Evidence of meeting #3 for Veterans Affairs in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was board.
May 30th, 2006 / 3:55 p.m.
Dale Sharkey Director General, Veterans Review and Appeal Board
If you like, I can go through the presentation deck that was circulated earlier.
3:55 p.m.
Conservative
3:55 p.m.
Director General, Veterans Review and Appeal Board
I think the chairman covered a large amount of the information in this deck in his presentation, so I will try not to take too much time going through it.
Basically, it just tells a little bit about who we are and what we do and gives a bit more detail about the board process internally.
As the chairman indicated, our mandate is quite straightforward. We provide clients with a full opportunity to request review and appeal hearings and we ensure a fair adjudicative process for the disability pension and award programs, as well as for some war veterans allowance claims.
We are quasi-judicial and independent, and we have full and exclusive jurisdiction to deal with both these programs in terms of redress. We are non-adversarial. In other words, at our hearings you will find only the board members and the representative and the client. There is no one on the other side representing, for example, the department's decision.
Our headquarters is in Charlottetown, where we have around 80 staff and approximately half of our members. Our staff are focused primarily on service delivery. We have an excellent partnership with Veterans Affairs for all our corporate services. That works quite well, and we're very appreciative of that.
We do have our own legal adviser, our own training, our own operational support for our members, and our own research and quality assurance functions. Some of our members are deployed. We do not have offices across the country, but we do have approximately 50% of our members located in major centres across the country.
We have some information on the appointment process. Would you like me to go through that, Chairman?
3:55 p.m.
Director General, Veterans Review and Appeal Board
As the chairman mentioned, we established an appointment process in December 2004. Through various means of advertising since that time, most recently nationally in newspapers, we've been using the process to assess proposed members on the basis of competency and experience. It's a transparent and professional process.
It involves three stages. The first stage is something called a screening committee, where we have independent individuals who go through all the applications looking at a series of experience requirements and education requirements. Those individuals who meet the requirements are invited back for a formal written assessment to assess certain elements of knowledge, skills, and abilities. If they are successful at that stage of the process they are invited for an interview, where they are once again assessed on ability and knowledge, followed up with reference checks.
All of the information about our process can be found on our website, including the names and biographies of the individuals who participate on both the screening and interview committees.
Once the interview committee has found individuals to be qualified, they are put into a pool of qualified candidates, and based on the operational requirements of the board the minister will draw from the pool for appointments and make recommendations to the Governor in Council. I believe we gave the clerk a chart, which could be distributed, that simplifies this process in very few words.
The next chart is simply a summary of the decision-making process. It shows a bit about the volumes. As you can see, there are various levels of decision-making, so individuals have quite a few opportunities to come back to request a review of their decision: going through the department, there's an opportunity for them to have a departmental review; there are two levels of redress with the board; and then an opportunity to come back to have their decisions reconsidered on the basis of new evidence or if there is an error in fact or law. There is no limit on the number of times or the amount of time that can transpire for returning to the board, should they have new evidence. At the end of the day, they can go to Federal Court to request a judicial review.
We've given you a bit of an overview on the volumes of cases. For example, the department makes around 36,000 decisions, which we call first decisions, on disability pensions and is soon to be involved in awards. They have a 60% favourable rate; in other words, they've made decisions that are in favour of the applicant.
At the board we receive around 4,870 requests for review hearings. As you can see, not all dissatisfied applicants decide to pursue a review or appeal. We vary approximately 59% of those decisions in favour of the applicants once again.
If individuals are still dissatisfied with their disability pension or compensation decision, they can request an appeal hearing. In both of these stages it's a right of appeal. They do not have to demonstrate grounds upon which they wish to appeal; they just have to be dissatisfied with their decision. We receive about 1,510 appeal applications per year and vary around 38% of those in favour of the applicants. We receive approximately 205 applications for reconsideration yearly and reconsider 122 of them. Based on the criteria to reconsider, most of those turn out to be favourable. In any given year, we average about 25 cases at federal court.
We're not a party in federal court. It is the Attorney General and the applicant who are actually in Federal Court.
With respect to board members, we usually have about 29 board members. There are two types of board members, and it's always complicated to explain these. We're limited to 29 permanent members and any number of temporary members, based on our workload. The only difference between permanent and temporary is the eligibility for appointment tenure and the length of time for which someone can be appointed.
All members hold office during good behaviour, and it's important to note that this is a full-time occupation. Our members work full-time at the Veterans Review and Appeal Board and cannot hold another occupation while they're working for us.
We have a little map here that shows the current distribution of our members. We tend to have members located in cities where most of our work is. It's very gruelling work to be travelling around the country to hearings, and naturally we try to locate members where we have the greatest volume of workload. That tends to be in the Vancouver-Victoria areas. We're short members now, but also Edmonton, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, and Quebec City. In the Maritimes we serve Halifax, St. John's, and New Brunswick out of Charlottetown with our members.
You've probably noticed a trend there. Our greatest volumes tend to be in areas where we have significant Canadian Forces populations, since that's the majority of our clients right now.
We'll be back talking about main estimates, so I won't go into details on the budget, but we have about a $9.4 million budget, and as mentioned before, the majority of our budget is devoted directly to operational support around hearings. We report annually through Parliament with both performance reports and plans and priorities.
Our breakdown of appellants is a bit different in terms of clientele from that of the department. Most of ours tend to be Canadian Forces. Over 75% are Canadian Forces, and the remaining smaller number tends to be World War II veterans and a small number of survivors, and about 7% within that 25% would be RCMP.
Pretty well everybody is represented by the Bureau of Pensions Advocates and about 5% are represented by the Royal Canadian Legion service officers at both review and appeal levels. We do see some private solicitors or some applicants who may choose to represent themselves, but if they choose to have someone represent them it's at their own cost, as opposed to the free service provided by the Bureau of Pensions Advocates and the Royal Canadian Legion.
As I mentioned to you, our favourability rates are indicated here, and overall about 59% are varied in favour of the client at review and 38% are varied in favour of the client at appeal.
The chairman mentioned that at review, the first level of redress is the first opportunity that appellants have to appear before the individuals who actually are making a decision in their claim, so they have the opportunity to give testimony and to bring in witnesses to provide testimony. Most applicants attend their review hearings. That's probably the unique difference in adjudication between what happens in the department and what happens at the Veterans Review and Appeal Board.
We hold hearings just about every week of the year, and we have about 34 different locations that we travel to. In fact we'll go wherever there's a significant volume of cases to be heard. All of our hearings are taped. The decisions are all in writing and sent to the appellant, hopefully within 30 days of the hearing. We found in our survey--which we're soon to be releasing--that most appellants feel they've been treated with courtesy and respect, that they've had an opportunity to tell their story at an independent review, and that they had a reasonably good feeling about the hearing.
By the time a case gets to appeal the issue has become very fine and narrow, and the hearings tend to be much shorter. They're held in Charlottetown, and as mentioned, applicants do not usually attend the hearings. A large number of our hearings at appeal are written submissions. We do some by video conference and certainly, as the chairman mentioned, if an applicant really wants to hear their hearing we can plug them in by telephone for that.
Once again, decisions are sent in writing and these decisions are final and binding; however, they can apply for a reconsideration.
With the aging veteran, we have fewer and fewer war veterans allowance cases yearly. We do a handful--less than 50. Basically that's because once a veteran reaches age 65 the war veterans allowance ceases. It's an income replacement program for the veteran, basically.
There are no time limits, as mentioned. We hear very old appeals heard by agencies that existed many years ago and oftentimes people don't appeal right away. However, we know that the Canadian Forces members and former members tend to appeal much more quickly than the traditional World War II veteran did in the past, so we're seeing their cases go through far quicker.
Lastly, the board also has authority to give an award called a compassionate award. It is basically for individuals who've been refused an award under the Pension Act or the new veterans charter act and they've exhausted all levels of redress. The board, under certain types of criteria, can grant a compassionate award and fix the sum.
Lastly, I mentioned Federal Court. Fortunately, we only have about 25 cases per year that we see and we certainly pay a great deal of attention to the direction and information that comes back from the Federal Court. We are a very busy board. I think we're the third-largest board in terms of volume of cases heard per year. In the last number of years we've been hearing over 6,000 cases. We are projecting to see that continue, if not grow somewhat.
I think the chairman already talked about a service delivery standard performance as well as the benefit of the doubt, so that's a very quick summary.
I'd be happy to answer any questions.
4:05 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rob Anders
All right. Thank you very much for that presentation.
Now we are going to use Mr. Perron's schedule to move to the questions for our witnesses.
Mr. Thibault, you are up for seven minutes.
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
Robert Thibault Liberal West Nova, NS
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Marchand, Ms. Sharkey, it's a pleasure to see you here this afternoon. I want to commend you for an excellent presentation.
I have a large military base in my riding and as well there was--it's closed now--a training base. That means that a lot of people take advantage of the beauty of the Annapolis Valley in Digby County to retire, so a lot of the cases that come before your board are residents of my community, I think probably a disproportionate amount.
Mr. Marchand, you mentioned the percentage of people who appear before the tribunal and who are successful or get some sort of award. Do I remember 57%?
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
Robert Thibault Liberal West Nova, NS
That points to a problem for me, and this is a problem that a lot of people tell me about when they come to my office. It is not a problem at your level, but perhaps a problem in the bureaucracy of the Department of Veterans Affairs, where, if cases are at all contentious, it might be--and I don't want to cast aspersions on the department--it might be safer to refuse them. Maybe they would appeal; maybe they wouldn't.
I am assuming that not 100% of people who should appeal do appeal. Perhaps some who would have a story to tell don't appeal because of the problems there are. I have a couple more points I'd like to make, but I'd like you to reflect on whether you see that as a problem.
Second, and again, I don't want to cast aspersions.... I am not sure that there is, but the number makes me nervous at that level--anything above 30% should make us nervous when they are refused and do find favour with the tribunal.
The second question is on the advocates who are named for these individuals. Are they named by the tribunal, by the department? Are they employees of the department? Are they private sector legal people who are on a call list? Perhaps before I continue you could answer that for me, because it's important in the remainder of my comments.
4:10 p.m.
Chair, Veterans Review and Appeal Board
The advocates are full-time government employees who used to belong to an independent agency, which was the Bureau of Pension Advocates. In the 1995 reform, the agency was brought into the department and they all work under the chief pensions advocate. There are 40 of them, and their work is totally dedicated to the preparation and arguing of cases before the board.
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
Robert Thibault Liberal West Nova, NS
I should, again, be fair to these people, because I do hear complaints about them occasionally. But of the hundreds, if not thousands, of people with cases who live in my riding, the number of complaints I hear about the advocates is tiny. The question I would ask you to answer is do you think there is a sufficient number of them for them to be able to do a full presentation? Do we need more advocates?
I have a couple more quick points and then I'll let you respond. One more, and then if I have time, I will come back on the last one.
The board, I understand, is about a dozen members down. You have people, of course, who would be coming to the end of term quite soon. Are we at a critical period? Do you foresee that to be able to maintain with the amount of...? Because I know, as you do, that it is a long period for people who are suffering and are forced to go to appeal because they've already been refused. They already have a problem. Their cases going through the regular DVA channels take a long time, and then they are waiting to hear from you and you have a waiting time. So are we at a critical period? Do you foresee that we'll be at full complement soon?
Perhaps I could let you discuss those before I ask my final question, if we have time.
4:10 p.m.
Chair, Veterans Review and Appeal Board
To answer your last question, I'll say that yes, our number of board members is down. We do require some appointments. Representations have been made to the minister, and I am very confident that the complement will be rebuilt soon.
In the interim, we've developed a number of strategies to make sure the cases are heard in a timely fashion. We've used single-member panels as a solution. We've sent all the members out on review and, in a sense, put some appeals in abeyance for a while, so that the hearings are held in a timely fashion. The regular complement is 28 to 29 members. We're down to 19, so we will need some appointments soon.
As to whether or not we should have more advocates, I'm a lawyer. I can't understand why the world would need more lawyers, but in fact the Bureau of Pensions Advocates has recently hired...I think it's half a dozen lawyers. They are rebuilding their complement with younger and more aggressive lawyers; that should make for interesting case law.
But the advocates are moving. The Legion is getting involved in every sector in every region and is presenting cases. I think people are well served from a representation point of view. My view, having heard a lot of these cases, is that they're doing a good job.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Robert Thibault Liberal West Nova, NS
My other question asked if you think the Department of Veterans Affairs has a tendency to bounce cases to you, rather than to make difficult decisions. Do you have an opinion on that? Perhaps it's an unfair position to--
4:15 p.m.
Chair, Veterans Review and Appeal Board
I don't have an opinion. What I should tell you is the numbers. What I can tell you is what the vets want and get, and that's a hearing before a board member.
I think the vet comes to this hearing well prepared. He comes with additional evidence, often on the advice of the advocates, and that's where we assess the credibility, really. When you look at the usefulness of a hearing, you've got a definite advocate of hearings, because they work--they get to the bottom of things; they get the testimony. We make rulings on credibility; we look at the evidence right then and there; and to top it all off, we render a decision within 30 days. The board member has to make that decision right there.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
Robert Thibault Liberal West Nova, NS
Mr. Marchand, we're running out of time. Perhaps I could ask you one quick question. If you don't have a chance to answer, you might have to--
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rob Anders
Bless your heart for taking Mr. Thibault on in terms of answering the question, but his seven minutes have elapsed.
Now we have Mr. Perron.
4:15 p.m.
Bloc
Gilles-A. Perron Bloc Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC
The two presentations were practically identical, but you did not answer one of my questions. Of course, you didn't know what it was. On page 7 of your presentation, you referred to a survey identifying areas of service that could be improved. What are those areas and how can they be improved?
4:15 p.m.
Chair, Veterans Review and Appeal Board
The first thing our client satisfaction survey showed is that people are looking for quick turnaround time when dealing with an administrative tribunal. Some cases require additional evidence, expertise, or research. So, we have to find ways of processing these files quickly. Unfortunately, some files do get bogged down. In such cases, people complain at times that their case is bogged down somewhere and is not moving forward.
The second thing is that people...
4:15 p.m.
Bloc
Gilles-A. Perron Bloc Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC
Can you identify the deficiencies and suggest solutions?