Veterans Affairs Committee on June 8th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Thank you very much.

Now we're going to be moving to the Conservative Party, with Mr. Shipley, for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I also want to congratulate and thank the minister for being a part of this discussion today. I want to tell you I'm impressed with this committee, Mr. Chair and Mr. Minister. We're all here, with partisanship mainly aside, to do what we can best do for our veterans. We had Mr. Marchand here the other day. He spoke well in trying to educate us about the review process, and obviously that has raised questions because of the backlog, which you've tried to address to some extent today.

But if you wouldn't mind, I'll go to a general context we've all touched a bit. From time to time we have veterans come into our offices who are concerned and sometimes a little frustrated about a process, whether it deals with a disability, pensions, or a number of the issues veterans have. I'm wondering what direction you might be looking at, or what fine tuning may be looked at, so that these folks get to a little lower level of frustration.

Mr. Rota brought up the financial impact, and I appreciate that, because it's so important, but I would just like to hear from your heart, because I know you have a real sense for this. Could you talk to us just a little bit about what you have in your mind on some of those things we may have to do some fine tuning of?

[Greg Thompson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Shipley.

Everyone in the room, every member of Parliament, in a way, is almost an ombudsman for veterans, aren't they? I'm always amazed at how many letters I get, as the Minister of Veterans Affairs, from individual members of Parliament. There is a connection between members of Parliament and veterans for the very obvious reason that they fought for the democracy and freedoms we enjoy as one of the best examples of democracy in the free world. So there is a natural connection to members of Parliament and obviously between members of Parliament and our legions and veterans groups, because they work with our veterans very closely, as well.

I think that really goes back to the new Veterans Charter. We work through that. At Veterans Affairs, we have extremely talented and very dedicated individuals with huge caseloads who are trying to work through a system....

I believe I am correct in this number: I believe that five years ago we had approximately 9,000 applications a year before Veterans Affairs. Prior to the new charter, we had 35,000 applications per year before Veterans Affairs. That is just an astronomical increase. It's a 400% increase in applications. All those people are human beings, and there are families attached to those decisions. It shows you just how difficult it is to manage all that.

On top of that, we have an appeal process that truly is the best in the world. If a veteran is denied, we have an internal review process within the department to take another look at it. If we go to the appeal board, we have pension advocates--professional lawyers--who will represent the veterans when they appear before the tribunal, the quasi-judicial body.

So we have an appeal mechanism unlike any in the country. I guess if we were living in a perfect world, we wouldn't have as many appeals as we have, or the answers would be quicker and more forthcoming. But there have to be checks and balances in the system.

That was one of the things that drove the government to move to a new charter, to a new way of dealing with veterans, because in the old system, the only doorway for veterans to qualify for any level of service for anything else that might come their way was to have a pensionable condition.

I think one of the failings under the old charter was that we didn't concentrate on the wellness of the veteran and his or her family. A veteran might have been successful in getting a 20% pension, if you will. What we should have been doing, in my opinion, in hindsight--but hindsight is always 20/20, and we learn as we go along--is more than just hand out a pension. It is like the old axiom: give a man a fish, you feed him for a day; teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

That's a little of the philosophy behind the new charter. What we're saying is that the age of a veteran coming out of the Canadian Forces is 36. That means that by definition, he has about 29 years of work ahead of him or her in the workforce.

Under the new charter we're really addressing, Mr. Shipley, that frustration level, because a 20% pension, and I'm not trying to be crass and I'm not saying this in a pejorative way, is almost a prescription for poverty. We would see a lot of these veterans coming in and their only hope of getting ahead was to get more pension and get the pension from 20% to 40%, 50%, 60% or 70%.

If you talk to any of these veterans, they say that the best thing we could have done for them was provide them and their families with an education to get beyond where they were. There are some veterans that can't. We know that, and we have the permanent disability program for them. We have all those types of programs for veterans who can't be rehabilitated, if you will, and are totally disabled.

For the average veteran, I believe the disability award or the pensionable range was somewhere around 30%. You could ask yourself, “Could I live on that amount of money”? Well, the answer is no. So under the new charter there is emphasis on the family. For example, if somehow the veteran himself or herself could not be retrained, that same retraining and the funding to do that would be extended to the spouse of the veteran. I guess the fancy socialists would call it the holistic approach, but it's really a family approach to dealing with veterans, because it's more than just the veterans; it's their families. I hope over time this will ease some of the burdens that are placed on families.

I can remember coming to Veterans Affairs and sitting beside Brian Ferguson. I was pushing him hard on some of the same questions you're giving me. He said, “You know, we'll never give up on a veteran.” We will never give up on a veteran. We're going to do everything we can for that veteran and their family. So if this fails, we'll try something else.

Going back to Mr. Perron's question, and I guess Mr. Thibault's--it's sort of a theme here today--as many of you know, when we launched the new charter it was right here with the Prime Minister on April 6, sort of the kickoff of the new charter. Roméo Dallaire was in the room that day, and he was talking about building this bridge. I had met with him two days prior to the launch, and it was one of the best meetings I could have had. It was one of those days when I had a lot on my mind and was wondering whether I was doing the right thing or not. He said, “What you're doing, Mr. Thompson, is building a bridge that will transition us from military life to civilian life.” He thought that bridge was well constructed and well engineered, and said, “You're not going to take just the veteran across that bridge; you're going to take their family, which is something that has never occurred in the past.”

I don't want to run on and take up all of your time, the chair's time, or the committee's time, but I think that's really fundamental to what we're doing at Veterans Affairs. It's sort of a new approach, knowing that the old charter had sort of done its deed, if you will. If you examine some of the programs that existed following World War II and how successful they were, I guess with time they kind of wore themselves out.

I'm pretty confident that what we're doing is the right thing. At the end of the day, we're going to have better programs for our veterans and better opportunities to get them through some of the difficulties they experience.

As I often say in my speeches, it's not just bullets and bombs that affect our soldiers. We're talking about some of the stresses they're under when they're in extremely high-risk missions. Whether it's our RCMP officers in some of the streets of our downtowns, as witnessed last week in Toronto, or a young soldier in Afghanistan, the stress of that type of work and being away from your family is something that most of us can't imagine. So when they come back, we'd better have a wide range of tools and support systems to help them and their families. That's why I feel pretty good about what we're doing.

As we say, we're not going to get it perfect, but what we have is an open book. We're going to depend on people like yourselves to help us come up with better ways of dealing with it. I guess what I'm saying is I feel pretty good about it.

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

Thank you, Mr. Thompson, and you actually answered my second question.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Mr. Shipley, you'll be honoured to know that your five minutes turned into ten.

Now we're over to Mr. Valley for five minutes.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

Thank you. Do I get ten minutes too, Mr. Chairman? Probably not.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Mr. Valley, it's at the discretion of the chair.

[A voice]

You're a Liberal.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

I'm a Liberal. I'm pretty low on the totem pole here.

[Greg Thompson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

I don't mind ten minutes, Mr. Chair.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

Thank you very much for coming here today. Minister, I heard you mention an awful lot of times--and it surprised me--what a good job we're doing. We've had that education since this new committee started. We've heard many times that we've got a lot of things right, and we're trying to improve the things we don't for the very reasons you mentioned--to make sure that veterans are the ones who benefit from our work.

It's also clear that as minister you've taken ownership of the new veterans charter, and I commend you for that. I have a very quick question, and would like to ask you another question after that . You spoke very passionately about Ste. Anne's Hospital, so if we have time I'd like to get to that.

Is there any difference in the charter from what we passed unanimously in the House to what was launched on April 6?

[Greg Thompson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

The interesting thing about the charter.... And I know the chairman will probably get upset at Mr. Thompson, but these are interesting questions, and they deserve interesting responses. One of the weaknesses of the charter, as you well know, is that it was never debated in the House of Commons. That's not a reflection on the government. It's not a reflection on individual members or the minister. It was embraced by all parties, so it wasn't debated in the House.

The knowledge level of the new charter, which normally all of us would have known more about simply because you are in the House, it's being debated, it's being reported by journalists, and there's always that back and forth we see in the House of Commons.... Some days, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to the public, but the whole process is educational. That's been one of the difficulties that really has been a challenge to the department, where the knowledge level that would be held by all of us as individual members of Parliament and even the press gallery itself wasn't there, because it wasn't a really exciting debate. The debate simply didn't occur.

We can identify some areas in the charter that may need some fixing or fine-tuning as we go along, but I think the model is pretty good and probably will withstand the test of time. But real changes can be made. I say it's an open book, and it is open to debate in some areas. I have identified some areas I might be uncomfortable with, but we'll have to see how it plays out. Some of these areas we'll have time to fix in terms of how the benefits would flow to a spouse or a widow, if you will. And often we have to be careful when we are talking; we often say a widow, but it could be a widower, or a family.

I think time is on our side in terms of some of the areas we might have to revisit. That is the beauty of a committee like this, Mr. Valley. The committee can take a look at the charter and take the time to deliberate and do some of the things like a careful examination that didn't occur in the last Parliament.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

Thank you. Some of us also felt it should have been debated, not necessarily to change, but to get on the record how we felt about it.

I'll be very quick, because I know I'll be cut off, but thank you for recognizing the value of that. And thank you for the opinion of an open book, because in my short time in government or on the back benches of government, I found it very difficult to keep an open book on anything, because the Department of Finance doesn't like that. I'm sure you'll have to fight that battle.

You spoke passionately about Ste. Anne's Hospital and the $368 million that was spent there. I believe this is the hospital that has the ombudsman.

[Greg Thompson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Yes.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

You spoke about visiting it and the quality of care, the excellent care that they're getting. You feel that's partly because of the ombudsman, because it's the only facility with one, as I understand.

I'm wondering if you can elaborate on that. Is that part of your drive: an ombudsman for all of them? I understand that particular person deals with health care.

[Greg Thompson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

That's interesting. That's the first time that question has been put to me. I hadn't thought of it myself. As Mr. Thibault would tell you, when you are appearing before a committee, you're trying to sort out what some of these questions might be, anticipating some of them, and just guessing about some of them as well. That is one I hadn't thought of. Thinking in terms of the question and your reflections on the ombudsman, I would say that it is.

I believe in openness and transparency in how information is transmitted. Just for an individual or a patient to know that person is there to serve them and the operation of the hospital overall probably would be enhanced by the ombudsman.

It's like Parliament. I believe Parliament works when we have openness, when things can be openly debated, and if you have a complaint, there's a place to take it. It creates another level of openness that otherwise might not occur.

There are facilities where ombudsmen aren't present. That is a huge facility, but it appears to be working well. If I'm not mistaken, it's one of the areas the Royal Canadian Legion initially identified as a model of the ombudsman working fairly well at Ste. Anne's Hospital.

It's a point well taken, Mr. Valley, and I think it's an example of how an ombudsman can do good work for all of us.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

Thank you.

Do I have time for another?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

I'm sorry, Mr. Valley, but you'll be happy to know the minister was also tight on time on that one.

Now we're over to Mr. Sweet of the Conservative Party, for five minutes.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Thank you.

I will pick up where Mr. Valley left off.

Thank you for coming.

I just wanted to say—and it's already been alluded to—that both Mr. Marchand and Ms. Bruce, the last time they were before the committee, gave a very cogent and complete presentation that really educated me. So I'm seeking some more education here.

How many institutions like St. Anne's do we have across the country?

[Greg Thompson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

St. Anne's is the only major institution of its kind presently under the direction of Veterans Affairs. Over the years a lot of these types of facilities have been integrated into other provincial systems, if you will, but it's the only veterans hospital that we have in Canada presently.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

But there are other facilities under contract, where we have a certain number of beds?

[Greg Thompson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Presently in Canada, we have about 11,500 long-term-care beds in the country, and St. Anne's would only be one of those. So we're working with the provinces, for example, where we have stand-alone facilities. For example, we have them in my home province of New Brunswick.

I did look at the numbers, but I believe that aside from St. Anne's, where I think there are 449 beds, the other 11,000 beds are in institutions outside of St. Anne's. They are facilities under our care, but St. Anne's is one of a kind in the country.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

And the ombudsman at St. Anne's, I have to assume, is a full-time position?

[Greg Thompson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Yes, it's a full-time position. That's correct.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

So the ombudsman for the entire Veterans Affairs is going to have his or her hands full.