RECOMMENDATION

SUMMARY

(a) amends the Civilian War-related Benefits Act to provide access - equal to that of armed forces veterans - to benefits under the Pension Act and the War Veterans Allowance Act, for civilian groups that served overseas closely with, or under analogous conditions to, the wartime forces, namely,

(i) the Newfoundland Overseas Forestry Unit,

(ii) the Corps of (Civilian) Canadian Fire Fighters for Service in the United Kingdom,

(iii) nursing aids and other members of the Canadian Red Cross and St. John's Ambulance who served in the Voluntary Aid Detachment of the First World War or as overseas welfare workers of the Second World War and the Korean War, and

(iv) Ferry Command personnel;

(b) amends the Pension Act to allow Canadian Forces members in the regular force who have service-related disabilities to receive disability pensions while still serving, thereby ensuring equality with members whose disabilities arose in special duty area service (i.e. peacekeeping) and reserve force service;

(c) permits veteran disability pensioners who are married to, or living common-law with, each other to both receive the married rate;

(d) extends remission authority to all types of overpayments of veterans' benefits, while improving the ability to collect without causing hardship;

(e) reformulates the provisions governing the assessment of outside disability benefits (e.g. workers' compensation, United Nations disability compensation, court-awarded damages for personal injury);

(f) provides for a one-year continuation of a deceased veteran's pension to the guardian of the veteran's orphaned children;

(g) changes the pension indexation formula to accommodate declines in the Consumer Price Index;

(h) consolidates the provisions relating to service in special duty areas (i.e. peacekeeping), as well as those relating to Korean War service, directly into the Pension Act;

(i) clarifies the rules governing the exchange and use of client information, both within the Department of Veterans Affairs and between the Department of Veterans Affairs and other departments;

(j) protects client information from having to be disclosed by public servants in non-criminal, non-appellate legal proceedings;

(k) reformulates the provisions governing the amount of income support under the War Veterans Allowance Act when income has declined since the previous year;

(l) allows compassionate awards to be continued to survivors without the necessity of a high-level re-adjudication;

(m) makes organizational changes in the veterans' land program;

(n) deletes penal provisions from veterans' legislation where the provisions are either unnecessary or are substantially duplicated by the Criminal Code; and

(o) makes technical housekeeping changes to clarify regulation-making authorities, improve wording, ensure the use of gender-neutral language in English, correct cross-references, correct the French name of the Department of Veterans Affairs, and repeal obsolete Acts and provisions.