Evidence of meeting #59 for Veterans Affairs in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was board.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:55 p.m.
Deputy Chair, Veterans Review and Appeal Board
I'm going to ask my colleague Mr. McNeil to do that because it's really his project and his initiative. He oversaw the first five years of the project, and I'm in the process of carrying out the second phase. So I will ask him to respond, if you don't mind.
5:55 p.m.
Chair, Veterans Review and Appeal Board
What that project does.... It's more about the case.
I'll tell you a story about a brother who is a veteran. He recently had a departmental review application. It's no secret. He had a near-drowning incident in basic training which resulted in a claim. That case finally came together with a detailed psychological report.
What we're looking to do is, you have that one piece of evidence and to not put it through the system and build all this upfront stuff, but to bring it forward and say, “Okay, we agree. We'll write a decision on that. We can reduce the time at the back and save all this time for cases that need more of that work.”
It's an issue-based thing. It might be a very simple thing. It might be testimony or something where somebody can give us a statement to clean it up. It relies heavily on Steve's lawyers, because they know their cases. They could say, “I have a case and I think, if you agree with my argument, we can do something quickly.”
I believe that if we continue to do the same thing over and over again, we can expect to get the same result. Veterans respond to this type of initiative, and it reduces the burden on them.
What I have learned is this: What keeps us up is the waiting. There's a veteran out there who needs benefits. It's not for me to decide whether they need them next week or next month. They need benefits, and we're trying to get them into their hands faster.
5:55 p.m.
Liberal
Darrell Samson Liberal Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, NS
Thank you.
I have a quick question.
Mr. Bouchard, Veterans Affairs has assigned a group of francophones to process francophones' cases in order to respond more quickly. With the additional funding planned, would it be possible to set up a unit on the board dedicated to francophone cases, like the department has done?
6 p.m.
Deputy Chair, Veterans Review and Appeal Board
Right now, half of our members are bilingual and we're counting on several francophones, which is already helping us a lot.
However, with the processes we intend to put in place, our goal is to hire many more francophone members to be able to tackle all the cases we have. I don't want to make any assumptions about future funding, but the funding we've received for the next two years has already enabled us to hire 40 people, many of them bilingual, to help us render decisions a little more quickly. Our intention is to continue to hire bilingual people to help us issue decisions faster.
6 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Emmanuel Dubourg
Thank you, Mr. Bouchard.
Mr. Desilets, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.
6 p.m.
Bloc
Luc Desilets Bloc Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Bouchard, earlier, you gave us statistics showing the difference in processing times for francophone and anglophone files, between the filing date and hearing date. Could you tell me about the difference between the hearing date and the decision?
6 p.m.
Deputy Chair, Veterans Review and Appeal Board
The time we take between hearing and decision is really due to the fact that we've lost a number of francophone or bilingual employees who are capable of preparing decisions on our quality control team. However, recently we've been able to hire some bilingual people.
We've just completed a project that ran from last November to April of this year. We had 1,200 cases in the system, and we've now dealt with all of them. Of that number, approximately 272 cases were in French, and we're in the process of completing them.
6 p.m.
Bloc
Luc Desilets Bloc Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC
However, what's the difference between the processing time for francophone and anglophone cases, specifically?
6 p.m.
Deputy Chair, Veterans Review and Appeal Board
I couldn't tell you exactly. I can just give you the time between the filing date and the hearing date, which is 57.1 weeks for francophone cases and 49.3 weeks for anglophone cases.
6 p.m.
Bloc
Luc Desilets Bloc Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC
Okay.
Earlier, we talked about the time between filing and hearing, which was 400 days, if I'm not mistaken. Have you established a service standard for this, which shouldn't be 400 days?
6 p.m.
Deputy Chair, Veterans Review and Appeal Board
I'd like to understand your question. Are you asking me if there is a standard?
6 p.m.
Bloc
Luc Desilets Bloc Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC
Yes. Is there a 14‑week standard or a 16‑week standard, for example?
6 p.m.
Deputy Chair, Veterans Review and Appeal Board
Our standard is 16 weeks, once the case is entered into our system.
6 p.m.
Deputy Chair, Veterans Review and Appeal Board
After the hearing, the standard for rendering a decision is six to eight weeks.
6 p.m.
Bloc
Luc Desilets Bloc Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC
Okay.
Let's go back to francophones. How do you explain the fact that it's so difficult to hire francophones? There are bilingual people, which is fine, but a bilingual person can't necessarily respond to a francophone's requests in a totally meaningful way. Why is it so difficult?
June 19th, 2023 / 6 p.m.
Deputy Chair, Veterans Review and Appeal Board
I can't really explain why it's difficult to find francophones, but I can certainly say that we're making a lot of effort to attract francophones. In fact, the process we will be announcing very soon, I hope, with the support of the Minister of Veterans Affairs, will focus on hiring many more bilingual francophone members.
As for our staff, 40% of our workforce is bilingual, and we've now started expanding our efforts to find more francophones who'd like to join us.
6 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Emmanuel Dubourg
I now invite Ms. Blaney to take the floor.
You have two and a half minutes, please.
6 p.m.
NDP
Rachel Blaney NDP North Island—Powell River, BC
Thank you, Chair.
I'm aware that some of you need to fly home, so I will try to keep my questions to the two and a half minutes.
I'm trying to get my head wrapped around how there's the connection between VAC and VRAB. There's been a lot of discussion in this committee on the table of disabilities and the entitlement eligibility guidelines. I'm wondering if there are any conversations as you're doing the cases and VAC maybe uses that information. Do they ask for information so that when they look at something like this table, they can maybe modify it, taking into consideration the decisions you've made?
6:05 p.m.
Chair, Veterans Review and Appeal Board
We certainly comment on their work. It's a bit problematic for us. The board does not endorse their work because we interpret the final product and maybe not the way it's intended. Obviously, there's unintended.... But, yes, we do. Certainly the BPA would be more heavily involved in how they see that, but, yes, those are very important tools to us.
6:05 p.m.
NDP
Rachel Blaney NDP North Island—Powell River, BC
Thank you.
Do you have anything to add, Mr. Woodman?