Veterans Affairs Committee on April 14th, 2016

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

Is there any sense that the department did in fact learn? Are you feeling more positive about that process?

[Michael Ferguson]

Where we are feeling positive is that the department has taken all of our findings and recommendations very seriously. When we presented to them and discussed with them the results of the audits, they understood these were things that needed to be fixed and that they needed to change how they were operating this program.

In terms of this audit, the thing we identified here was that they needed to have a better feedback process to learn from the appeal decisions to make the original application process better.

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

One of my concerns with regard to the appeal process is the stress it puts on veterans. When they go to the Veterans Review and Appeal Board, they are asked a lot of questions and it can be a very intimidating kind of process, so I'm glad you investigated that and have offered that support.

In your letter of February to our chair, you said that although the department had developed a mental health strategy for veterans, it had not put performance measures in place.

Could you explain why those measures are so important? What do they accomplish? Why should VAC be pursuing those?

[Michael Ferguson]

Whether it's Veterans Affairs and this program or it's any other program, performance measures are important to understand whether the intended outcomes, the results of a program, are being achieved or not. Having a way of knowing whether the program is doing what it's supposed to be doing is very important.

One of the issues in this audit, in particular though, about performance measures is that they had a performance measure in place around processing the application, how long it took to process the application. They were pretty close to meeting that target, but it was only measuring one part of the process. It wasn't measuring all of these other parts, including the appeal or how long it takes to fill out an application.

Matching up performance measures with the entire intended outcome of a program is not easy to do, but that is really what performance measures need to do. It's whether the program is achieving what it's supposed to be achieving. It is good to measure individual activities, but those individual activities need to somehow get into an overall measure of whether the program is achieving what it's intended to achieve.

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

Certainly, we are dealing with human beings here, and our objective is to deal with them as faithfully as we possibly can. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Thank you.

Mr. Eyolfson.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Thank you for the presentation. It was very helpful and very enlightening.

I'd like to quickly follow up on one of the questions that was asked before regarding when people are waiting. They asked about interim services. I can tell you from my professional medical practice experience, one of the interim services that people end up using because they have nowhere else to go is emergency departments. A lot of them, first of all, don't have family doctors, or they'll end up in a crisis situation at hours that don't enable them to get in right away.

Has there been any thought given to an outreach program, or getting some resources out to hospital-based practices in emergency departments where records can be readily accessed, or the department could instruct them on where to go further, or the emergency department could send information that might tell someone up the line, “We can't wait much longer, can you please expedite this?“

[Michael Ferguson]

Again, it's really the department that needs to sort of speak to the overall design of the program, but I think what you're identifying is similar to the first question. It's about all of that outreach, isn't it?

The department needs to make sure it identifies all of those places where veterans with mental health conditions are in contact with various types of service providers, and how those service providers know how to interact with the veterans with a mental health condition, but as well, how all of that information could also come back to the department. As you say, to say there's an individual here now.... I mean, Ms. Campbell talked about some of the other services that the department has in place—the hotline, outreach, and some of those other things—but I really think the department should explain to you how all of those services fit together, how they do their outreach to the various stakeholders and people who are touched by this whole program, and how they draw information from people who would know something about individual veterans as well.

Again, I think it's really the department that needs to explain all of those different points of contact.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Thank you.

Something that really strikes me is the fact that when you're applying for disability, you first of all have to go through this application process and you have to collect all these records, records that should all be readily available through your national defence service. The fact that so many of the people who appeal are successful in their appeals suggests that those who are not legitimate applicants are outliers. Therefore, what I'm seeing here is the fact that you have to go through this application and prove that all of these things are going on, and it gives me the impression that when someone applies there's the unspoken consideration that they are faking it until proven otherwise.

Considering that so many of these appeals are successful, should we not be developing more of a policy that turns that around into a sort of negative option that says, “If you are applying, it must be assumed that this is legitimate unless the department can find information that proves that you're not eligible”?

[Michael Ferguson]

Again, I think the department will need to talk to the approach they take to each individual application coming in. But I think a couple of things you mentioned that are important are, number one, we did identify that the sharing of information between National Defence and Veterans Affairs was not being done in a timely manner. That showed up in both of the audits, the audit we did on the transition of ill and injured military personnel to civilian life, and also the audit on mental health services. It's a matter of having a way of making sure that this information is shared.

The other thing, though, that we found in the audit of the transition of ill and injured members to civilian life was that when we looked at the Veterans Affairs' rehabilitation database—and remember this was in 2012—we found there were significant errors in the data that had been transferred. If you're starting out with a database that has errors in it, that's going to cause problems throughout the process of considering what types of benefits somebody might be eligible for.

Certainly, making sure there's timely sharing of information, I think, is something that is critical to improving these types of services, but then also it's making sure that there are sufficient quality-management steps around the data to make sure the data being shared is accurate.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

One of the difficulties they identified in the report was the long wait for referral to a mental health professional. I know much of that must be due to the fact that there aren't as many. Has there been any identification as to why we can't attract more mental health professionals to serve in this capacity?

[Michael Ferguson]

I guess the short answer is that this wasn't part of the audit, so we didn't actually look at that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Thank you.

Next we have Ms. Romanado.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Thank you.

I have a couple of questions. In terms of the overturned eligibility, one of the recommendations was to capture more systematically the reasons for the overturning of decisions. There's no indication that training was offered to ensure that these kinds of decisions that should have been approved.... People are learning from past mistakes. I want to know if you were able to capture any of that, if training went along with it, and if so, you could let us know.

I also have a follow-up question on that.

[Michael Ferguson]

Again, I think what we were looking at was whether the information got fed back in. I'll ask Ms. Campbell to elaborate whether there was anything done on the training side.

One thing, and it's outside of this audit, we also recently released an audit on Canada pension plan disability and access to that. We actually found a very similar thing. Something I think a number of government departments need to start to build into their processes is that when they have a process that includes this type of an adjudication and appeal process, learning from that and feeding it back into the process should be a really important part.

I'll ask Ms. Campbell if there is anything else she'd like to elaborate on.

[Dawn Campbell]

No, we didn't look specifically at what you're asking.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

In terms of the data integrity that you talked about in the transfer of records from DND to VAC, were these errors human errors or system errors?

[Joe Martire, Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada]

As was mentioned, it's very important that the information is shared in a timely manner but that it's also accurate and reliable.

Back in 2012, most of the records that were being transferred were being done manually. They had an initiative to work on electronic data transfer, I'm not sure where that's at now. But the types of errors that we're talking about included things like the release dates and included even the type of veteran. Was it a member of the Canadian Forces? Was it a member of the reservists? These things affect eligibility of programs. They also talked about whether someone served in a special service area. Again, that may entitle someone to certain benefits.

We found 24% of the service numbers were actually in error back in 2012 in the databases.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

You may not be able to answer this, but I'm curious.

Are employees' compensation based on performance? Are you aware if they are, in fact, based on performance?

[Michael Ferguson]

Do you mean in the Department of Veteran Affairs?

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Yes.

[Michael Ferguson]

I think they would have to answer that question. I can't answer that.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Okay.

In terms of the transfer of data from DND to VAC, would you recommend what I would call a one-stop shop, rather than a service member having to fill out all of this form and then DND having to transfer all of this information to another department? Would it not make more sense that the case worker who's with the active member of service in DND remain with the now veteran to ensure that there's a continuity in service? It seems to be “Oh, it's no longer my problem. The person's a vet” or “They're not ours yet. They're still an active member”.

There's this gap of “it's not my problem”, so I'm simply trying to see where the “not my problem” is.

[Michael Ferguson]

In the 2012 audit on the transition of ill and injured members, we made a recommendation that National Defence and the Canadian Forces and Veteran Affairs Canada should ensure that their databases contain reliable information and that Canadian Forces and Veteran Affairs processes are managed to facilitate the timely and efficient sharing of authorized information. That's in paragraph 4.28 of that audit and there's a response from each of the departments there.

We recognize that trying to start from scratch and put in place a comprehensive system that's going to cover everything, that type of thing, takes a long time. Recognizing that, they still need to find ways of making sure they are sharing information in a timely fashion and that the information that's being shared is accurate, and if the information has to be re-entered into another system, that there's a way of making sure that it is re-entered properly.

Certainly, we made a recommendation that they should facilitate that efficient sharing of information.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

In terms of the data integrity you were mentioning, we have a problem with sharing information. We have a problem with the information that's actually there. As the old saying goes, garbage in and garbage out. Who's accountable? How come this keeps happening?