Veterans Affairs Committee on March 11th, 2008

[Colleen Calvert]

The initiative we have taken is that for the past two and a half years we've invited somebody from Veterans Affairs to come with us every time. We travel every month, and four times a year we do big travelling road shows across the province. We invite somebody from Veterans Affairs all the time. We are connected right in with the social workers in VA, so that we have a direct referral, if a veteran's family or a veteran comes in looking at accessing services. We have gone out of our way to educate ourselves in what services and resources are there.

My staff work hand in hand with anybody we can get our hands on, and we take them out on the road. If I'm doing a deployment briefing for 350 family members, I invite VA to come in and set up a display and hand out those brochures and all that information.

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

How is it working?

[Colleen Calvert]

It's tremendous. We've had great response.

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

And there is great acceptability by Veterans Affairs to be there?

[Colleen Calvert]

Yes, absolutely.

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

You talked earlier about duplication of services. One of the things I think we always want in terms of that transitional part is to know how we avoid...or what is the duplication of services that you see we should be focusing on, to get rid of it?

[Colleen Calvert]

I don't know that I can speak to that one, but it's a good question.

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

But you mentioned duplication of services. When somebody mentions that we have a duplication of services, I like to know what they are so that we can actually....

I think you were talking about Canadian Forces at the time. I don't want to necessarily talk about Canadian Forces, but I want your opinion of what duplication of services there might be, as a transition to Veterans Affairs.

[Colleen Calvert]

No, I can't.... I'm really thinking about some of the duplication of services I've seen within the Canadian Forces. I'm still very unclear. I heard that in Halifax, VA was hiring a family peer support person for occupational stress injury. National Defence has a family peer support person for OSI. The family peer support person and the peer support person—the retired military member—are all working with retired and released families. Nobody's working with any current families, because they don't have any.

There's a duplication of services right there. These families should, in fact, be working with VA.

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

I think those are the things that we would be interested in hearing about. So if we could get something from you, not today but if some of those things come to mind that you're finding in your research and in your discussions and tours and as you continually meet.... What are some of those duplications, so that actually we can coordinate?

It's more about coordinating to get rid of the duplication, because whether it's operational stress or whatever, they're on both sides of the border here, in terms of the border being the transition between CF and veterans. So we're very much interested in learning, to get rid of duplication, because duplication does not always have a consistent message, and I think that's the biggest issue, quite honestly, for it.

You mentioned a shortage of doctors. How do you work with communities to get the shared services of medical professions that are needed? You have shortages in the Canadian Forces, I suspect. We have it in serving our veterans in particular hospitals and clinics, and we obviously have it in the general public. Do you have any ideas on how we can work with the general public to share the best we can and take advantage of those professional services?

We have to be innovative somehow, because we can't snap our fingers and get a doctor or some of the professional services.

[Wendy Purcell]

Absolutely.

I guess it would be making yourself knowledgeable enough of what is out there so that you can actually source out some of the physicians who are readily available and taking new patients or serving families. We know in calling a hospital that they have a big list of all the doctors who are currently taking new patients. You can contact your local physician and he or she should be able to give you a number of places that you can contact as well.

In our situation, if we're being posted around, we can't just say, because we're Canadian Forces, now we're here and we need a doctor. It doesn't happen that quickly. It doesn't happen just because we are that.... We're in the whole pot with the general public.

[Colleen Calvert]

But Canadian Forces families shouldn't be in the whole pot with the general public. They've already made huge sacrifices.

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

Bring that back. You said—

[Colleen Calvert]

I said Canadian Forces families shouldn't be the same as the general public. The general public isn't making sacrifices on behalf of this nation.

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

But veterans tend to be in, once they come through. We're talking about veterans here. So when they come out, we have to somehow work with the general public in terms of those services.

[Colleen Calvert]

Absolutely, but when it comes to medical...the comment was made that day care is a provincial issue. Well, it's the Government of Canada and the Canadian Forces saying you're moving to Lower Pumphandle, Saskatchewan, and too bad, so sad, there's no day care. So that military member, or whoever, is going to get out, and you've just lost a whole bunch of money.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

It's these nasty time constraints. When their turn is up, they all want to speak longer, but then everybody else wants to get a turn. It's a real conundrum.

We'll go now to the Liberal Party of Canada and Mr. Russell for five minutes.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Thank you once again.

I want to return to the theme I started. I'm not much of a one for too many silos, believe me, or these jurisdictional debates. I sometimes think that even we make comments here saying, listen, we only want to ask questions that have a direct impact on our mandate. We run the risk, too, of running some interference in terms of what services are provided to various individuals.

I think about the most extreme case, where a life does get lost over jurisdictional disputes. We passed a motion in the House of Commons, called Jordan's principle, over a very similar situation, where you had a provincial and federal government or a first nations government arguing over who the hell was going to pay for care, and somebody's life got lost because of it.

But I want to come back to transition. We have somebody active in the service, and they can go to you. They leave; I don't know where they go. They become a veteran, or at some point they may access VA. What happens to them? They're with CF, and they have a counsellor or maybe a physician at CF. If they're out, I would say that the CF is not paying, or they may not pay, particularly if it's a CF physician or psychologist. So they have nobody in that interim period, and they may or may not know what the hell is out there under VA. What happens in that transition?

Colleen, you were in for 21 years.

I'm not sure about you, Wendy. Were you a civilian?

[Wendy Purcell]

I was a civilian, yes.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

So, Colleen, maybe you can relate to this a little bit. Again, maybe there's something here we can suggest.

[Colleen Calvert]

I was not educated about anything available to me when I was released from the Canadian Forces, and that's what's still happening today.

We have a number of military members who have been injured who are working directly with us, and they provide my 24-hour, 7-day-a-week family information referral services. These guys are with me for a year or two until they get their medical release. I'm talking to them every day, and they say that when they're being released, they feel like the proverbial arm in a bucket of water: when they pull it out, there's no hole there and they feel as if they've been totally abandoned. Half the time, they're not educated about anything that's available to them, especially through VA. It's a case of, sign here, sign here, sign here, then bye-bye.

There needs to be some kind of a transition; there needs to be some kind of an education, and it needs to be inclusive of that family.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Do you guys provide information about Veterans Affairs programming?

[Colleen Calvert]

No, we invite VA to come in and provide that.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

So there is some overlap.