior care in Canada for some years now.