Veterans Affairs Committee on Feb. 15th, 2007

[Albina Guarnieri, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Transcripts.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Ms. Guarnieri, I'm just going to clarify this here. I talked about this with the clerk, and as far as I understand it, that would be a violation of members' privilege. Here's the reason why. Those things can pick up sometimes not only the testimony of the witness but also side conversations. Anyhow, we talked about it, and I don't know if that's still in use, but unfortunately I would have to ask that it be removed.

[Albina Guarnieri, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

I am being censored.

We'll get it from the transcripts. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

I understand. I'm just letting you know how it works here.

Now on to Mrs. Hinton for seven minutes.

[Betty Hinton, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Thank you.

Welcome back, Mr. Marchand. We've had the pleasure of your company before. Some rather interesting comments have been going around the table, but the fact of the matter is this committee agreed to invite you here today to ask you for your views on the bill of rights. We've not actually touched on that yet. I will have a couple of questions for you and I'll split any remaining time with my colleague, Mr. Shipley.

How do you feel a bill of rights would impact VRAB's current work? That's the first question.

Secondly, what in your opinion should be included in the bill of rights? You deal with veterans on a fairly regular basis. I would like to have your perspective on this. We've certainly heard from a number of veterans groups, and we have a pretty good idea of what they want in it. Personally, I have a pretty good idea of what I'd like to see. I'd like to see it kept very simple, clear, and easy for veterans to understand.

I'd like to know what your views on those two things are, please, and I'll leave the remaining time with Mr. Shipley.

[Victor Marchand]

All right. My initial reaction is that it will always be the same. Any time the legislature wishes to adopt a system, a new approach, a set of rules, a bill of rights that will improve the lot of veterans, I will support it in any way, shape, or form. So any endeavour to do so the board will support at the first and at all occasions. I think it's important to continuously review and revisit the systems and services that vets receive. So to answer right away, I support it, and I hope it succeeds.

As for the actual text of the bill of rights, I may have seen an early version of it. There were many components to it. There was the right to be treated fairly and respectfully. There was the right to be accompanied or represented. There was the right to receive services in both official languages. There was a set of four or five principles involved.

In my view, the thing that vets will always appreciate and that is extremely important for the system to realize is that speed in services is a very important thing to consider and always be conscious of. The extent to which the rights are available and the extent to which the services are available is of course very important, but the speed with which the services are rendered, in my opinion, is also extremely important. That's our experience at VRAB.

[Betty Hinton, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Thank you.

Mr. Shipley, go ahead.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Marchand. It's good to see you back again. I think, as we mentioned earlier, it was in about May that you were here. That seems like a long time ago. It was a lot warmer at that time.

I just want to go back a little bit to Ms. Hinton's question. She'd asked you how you felt the bill of rights would impact the current work. I'm not so sure that you actually really answered that.

I want to go back. At the time we came into play here, there were about 8,000 or 7,500 claims backlogged. I think the question was asked as to how the bill of rights would impact the current work when you had that backlog.

First, I would like to know where you are with the backlog. How have you been able to move ahead and accomplish what we talked about back in May, to start to dissolve some of those and get them off the plate? If the bill of rights comes in, what kind of impact will that actually have, when you know that you have a backlog?

I'll ask those questions first, and then I have some other ones, actually, following up from my colleague who had brought up questions. Could I have just a quick response on those, please, first?

[Victor Marchand]

All right. From a functional merit point of view of the board, the board works and deals with the rules of justice and natural justice. So we're in the business of being fair. We're in the business of being even, impartial. If the bill of rights comes to us and we are told to do even better there, we will, because it's our business to make sure that these things are applied and done right by the vets.

To me, any enhancement of that proposition or system is a good thing. That's my view of how the bill of rights can affect us. It can challenge us to do our job even better. To me, it's an asset, it's something good, it's valid.

The second thing on the backlog, yes, at the time there was an assessment done of matters not necessarily pending at the board, but matters that are presently in the hands of, or are being handled by, the advocates. The tally at that time was some 8,500 cases.

These can be phone calls, these can be vets calling in and saying “I just got a decision on a given subject. Advocates, look at my problem, give me your opinion. Should I move ahead with this matter before the board?” I think what is important to know there is that in the 8,500 a lot of these matters will never make their way to the board because there's no reason to proceed to the board with the case itself.

Last fall we blitzed the caseload the BPA had. We succeeded in hearing and rendering 500 more decisions in a period of approximately three months, mostly by using single-member panels, and that is asking for the permission of the vet and the advocate that but one member hear the case so we could hold more hearings in various locations. With that, we succeeded in literally hearing 500 more cases.

As an aside, we plan on repeating the exercise, a variation thereof, and concentrating our work and hearings in the months of April, May, and June in areas where there are many files pending. We're going to increase our capacity for three months.

At last count, there were approximately 8,000 cases pending at the BPA. There are, of that number, 4,000 cases that are being studied, reviewed, and commented upon by the BPA for further action. It is not certain that these cases will proceed at the board because they may be counselled out or the veteran may decide not to proceed. There are 700 cases being prepared by the board, because you must know that once the BPA says “I'm ready to proceed, please prepare the file for me”, we in fact prepare the files for the advocates and the clients. There are approximately 700 of those, and there are another 1,500 that have been registered with the board for eventual hearing. So that is the amount of 8,000 cases added on to one another.

We made a dent in the fall with the blitz. We want to blitz again in the spring, hopefully. We have new members, whereby our complement is up to 26 members, so our hearing capacity will be up because of that.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Am I out of time?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Yes, sir. Actually, we've allowed for 9 minutes and 50 seconds.

The way I work generally is as long as you guys are under your time limit, that's fine. The guests I allow some discretion.

We'll be on to Mr. Valley next, for five minutes.

I wanted to be able to say with regard to the situation we addressed earlier, just for clarification, if the media are here, they're able to plug into the actual House of Commons sound system in the back, which are the mikes that are turned on and off, of course, by our staff here. Anything that's extraneous to that, the press are not allowed access to, nor are staffers, for microphone purposes, etc.

[Albina Guarnieri, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

You'll notice that the microphone was where the witness was, not where the other members were. Anyway, that's fine.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

I'm just telling you the way it is.

[Albina Guarnieri, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

I'll just review the transcripts. No problem.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Now, Mr. Valley for five minutes.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

When it was my turn, he started to talk. Did you notice that?

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

Thank you very much for coming before us today.

You mentioned a couple of times that the bill of rights we're working on is going to improve service for veterans, and that's what we're all about. It's also about your board working to its capacity. You mentioned a couple of things. On May 30 you were here, and you told us about a huge number of vacancies. This deals with the veterans bill of rights because I want to make sure that your board has the capacity to do this.

I called you on September 25 because there had not been a lot of appointments. My question is, how many appointments were made to your board from January to May, and then from May to September 25? When I called you, you expected a lot to happen very quickly then. You've told us that 17 new appointments have happened. Can you give me the timeframe on when they happened? On September 25 you expected a lot of things to happen. You just mentioned a bump in the fall, and you were able to take care of a lot of cases. How many more appointments do you have to go? Are you full now?

[Victor Marchand]

No, we're not.

Our regular complement is 28 from an operational point of view. The law says we can have up to 29 permanent members and any number of temporary members. We got six members in the fall of 2005. We got two members in June of 2006, three more in the fall of 2006, and we just had six appointments in early 2007. That should tally up to 17.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

That information must be public. We'd be able to get that off your board. We'd enjoy seeing that.

I'm sorry, how many do you have left to do?

[Victor Marchand]

Our regular operational complement is 28, and we're presently at 26, so two more. I've always asked for what I call operational spares. Like a fleet manager of an airline, it's always good to have operational spares when you've got a plane down, or you've got a member down for illness. I've seen the board go up to 30. With that, from an operational point of view, it's very comfortable.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

That leads to my next question.

With the bill of rights, as already mentioned, we intend to improve services for veterans. We know that you serve veterans from bygone days to the new veterans who are coming out as we speak. The complexity of their cases is getting to be more and more complex as the years go by, with different areas that have to be looked into.

The cases you have had in the past may be complex because of time, but there are issues out there now that we'd never dreamed of, that our soldiers have to face in the current areas they're serving. Is the complexity of cases going to cause the backlog to grow? Is the sheer number of veterans we're going to be putting out in the next little while going to cause your backlog to grow? If so, how do you plan on dealing with that part of it?

[Victor Marchand]

The answer to dealing with more complex cases is clear: it's training, training, training for the board members.

The increasing complexities exist in the nature of medical conditions: not in the factual happening of the event, causative of damage or of the disability, but rather in the area of medicine. Training will always be required to stay abreast of the various medical conditions out there. It's as simple as that.

No, I don't foresee that the complexity of conditions will enhance or aggravate the backlog. What in fact can create delays is the preparation of the files in relation to expert testimony or expert reports. Often it is the availability of medical expertise--and this is strictly procedural, and almost a societal problem--where vets have difficulty finding an expert to look at their condition. So it's not the complexity of the condition but the availability of the expert to look at the condition that often creates a delay in the preparation of cases.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

If you hadn't talked so long, Mr. Chairman.... I'm just kidding.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Sir, I didn't start timing until after.... It's 5 minutes and 18 or 20 seconds.

Now, we're on to Mr. Roy.