• Textual record

This series contains comprehensive files concerning the major issues dealt with by the Subcommittee from 1992 to 1998 as outlined above. Materials relating to some of these issues were brought together in briefing books as indicated in the file listing while others were simply kept in several files. They contain submissions and the testimony of witnesses, background documentation, correspondence from the public on the issue as well as internal correspondence between committee members, legislation, briefing notes, press releases, newspaper clippings, and reports.

The Senate Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs was struck in 1985. Prior to that date the concerns of veterans had been the purvue of the parent body, the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology. Senator Phillips served on this Subcommittee and chaired it from 1994 to 1999. Over the years the Committee was greatly concerned with the administration of veterans' pensions and health care issues, hearing witnesses and studying submissions from interested parties, and producing early reports entitled They served, we care (1981) and Its almost too late (1991). Keeping faith into the future (1994) was a study into the future directions of the Department of Veterans Affairs which was instrumental in 1995 in the introduction of BillC-67: An Act to establish the Veterans Review and Appeal Board and to amend the Pensions Act. The Subcommittee, under the Chairmanship of Senator Phillips, was also asked to examine and report on the implementation of measures by the Department of Veterans Affairs to expedite the adjudication of pensions. This resulted in the report Steadying the course (1997). In 1998, the Subcommittee carried out a fact finding mission into the state of veterans health care in Canada. As well the Subcommittee held hearings into controversial issues such as the production and distribution of the CBCseries "The valour and the horror" and the proposal to include a holocaust room in the Canadian War Museum.