Veterans Affairs Committee on March 6th, 2008

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Sir, you're 37 seconds over, but it doesn't mean you can't come up later.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Okay. Thank you, sir.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

You see, this way they have opportunity. It keeps them fresh. You've inspired them to further questions. They can carry on later. It's all good.

Now over to Monsieur Perron

of the Bloc Québécois. You have five minutes.

[Gilles-A. Perron, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. Peate, I am going to go back to the questions of residence and domicile, and the question of home care. Only a few weeks ago, we were in Todd Russell's riding, and we heard testimony that described a truly shocking story. An aboriginal man who had fought in the Second World War was going to be removed from his little village. The man was living peacefully with his family and they were caring for him as best they could. But because of a lack of resources, he was sent to Halifax, to a home or a hospital. The man didn't commit suicide, he simply refused any medical care. A few months, or weeks, or days later—the time is not the issue—he died.

When we are told that kind of story, we realize we have a long way to go in taking care not only of our veterans, but also our seniors. The same thing happens in everyday life as well. I don't see how we can uproot a fellow from the far reaches of Abitibi and put him in a home in Montreal, where he is to live out his days. That is asking people to die like dogs. I think we should be making an effort—and I hope you would agree with this—to help the natural caregivers to care for their father or mother and provide care in their community. With the technology we have today, we can care for them long-distance so they can keep their feet in their own backyard and on the land where they love to live.

Mr. Peate, I would like to hear your comments on this subject.

[Les Peate]

There's no doubt about it, whether you're looking at a veteran or a senior, it doesn't make any difference. It is better for the person, better for the individual, and it's certainly more economical to provide the necessary care and support to keep the individual at home as long as possible. This, I believe, is part of the policy of Veterans Affairs now. This is, for instance, why they have the VIP program. This is one of the reasons.

I'm old already, but when I get older I hope I'll be able to stay at home. Sure, there's no doubt about it, if people have no family, for example, we have places like the Perley; we have places like Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, which would be a good place to go. To get a veteran and shove him around like a piece of merchandise or something else, or like the railroad shoves the empty trucks down into a siding, out of sight, no, that is not it. I would say that we would certainly be very much in favour of keeping the veteran at home as long as possible. This, I believe, is the policy of Veterans Affairs. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure they are more and more inclined towards providing assistance in the form of things like the VIP.

[Gilles-A. Perron, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

If young people like my friend here want to care for their aging father or dying mother, could we not give these natural caregivers tax benefits to encourage them to take care of their old folks, of their parents? I hate the expression “old folks”; I will use the word “parents” instead.

An effort has been made in Quebec. I don't know whether I like how it is working. The government is helping to make alterations to homes so that they can be intergenerational housing, so that people can take their father or their mother or their grandfather into their home. That is still not enough to suit me.

[Les Peate]

I think that makes sense. As I said, it's perhaps more of a social issue than purely a veterans' issue.

I know there are certain incentives. For instance, I believe you get tax credits if you're supporting a parent, or something like that. In some cases, I seem to remember that grants were made over the years for things like building what they used to call a “grandmother” apartment, an extra apartment in your building to keep your--

[Gilles-A. Perron, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

These are homes where several generations live together.

[Les Peate]

I'm not an expert on that. It's more or less out of my field. But I agree with you. The bottom line is, it's certainly better to keep your veteran at home, if you can. And I think that's the policy of Veterans Affairs.

[Gilles-A. Perron, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Thank you, sir.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Over to the Conservative Party of Canada and Mr. Shipley for five minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Peate, for being back with us again as you were in October, as part of our successful discussions around putting in place the ombudsman for Veterans Affairs. We hope the process, in terms of health care for our veterans in the VIP, becomes as successful in the end. It seems to be taking a long while. We just want to be thorough and make sure the product put forward is one that's good for everyone.

One of the things you mentioned about your allies not wanting to give some credit to.... One veteran told me one thing worse than having to fight along with allies is having to fight without them. So I think we always recognize how important it is to have our allies with us, even in the conflict we're in today.

You say veterans are not recognized. If you were in the conflict in the Korean War, you're not recognized as veterans.

[Les Peate]

That's because I wasn't in the Canadian army; I was in the British army.

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

But if you're in the Canadian army, you are recognized.

[Les Peate]

The Canadian army, of course, recognizes veterans.

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

Okay.

One of the things you talked about.... When we were going through earlier discussions, you indicated there are not enough claimants in the PTSD issue. People don't put their names forward.

We've heard a lot of reasons, or at least comments, why someone won't.... One of the issues is that we need to have different communications, a different education system for them. I think you have touched on one, which is that in some cases people don't want to acknowledge they've got an issue or a problem.

I'm looking for some ideas you might have that would help us raise that awareness, lower the concern that somebody would have, by coming forward and saying they've got this disease that affects them mentally, and physically also.

[Les Peate]

One way, of course, is through publications. I'm not going to plug the publication I write for, but nevertheless.... I write a veterans column in a military magazine. I've been constantly urging people, pointing out there's no shame in applying for post-traumatic stress disorder. It's an injury just as much as if you were hit by a shell. Just because there's no blood, it doesn't mean you're not suffering from an injury.

One of the more pleasant phone calls I got was from a guy who had quite an interesting time in Korea. He rode in the back of an unarmed aircraft looking for targets he had fired rockets at. Then the high-performance aircraft came and shot them and napalmed them and things like that. He said he had never thought of this. He decided to put in for it. To his surprise, he's getting treatment and getting a 60% pension from Veterans Affairs for it. He thanked me for letting him know.

We can do it through the Legion Magazine, and we've done it. We can do it through the Veterans Affairs newsletter. But there's an ingrained feeling I think that it is somehow shameful to admit you're suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. And there isn't.

It's very hard to explain to a very mature generation that there's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing wrong with claiming you've got it. People live with it. They bottle it up and they get worse. I find I can sleep at night, but a lot of my friends can't.

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

Those are interesting comments. I'm a member of the Legion and I get the magazine. There are very interesting articles in it. All the encouragement we can give to help veterans walk forward is very good.

One of the things you talked about earlier in your speech is the differences in the Korean War. One, which I read an article about and which is in here, is DDT, and there are other issues.

What makes that war different from World War II, for example, and the conditions they were exposed to then?

[Les Peate]

Let's use the political reason first of all, if we may. People often ask why it was necessary. I hate to give everybody a history lesson and waste your time, but I don't think many people here were around in 1936.

In 1936, Italy invaded Abyssinia—Ethiopia, as it is now. Abyssinia applied to the then-League of Nations, saying, “Help, help, help!” The League of Nations did nothing. The only concession they made was that Britain wouldn't let the Italians put troop ships through the Suez Canal.

What happened? You had Mussolini, you had Hitler, you had Tojo. These people were encouraged. They saw they could get away with this sort of thing, and they did, and eventually we had World War II.

Now look at 1950. The same thing happened. You had a bullying nation starting to throw its weight around, and South Korea appealed to the United Nations for help. This time they didn't sit back. They sent troops and medical people from 21 nations, who served in Korea to push the North Koreans out.

This was a time when there was a great deal of communist aggression: they were pushing into Europe; China was getting antsy. Who knows what might have happened if we hadn't stood firm and said enough is enough, and that's it? This is why I think the Korean War was important.

I don't look upon myself as a knight in shining armour and a saviour of democracy; nevertheless, it could have been.... That's one reason why it was different.

Secondly, as far as Canadians were concerned, it was different because of where we served. People have served in hot countries; people have served in cold countries. Korea had extremes of climate, massive rain storms; the climate was terrible, and the country itself was terrible. I heard an Australian say that if Australia were looking for the worst place in the world to send their troops to fight, Korea would have been it.

As an example of why we have ailments, the ground had been fertilized with human excrement for centuries. These are the places that our troops were digging into. You dug a hole in it and you lived in a hole there. Is it any wonder that Korea veterans are suffering? Of course, to counteract the effects of this, we had the ubiquitous DDT. I think the cure was probably worse than the problem.

This is why we felt this was important.

Thirdly, the first troops we sent to Korea.... We had very few troops left. We disbanded after World War II. All we had were three infantry battalions, nothing left to defend Canada. We had to rush out and recruit a special force from volunteers, and they did it in no time. The first troops to go to Korea were all volunteers. They did it in such a rush that amongst other people they enlisted a man with one leg, a 70-year-old, and heaven knows how many 14-year-old boys.

But they did it. They volunteered, and they got them out in a rush, in a matter of weeks. This is one of the things that makes it different.

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

Thank you.

[Les Peate]

I'm sorry for the history lesson.

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

It was interesting. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Sir, don't apologize; that was a fascinating insight. We appreciate those types of things. That's why we particularly enjoy your visit.

Now we go to Mr. Valley, with the Liberal Party, for five minutes.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

Thank you.

I'm not sure I expressed my question very well last time, but we just travelled to some bases and we're looking forward to visiting a couple more very quickly--I think Valcartier and Petawawa. You mentioned incident reports and how vital they are to us--tracking medical records and making sure we can provide veterans with the coverage they need, pensions, and everything else.

I was surprised that at the base I visited last summer it was totally the opposite to what we saw last fall. Last fall they stressed incident reporting. Everything had to be written down and documented. You've been through a whole life of this, so you know how important that is.

When I was on the base, reservists were being trained, and a lot of them were sent to Afghanistan after that. You mentioned your sergeant yelling at you. I experienced that firsthand. There was no way that anybody who was hurt in this whole group we were with was ever going to report anything. The lieutenant was adamant that if you got hurt you shut your mouth and did not say anything to anybody. I was surprised at that because, being reservists, these people wouldn't have had that background on how important the incident thing was. I think it's something we have to standardize through all levels of the military. Whatever service they're in, they have to document that.

I just want your comments on that. Have you noticed, throughout your long experience, different levels of tracking systems and service?

[Les Peate]

Yes. In some cases, records get lost or burned. These things happen.

The other thing that's interesting is if you're sick in the service now, you go to the medical officer and he gives you some pills. It wasn't done that way in Korea or World War II. If you were sick you went on what they referred to as sick parade. You had to dress up in your best uniform, your full kit. You were inspected. If the sergeant who was inspecting you didn't think your cap badge was shiny enough or your webbing was blancoed well enough, you'd be on the charge. Then you'd go along and eventually get to see the medical officer. If you were lucky, you got treatment; if you weren't....

I can give you an example. When I was in the Canadian Forces I brought two people to the medical inspection room. The MO said, “I'm going home now. The first person who's ready for me I'll give excused duty. The second person will get M and D.” That meant medicine and duty, or, in other words, they gave you a pill and sent you back. One poor guy had blisters on his feet and had to take his boots and socks off. The other guy had a sore throat. So guess what happened? That was literally how some of these things happened.

I noticed that my hearing was going when I was on a French language course. I went to the medical officer and said, “I think I'm losing my hearing.” So he got his glasses out and starting tapping on the glasses case and said, “What am I doing?” I said, “You're tapping on your glasses case.” He said, “Oh, that's all right. You can hear me.” I said, “I can't hear you; I can see you right out of the corner of my eye.” Nevertheless, no sick report was made out. When I applied for a hearing pension many years later when I was on another French course with the public service and couldn't hear the tape recorder, they found no record at all of my reporting that problem in the first instance. They do those things.

They get lost and misplaced. Sometimes rather than go through all this stuff on sick parade--maybe someone sprained his ankle or something like that--a guy would just stay and hope it went away in a couple of days.

There are a lot of problems with any system of documentation. I was with another government department and we lost people's records; we lost documents. I was with unemployment insurance and we sometimes lost a person's record of employment. The poor individual had to wait months before getting UI. So it happens. It's a way of life that documents get lost.