Veterans Affairs Committee on March 19th, 2013

[An hon. member]

With vets.

[Lt (N) Louise Richard]

Yes, with veterans, just like in the United States, something like the research advisory committee on Gulf War illnesses, where it's based on science, research, and facts, by scientists, not Veterans Affairs Canada.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Peter Stoffer]

Thank you, Madame Richard

Mr. Casey, thank you.

We now move on to Mr. Young, please.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you very much, Madame Richard, for being here today.

I want to congratulate you on your advocacy, which I find very courageous. I am very, very pleased to hear that your mother was recognized with the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal. I think you should also be recognized for your leadership in a similar way and I hope that happens. If it hasn't happened already, I hope it happens soon.

I imagine your biggest challenge was telling everybody what was happening and nobody believed you. It must have been very lonely with the two of you working together.

[Marie Richard, As an Individual]

She is educating the doctors, her specialists.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Yes, so congratulations.

I'd like to ask you three brief questions, if I may, and then give you an open question because I'd like you to summarize for me and the committee members.

You said Canada is not doing research on these matters. What conclusion have you drawn on why Canada isn't? Could you give me a brief answer on that? Then I'd like to move on. Why isn't Canada doing research on these matters?

[Lt (N) Louise Richard]

Well, I think it's like anything. If you don't deal with it, it doesn't exist.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

It's like wilful blindness, or is it a cost issue? What conclusion have you drawn?

[Lt (N) Louise Richard]

To me there should not be a cost associated to any care for veterans regardless of what it is.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Do you think it has been a cost issue, or do you just think that it was such a big problem no one wanted to talk about it, that they hoped it would go away?

[Lt (N) Louise Richard]

I think it's all of the above, but the fact that the headquarters of Veterans Affairs is in Charlottetown is far from being helpful. It should be here in Ottawa.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

You broke down two categories of injury or illness, which were trauma and stress. Is Gulf War illness a third category, or would you categorize it as a trauma?

[Lt (N) Louise Richard]

It's an illness on its own.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

It's in the third category.

How many veterans have been affected as you have been? Sorry, I'm new to the committee. How many veterans have been affected?

[Lt (N) Louise Richard]

I wish I knew the answer, sir.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Do you have any idea?

[Lt (N) Louise Richard]

Canada doesn't do any statistics or research, so we don't really have any data. It's word of mouth, but back in the early 2000s, I knew of close to 400.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

I'd like to ask you an open question and give you the rest of my five minutes. It might be three-and-a-half or four minutes.

Can you give me a list of actions that you think the government should take now if you were in charge, that is, things that you feel were addressed in the report appropriately and were helpful, and things that were not addressed in the report? Can you give me a brief list so the committee can do its deliberations and take action and make recommendations based on what you've noticed has either been missing or has been addressed appropriately.

[Lt (N) Louise Richard]

The immediate thing that needs to be done is to establish an independent, active, medical scientific advisory board. We're dealing with difficult to understand serious chronic illnesses. We need specialists like in the United States and Britain. That's the first thing I would do. We would have real doctors and we would meet with real people, not have a kind of paper warfare. That seems to be the only way Veterans Affairs works. It has to be tangible and face to face. We should have the nucleus here in Ottawa where we have access to all these specialists and universities, and maybe have hubs in each province or OSI clinics to make sure there's a continuity, and a national standard of care, which is not there now. Right now, it seems that whoever gets that application and however they interpret the policies is the flavour of the day. That has to stop.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

What other things should we do?

[Lt (N) Louise Richard]

We should absolutely have veterans be part of this active medical scientific advisory board. Honestly, and this has been asked not just by me but by Sean Bruyea and all kinds of veterans and advocates through SNAG, the special needs advisory group, and through the Office of the Veterans Ombudsman. VAC is broken.

When I went to war and I started coming home with all these illnesses, they decided to tweak the table of disability in 2000. We had already been falling through the cracks for 10 years. Then you find out it hadn't been amended since 1919.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

What's the best way to fix it?

Do you have any other suggestions as to how to fix it? That would be helpful.

[Lt (N) Louise Richard]

To me it's just a system that's broken. It doesn't work for us anymore. It cannot just be about policy, and beg and apply, deny and appeal, and all of this stuff. That has to stop. People are dying at the doors of Veterans Affairs waiting for decisions and waiting for a disability pension. Families are broken. When things aren't happening from VAC we have to go out and find it on our own. Most veterans don't have that kind of money. They're sick. They're vulnerable. They need help. Veterans Affairs needs to seek them out, not the other way around.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Peter Stoffer]

Thank you, Madame Richard.

We now go to Ms. Mathyssen, please.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Richard, it's good to see you here and it's very courageous of you to provide this testimony.

I've heard a number of technical things about DU and whether it's toxic or not toxic. It seems to me that we're talking about something far more human than just the scientific evidence. I wanted to ask you about these inoculations that you received. It sounds to me like a terrifying cocktail.

How did you know that some of them were experimental? Where did you get that information?