Mr. Speaker, I welcome the intervention by the member opposite.

Let me first start by affirming, of course, that not only the Minister of Veterans Affairs but the parliamentary secretary and members of this government from the Prime Minister on down have nothing but the utmost respect for our veterans. We are obviously concerned and are always looking for ways to improve the level of service while delivering value for taxpayers, who support them as well.

Additionally, the premise of the member's question is absolutely false. What the public accounts will show over time is that this government, since coming to government and implementing the new veterans charter, has invested nearly $5 billion in new investments. That is a year-by-year appropriation of somewhere in the neighbourhood of $3.5 billion, 90% of which goes to front-line programs, services, and benefits for our veterans.

On the part that is for administration and overhead, if we go back and look at the decision to merge eight local or regional district offices into the Service Canada network, we see it was to capitalize on using the Service Canada network and its overhead by phasing out or moving into these offices that were underutilized.

I will use the example of Windsor, since that is in my area. We had a 10,000-square-foot building and six unionized workers with their wages plus benefits managing 23 files, with low foot traffic. Instead, we now have the Service Canada office one kilometre away with a VAC client service agent and the other Service Canada network employees who are trained to a standard to deliver that service.

More than that, we are now reaching more communities with information, such as Belle River, Amherstburg, Leamington, and Chatham-Kent. Veterans in those communities used to have to drive into Windsor to get basic services. They can now do that in all of the communities I listed. We are moving our service points closer and into more communities where veterans themselves actually live, saving them a ride.

Let me clear what the VAC offices are. They are administrative points of service. They are not medical clinics. They do not deliver support for PTSD. They are not stress injury clinics, which were created by this government two years ago to deliver that important support. These were places where one could come to pick up and drop off one's paperwork. Veterans can now do that in more communities than they did before. We did this by delivering greater value for taxpayers and enhancing the level of service. We stand by that commitment to our veterans.

Jeff Watson

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