Veterans Affairs Committee on May 9th, 2013

[Robert Reynolds]

I'm not either.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

If I were a Canadian who served in Afghanistan alongside U.S. troops and I moved, say, to California and became a U.S. citizen and I was developing problems because of my service, in some cases there may be assistance in Canada.

Do you know of any program that assists any allied veterans in the United States in that regard?

[Thomas Murphy]

I do not.

[Robert Reynolds]

No, I do not.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Gentlemen, thank you very much for your time. I greatly appreciate it.

I'm just kidding about the tie, by the way.

[Robert Reynolds]

That's okay.

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

You'll get used to him. Send him a hat. I think that's what he would like.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

A hat would be nice, and send up any pins you have.

[Robert Reynolds]

Okay.

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

We'll get back to business, if we could.

We have Mr. Lizon from the government side for five minutes, please.

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Thank you very much.

Welcome, gentlemen. Thank you for your great service.

The first question I have is on what measures the United States have taken to simplify procedures and processes in the amount of paperwork required to receive benefits and services from the Veterans Affairs department.

[Thomas Murphy]

That's everyday business for us. The idea is, how do I reduce the administrative burden I'm putting on individuals, number one. Number two, how do I take off the obstacles to having to fill out this form, and then fill out that form, and then fill out another form? It's partly selfish and partly an impact on the veteran. Partly selfish because each time I do that it takes me longer. I'm measured on my days to complete a claim from beginning to end, so I want to reduce all that and get it down to collecting it up front.

The other part of it is the VONAPP Direct Connect. The VDC online application we're talking about is the big focus for us. It allows me to do a TurboTax-style interview to collect information from a veteran in the form of data and process that significantly faster. This won't happen until this summer, but the idea is that a veteran comes in through the eBenefits portal and goes into the VONAPP Direct Connect to complete an online application, and they answer a series of questions. Until they answer all those questions all the way to the end, the veteran doesn't even know what information and forms in great detail I've done. I pre-populate in the right forms for them and feed that into my system. I'm trying to get the veteran completely away from the paper environment. As I said earlier, we'll always maintain the ability to do it through paper, but we're trying to capture that in an automated environment.

The other thing we put in place is the ability of the veteran to hit the save button at any time, lock in their effective date for payment, and then have up to one year to come back in and put that additional information in and submit that form to us.

So every single day I get up, every day that I'm at work, I'm trying to figure out a way to make the process faster and the easier for me and for the veteran.

[Robert Reynolds]

Perhaps I could just add a quick example, and I agree, we do it every day.

When I was with our home loan section 10 years ago, a veteran would have had to fill a form out, which would have gotten sent into VA, and then one of our claims people would have typed what we call a certificate of eligibility for the home loan benefit and mailed that back to the veteran. Today, a veteran can go on eBenefits and literally click a button without entering any data and generate that certificate of eligibility. So with a click now they can get their certificate of eligibility.

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Here in Canada we've recently changed the way veterans receive benefits. They don't have to submit receipts for all the services they're eligible for, and instead they will be getting an allowance without having to submit receipts for training or for snow removal services, or other services they may be eligible for. This simplifies the amount of paperwork, of course, and bureaucracy that existed before.

Mr. Reynolds, you mentioned some transitioning programs for the veterans when they are leaving the army for medical or other reasons and they have to transition to civilian life. Do you have in the United States any preferential treatment of veterans in hiring practices in the government sector? Do you have any private sector companies that offer preferential treatment in hiring veterans?

[Robert Reynolds]

Yes, we do. For government, if you have honourably served, you get what we call a five-point preference for federal employment. It's based on a point scale. Right now every veteran gets moved to the top. If you are a service-connected disabled veteran, you get what we call a ten-point preference. As a veteran, you can also automatically generate those preference letters right on eBenefits, again with just a click of a button. You don't have to come and request those. You can do it with self-service.

Our private companies out there, in recognition of that service, I would say, are trying more and more to hire as many veterans returning as they can. I think everybody knows veterans are usually highly skilled, highly motivated, and highly trained. They bring a work ethic to the workplace. I think our private employers are seeing that as well, and they're also out there trying to market, to bring veterans on for employment.

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Thank you very much.

Do I still have time, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

Probably somewhere down the road, Mr. Lizon, you'll have more time.

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

That's the time you have today.

Mr. Casey had to leave, so we're going to wrap up with Ms. Adams for five minutes, please.

[Eve Adams, Conservative, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

Thank you very much.

Back in 2006 we passed unanimously here in our Parliament something called the new Veterans Charter, and it focuses on rehabilitation for our most seriously injured and ill veterans. It's called a living document, in that we review it. We recently updated benefits back in 2011, and we'll be reviewing it again this fall.

How does the U.S. treat the review of your benefits? Do you have something that says, statutorily, that you need to review them every so often? How do you approach that?

[Thomas Murphy]

We approach it in several ways.

One of the major ones is that there is a standing committee appointed by our secretary, in this case made up of a retired lieutenant-general and a myriad of individuals with different expertise. It's called the Advisory Committee On Disability Compensation.

They meet on a monthly basis, they discuss the issues we have, and they look at current events, current trends, and report back to the Secretary on where we could be doing better, where we're missing opportunities, where we're performing well. In that annual report it's driven back into our planning guidances going forward.

There are other committees that we talked about a few moments ago—the veterans stability committee—that are appointed from time to time.

In addition to that, we have a very robust group of veterans' service organizations that we meet with on a monthly or quarterly basis, depending on the level of the organization. I know the executive directors sit down with our Secretary, they sit down with my Under Secretary, and then I meet with them as well. Rob runs meetings with those individuals.

The point is that we get a great deal of feedback from them to make sure we're meeting the needs of the veterans going forward.

[Eve Adams, Conservative, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

You've heard about the housekeeping services we provide to our aging veterans to allow them to continue to stay in their own home—things like snow removal, grass cutting, and housekeeping services. If the aging veteran has passed away, we will continue to provide that, in many instances, to the surviving spouse.

Do you have those types of programs for surviving spouses?

[Thomas Murphy]

Again, we don't have them directly for things. We can't call it snow removal and home cleaning, but there is a level of attendance that is provided to a spouse based on a service-connected death.

[Robert Reynolds]

Right, DIC.

[Eve Adams, Conservative, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

What if it's not a service-connected death? What if it's just that they served for us in World War II and they're now aging? These are not service-related....