Bill C-27 (Historical)

Veterans Hiring Act

An Act to amend the Public Service Employment Act (enhancing hiring opportunities for certain serving and former members of the Canadian Forces)

This enactment amends the Public Service Employment Act to provide increased access to hiring opportunities in the public service for certain serving and former members of the Canadian Forces and to establish a right of appointment, in priority to all other persons, for certain members of the Canadian Forces who are released for medical reasons that the Minister of Veterans Affairs determines are attributable to service.

[Fraser Tolmie, Conservative, Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK]

Thank you.

Thank you for joining us today.

Thank you, Mr. Hutt, for your service.

Respectfully, during our conversations today, one comment made was that you're taking surveys of people who have gone through the re-education program and gotten employment. These people have been successful. The problem I have with that is, the metrics should be.... You should be evaluating people who aren't successful and looking for jobs.

I've read through the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates report from June 2019; “A Seamless Transition to Civilian Life for All Veterans: It's Time for Action” from May 2018; and Bill C-27 for vets' employment, which was passed March 31, 2015. What kind of assurance are we going to have? There are 32 recommendations sitting here. We need to hear what you're going to do differently from all those other reports.

[Alex Grant, As an Individual]

Honourable chairman and committee, thank you for the opportunity to be here today.

I am a retired naval officer. I work for DND, but I worked for VAC for three years. My evidence is as an individual from the perspective of a middle manager who was tasked to operationalize the Veterans Hiring Act, or VHA.

Back in July 2015, the VHA amended the Public Service Employment Act. Medically released personnel are now eligible for either statutory or regulatory entitlement, dependent on whether their release was or was not attributable to service. They have five years to activate their entitlement, and when it's activated, they have priority for five years or until they accept indeterminate employment with the public service. Serving members and all veterans have preference for external processes for five years from date of release. They also have mobility, which means they are eligible to participate in internally advertised appointment processes for up to five years after date of release.

I am very pro-VHA, but clearly to the layman it is complex. With the VHA, many armed forces members and veterans believed that upon retirement, they were automatically entitled to a public service job. This is not the case. When hit with the reality of public service hiring, some became bitter and felt betrayed.

As well, the VHA creates a complex space between the Public Service Commission, Veterans Affairs Canada and Canadian Armed Forces mandates. The Public Service Commission's mandate is to promote and safeguard merit-based appointments to protect the non-partisan nature of the public service. They are all about fairness and transparency. VAC's core mandate extends to the care, treatment or re-establishment in civilian life of any person who served in the Canadian Forces. Finally, one of the seven basic armed forces professional development objectives is to prepare retiring CAF members for the transition to civilian life. You have three departments whose mandates touch in this complex space, with no clear lead department, no MOU and confused clients. This is probably why this committee has been assembled.

Veterans Affairs Deputy Minister Walter Natynczyk talks to a lot of veterans and service members. He understands their concerns, and in an effort to close the seam between the departments, he took the initiative to create the veterans in the public service unit, or VPSU. You've heard about the VPSU's award-winning accomplishments from the Veterans Affairs director general of HR and other veterans. Its lines of effort are to influence two audiences—one, the veterans of today and tomorrow, and two, the public service hiring managers. There is a service delivery arm made up of veterans who understand the Veterans Hiring Act, have experienced the public service hiring process, and connect and relate with their clients as brothers in arms. To influence hiring managers, a strategic initiatives arm has, one, created an interdepartmental working group; two, leveraged GCconnex to share best practices; and three, completed outreach and connection pilot projects.

As the VPSU concept matured, I did internal stakeholder engagement at Veterans Affairs Canada. This is where I started to get a sense that operationalizing the VHA was going to be a difficult journey. I was challenged by HR professionals and hiring managers alike to justify the expense and resource drain of the VPSU when veterans are not an employment equity group. The answer, obviously, is that most veterans are not an employment equity group but the Government of Canada and Canadian people think they deserve enhanced public service hiring consideration—thus the VHA.

To improve, this will require continued education and accountability of our HR professionals and hiring managers. I have worked collaboratively with the Public Service Commission. I am confident they have the expertise required to address this issue. However, holding hiring managers accountable is an individual department's responsibility. I suggest that the way to do this and maintain transparency and fairness is for deputy ministers to, one, follow Veterans Affairs' lead and consider their department's mandate; two, consider the value that veterans represent; and three, establish reasonable aspirational hiring goals.

Then hold the hiring managers accountable for their actions. How can this be done? Well, I heard VIA Rail's president speak at a career fair. He said he has every director who screens out a veteran report to him and explain why and how that veteran could not be accommodated. When it comes to veteran hiring, I think public service directors and DGs can learn from his style of leadership and accountability.

When I left VAC, the requisite memos to cabinet and Treasury Board submissions were being considered to fund the VPSU. Up to that time, the VPSU had been funded through the DG of HR's funding envelope, and she was creative and innovative in making it work. I hope this can-do attitude continues, but I am concerned.

One of my last meetings while at VAC was to listen to legal counsel explain how they were having trouble aligning what the VPSU was doing with Veterans Affairs' mandate. To me, it's an obvious match. I hope they've figured it out, especially since a significant portion of VAC's evidence to this committee related to VPSU accomplishments.

In sum, there are two primary audiences: veterans who need to be mentored through the process, from skills translation to application, interview and immersion into a brand new culture; and appropriately monitored public service hiring managers who need to be educated about the veteran labour pool.

Sir, thank you very much.

[Craig L. Dalton, Veterans Ombudsman, Office of the Veterans Ombudsman]

Mr. Chair, thank you.

Mr. Chair and committee members, thank you for inviting me to appear before you today and for giving me the opportunity to talk about priority hiring.

I'm joined by Sharon Squire, the deputy veterans ombudsman.

I would like to begin by explaining what we hope to do with our time today, and that's to share with you our perspective based on what we've heard from veterans on priority hiring over the last number of years and to speak from the perspective of an organization that has hired veterans as recently as two weeks ago through priority hiring.

I should also declare a bit of a personal bias, too, that I try to remain conscious of. I think our veteran population represents a huge pool of talent that should be leveraged. It is not always understood across Canada in the public and private sectors. I've developed that bias as a result of serving for 25 years and transitioning to the public service but also by working as a deputy head in two provinces and now with the federal government and having hired veterans through normal and priority hiring processes.

I would like to commend you for undertaking this important study. The Veterans Hiring Act, and indeed all initiatives related to veteran priority hiring are important initiatives. They have the potential, when implemented effectively, to have a considerable impact both for government as a whole and for veterans and their families.

From the perspective of a veteran, priority hiring represents an opportunity for one at the end of a career of service to Canada and Canadians to continue that service in another form. That's an incredibly powerful opportunity. I think we would all be aware of some of the challenges that occur with transitioning from uniform to civilian life. Priority hiring is one way, if implemented effectively, we could address and support these challenges.

They're not just opportunities for veterans, for those who are medically released, those who have suffered illness and injury as a result of their service to our country. It represents an obligation, an obligation on the part of government and an obligation on the part of Canadians to support those veterans who, through no choice of their own, are unable to continue their service in uniform. I think it's quite self-evident why it's important to get this right for those Canadians who have sacrificed for us and all Canadians.

From the perspective of the public service, veteran priority hiring initiatives represent a tremendous opportunity to tap into what is a large pool of highly trained, educated and experienced Canadians, roughly 10,000 servicemen and servicewomen, regular and reserve forces, released for a variety of reasons every year. Not all of those individuals would wish to pursue a career in the public service at the federal level. Some will enter the private sector. Some have the entrepreneurial bug. Some want to work in the not-for-profit sector, but a number are looking for public service employment. As a large employer across the land, it makes perfect sense, I think, for the federal government to want to engage these 10,000 or so highly capable and talented Canadians every year as the public service seeks to attract, recruit and retain the best and the brightest.

Lastly, from the perspective of government, I think veteran priority hiring represents an opportunity to demonstrate leadership in an important area. This leadership has already been demonstrated in instances like the introduction of the Veterans Hiring Act, but when it comes to implementation, I think much more could be done.

There are a number of private sector companies and corporations across Canada that have made it a mission to hire veterans and to advocate for the value of veterans to others in the private sector. There are also a number of organizations and groups that work hard to advocate and link veterans up to both private and public sector employers. These individuals demonstrate significant leadership. We think that the federal government could continue to play a leadership role and play an even greater leadership role as the largest employer in Canada and send a real message to the rest of the public and private sectors that there's tremendous value in hiring a veteran.

I was struck by one of the individuals who wrote to the committee to share his thoughts on his experience with veteran priority hiring. After a very articulate, compelling story of what he encountered, he wound up with a question. That question at the end of his submission, and this speaks to the role of leadership, was, “If the federal government won't hire veterans, why would the private or public sectors in other jurisdictions hire veterans?” I think that is certainly something worth considering.

How effective is the Veterans Hiring Act? How effective has implementation been? I understand that is really the task of your committee.

To be frank, I would suggest that at the strategic level that's a very hard question to answer. We have some statistics and those statistics are interesting and they tell a story, but when I look at them, I don't think they tell the full story.

One of the reasons I don't think we're in a position to really answer that question is that we've established an intent in the Veterans Hiring Act to enhance veteran employment, but we have not established or articulated clear objectives. It's a case of knowing where we want to go but not necessarily describing in general and not necessarily describing specifically how we plan to get there and what success looks like. In addition, we haven't assigned clear accountabilities for delivering on whatever these objectives or outcomes might be. I think that's reflected in the testimony you've received from veterans in person and also in the submissions you've received.

On a more tactical level, there is clearly room for improving the delivery of priority hiring in the Veterans Hiring Act. I don't intend to repeat the testimony you have already received or indeed repeat some of the comments that Mr. Lick has made, but I would like to highlight a number of the observations that our office has made. They've been submitted to you in writing, so I won't go through each and every one but I would like to highlight just a couple.

The first is that the process is too complex and not veteran-centric. I would describe this as the burden resting on the shoulders of a veteran who is releasing and looking to be engaged with the public service, and not on the institution itself.

If you consider the context of a veteran releasing, particularly those who are releasing for medical reasons—again, many of whom are not releasing of their own volition—just try to imagine what it's like to be at a point in life where you've been told that you're no longer able to serve your country in the manner that you had and that you're going to release. Employment—finding a sense of purpose and finding meaning in your post-service life—is just one of the many questions you're trying to wrestle with.

You may be wondering about your personal medical care and continuing it post-release. You may be wondering where you're going to live, where your spouse is going to work and if this is going to affect your children's education. It would be an oversimplification to describe this as a stressful and challenging time in the life of a service member, but I think it's pretty clear that it is.

If anything, the opportunity to attach to the federal public service should be a bit of a lifeline. It should be a way to address one of those key questions, that of, “How am I going to find purpose in my post-uniform life?”

Unfortunately, today that's not necessarily the case. I could walk you through the process as shared with us by a recent hire on our part, but suffice it to say that it is anything but simple, and in my opinion it is not designed to help a veteran achieve success in the employment realm.

Decisions are not made in a timely manner. Mr. Lick has addressed the attribution of service question. That is one that continues to come up frequently. Not all CAF members are aware of the priority hiring process, nor are they necessarily aware, based on their employment experience, of what it takes to participate in the process of seeking employment in the federal public service.

I am going to skip a whole bunch of my notes and just speak about the federal public service side and some of the challenges we hear about and that we know exist.

One is on the part of HR managers and understanding the intricacies of priority hiring initiatives and being able to act on them. We've experienced that in our office recently. Equally, but more important, perhaps, there is a lack of understanding on the part of leaders and managers across the public service of the value that exists in service members who take off the uniform.

To share a short story, as the deputy head, I had an assistant deputy minister approach me about a competition he was running. They had narrowed it down to three individuals on the short list, one of whom was a veteran. This individual said, “My gut tells me to go with this individual.” He said, “I'm concerned, though.” One of the challenges he was trying to address was the leadership environment on his senior team, and he didn't know how this veteran would react in working in this new environment.

In the end, I told him to go with his gut. He ended up hiring this veteran, but for me it was another indication of this unconscious bias that exists, and if we don't do something about educating folks, it may continue to exist. This individual came to me some time later and said that in 26 years it was the best hire he'd made in the public service.

In conclusion, I'd like to offer three recommendations for consideration by the committee.

One, establish and assign clear outcomes to departments and organizations across government.

Two, establish clear accountabilities for delivering on these outcomes.

Three, ensure that all medically releasing veterans who wish to be considered for public sector employment opportunities are fully able, from both a personal and administrative standpoint, to actively participate in that process from the moment they receive notice that they're going to be released.

Mr. Chair and committee members, thank you. I look forward to answering your questions.

[Gregory Lick]

My support was based on what I saw as natural links between the Canadian Coast Guard and the Canadian Armed Forces.

I recognize that the links between the training elements of the Canadian Armed Forces and organizations such as the Canadian Coast Guard, Canada Border Services Agency, Parks Canada and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police may appear less clear for other departments as they look to retired members to fill public service positions. However, I believe that all public service hiring managers must meet retired members halfway. We're committed to giving retired members post-service employment opportunities. In my experience, the public service ultimately gains from their expertise.

However, for members of the Canadian Armed Forces who are medically releasing, we have an obligation to provide them priority access to public service positions. Those members who are medically releasing as a result of an illness or injury sustained as a direct result of their service are placed at the top of the statutory category for priority entitlement.

For those whose illness or injury is not as a result of their service, their priority entitlement is entrenched in the regulatory category. In either case, we have a duty that far outstrips a policy or initiative. It was within this context, as well as the context of the introduction and passage of the Veterans Hiring Act that my predecessor became publicly engaged on this issue. In 2015, he published a report in consultation with Mr. Dalton's predecessor that recommended “that the Canadian Armed Forces is best placed to make the determination of whether a medical release is attributable to service pursuant to Bill C-27.”

More importantly, the ill or injured Canadian Armed Forces member stands to gain significant benefit from quicker access to enhanced hiring opportunities in the public service.

In the end, the Veterans Hiring Act vested Veterans Affairs with the responsibility for adjudicating applications of CAF members seeking access to this priority list held by the Public Service Commission. Since that time, Veterans Affairs has struggled to meet its service standards, an unfortunate consequence that has seen itself play out in numerous media stories and public debate.

My interest in appearing before you today is not to fuel any of that debate. Rather, I want to provide you, in plain speak, what our office believes to be the elements that need to be considered to make this overall initiative a success.

First, we must consider perhaps the most relevant statistic. The average Canadian Armed Forces member will release around their 40th birthday. This means that former members have quite a few employable years before they're fully retired. Experience in the Canadian Armed Forces is unique, and the federal public service has the potential to harness quite a lot of this energy as it looks to fill its ranks with qualified individuals.

Medically released members may face greater barriers to entry and challenges in obtaining and maintaining a second career. For this reason, logically we have the provisions of the Veterans Hiring Act, as well as priority entitlements, to ease entry into public service employment.

However, there are delays for Veterans Affairs Canada to adjudicate files that would allow individuals to gain priority access to those jobs. In addition, there's a lengthy process on the Public Service Commission side in terms of putting these individuals on the priority list.

The natural consequence of these two administrative factors is that fully deserving and qualified former members of the Canadian Armed Forces are missing out on opportunities as a result of the administrative delays. Veterans Affairs Canada's statistics are getting better but are far from perfect. This causes a great deal of anxiety among Canadian Armed Forces members who are transitioning from military to civilian life, or from my jurisdiction to Mr. Dalton's jurisdiction.

Administratively, VAC has eliminated some duplicated adjudications to improve their response times. This is promising. What is equally promising is that the armed forces and Veterans Affairs Canada have established a process by which Veterans Affairs can now almost instantly access relevant information contained within the Canadian Forces' health information system to speed up their adjudications. This initiative is expected not only to speed up priority entitlement decisions, but also adjudications as a whole.

Nevertheless, if that applicant still faces significant wait times, more creative solutions may need to come to the fore when it comes to getting these individuals on the priority list.

Some non-medically released military members may already have private sector jobs. Others may have jobs in the federal public service, given that serving members can already apply for internal competitions under mobility and preference provisions. However, for many of them, this may not be the case.

Many constituents and hiring managers have told us that, despite the government's efforts, there's still a lack of understanding of how the knowledge and skills acquired through military service translate into the civilian work environment. This is troubling, considering that this issue has been a key priority for retired members and the government since at least 2011.

For example, the Standing Committee on National Defence recommended in its 2014 report entitled “Caring for Canada’s Ill and Injured Military Personnel” that the government “develop a comprehensive, algorithmic, military skills translation software tool to facilitate CF members to obtain civilian employment upon release.”

Such sophisticated translators already exist in the United States. An American military member can simply enter their service units and the certifications they have received into a computer database. The computer then spits out those civilian job equivalencies as well as a civilian resumé template once the member has made some simple drop-down menu selections.

The CAF has developed a translator tool, but having a singular government-endorsed tool would be valuable for current and former CAF members and public service hiring managers. Whatever that tool looks like, it should take the next steps beyond simply transforming a military occupation code to a civilian occupation. It must incorporate and recognize the leadership and management experience that is gained over the course of one's career here in Canada, as well as on international deployments.

It is also evident that there is a genuine lack of awareness of valuable programs, such as the vocational rehabilitation program for serving members. This program enables eligible CAF members who have been notified of an impending medical release, with the approval of their commanding officer, to begin vocational rehabilitation training for up to six months prior to either their start of retirement leave or their final CAF release date, whichever is the earlier date.

What does the program for serving members mean for hiring managers in the public service?

The armed forces will continue to pay a member's salary while that member works within your organization. If that member performs well within your organization, you have a high likelihood of bringing that individual on full time if you have a vacancy to fill and the selection criteria are met. The program is incredible, but few people know about it, despite the fact that it is a perfect example of seamless transition. Our office and I have used this program in the past, and we have gained from it.

Ultimately, the public service, and particularly those veterans now working in the public service, must take responsibility and be supported in mentoring, coaching and training service members in their transition. We have to make it as easy as possible for public service managers to hire former CAF members.

As the former Coast Guard director general of operations, I was committed to the hiring of CAF members by my organization. I, and others, travelled to CAF bases and wings in order to make the sales pitch for, and mentor and coach, releasing members to sign up with us. I know there are many public service hiring managers who are just as enthusiastic, but we have to provide them the information and the tools to empower them. We all have a stake in this.

Members of the committee, Mr. Chair, I want to thank you once again for the opportunity to appear before you today.

I'm free to answer any questions you may have related to this important file.

Thank you.

[Rear-Admiral, Retired) Elizabeth Stuart (Assistant Deputy Minister, Chief Financial Officer and Corporate Services, Department of Veterans Affairs]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As a follow-on to the statement made earlier by the deputy minister regarding the veterans in the public service hiring unit, we've stood up a team in late November and early December. It's very small at the moment, but we have a phased approach to improve the hiring of veterans in the public service. The phased approach looks to Veterans Affairs Canada being a role model, first and foremost. Obviously DND is very experienced, because the Canadian Armed Forces and National Defence work in an integrated fashion.

We are seeking in the next phase to have a positive effect on hiring throughout the entire public service and then to branch out into industry. Also, we know there are a lot of not-for-profits and organizations that are already assisting in this manner.

Since the coming into force of Bill C-27, the Veterans Hiring Act, we have seen some take-up by priority veterans who have been medically released, either for reasons attributable to service or reasons not attributable to service. The Public Service Commission has a mandate to collect data on those veterans, but to date there is no mandatory reporting of hires in the public service who are veterans. For example, at Veterans Affairs Canada we have sent every new employee a voluntary survey. It's still not mandatory to self-identify as a veteran, and I would imagine that some veterans may not wish to do so, but it has improved our reporting.

I can give you some statistics. From the coming into force of the Veterans Hiring Act on July 1, 2015, we had 315 priority hires in the public service, 18 of them within Veterans Affairs Canada. The total of veterans employed at VAC who have self-identified through our survey currently is 115.

We are working with the Public Service Commission to try to improve our ability to collect data on veterans, and we have sent a letter asking to have a question regarding military service added to the public service employee survey.

We're working on several venues, and we haven't finished our work by any means as yet.

[Christine Donoghue, Acting President, Public Service Commission of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to introduce Mr. Michael West, our director general for delegation and accountability, who is with me today.

We are very pleased to be here and to have the opportunity to participate in the work of the committee with respect to chapter 2 of the report of the Auditor General.

As the report notes, the Public Service Commission is responsible for promoting and safeguarding the merit-based appointment system and ensuring that it is free from political influence and, in collaboration with other stakeholders, is responsible for protecting the non-partisan nature of the public service.

The PSC is accountable to Parliament for safeguarding the integrity of staffing in the public service and the political impartiality of public servants. We report independently to Parliament on these matters.

The Public Service Employment Act, as amended in 2005, sets out a staffing system based on values, in which deputy heads have greater responsibilities. The PSC fulfills its mandate by delegating staffing to deputy heads and providing overall policy guidance and tools to assist them in exercising their delegated authorities. We have delegation agreements with 80 departments.

Since 2005, the staffing management accountability framework has set out the PSC's expectation for a well-managed appointment system and has provided a framework for monitoring staffing performance. The PSC has been overseeing the staffing system through regular monitoring and through conducting audits and investigations when needed.

Deputy heads have been submitting self-assessments in the form of departmental staffing accountability reports in which they report on their organization's performance. These provide the commission with the opportunity to assess organizational performance against the staffing management accountability framework and to provide annual feedback to deputy heads.

Based on the overall performance of the staffing system, we have been aiming for continuous improvement and lessening the reporting burden on departments and agencies. A mature staffing system has allowed us to move towards a more effective and efficient model of accountability.

Our efforts to streamline the PSC's reporting requirements have been acknowledged by the Auditor General in the report. We developed a framework in consultation with internal and external stakeholders, including deputy heads. We made it simpler and more focused, with 12 indicators in 2013-14 as compared to 29 in previous years.

A shorter, more concise report makes for a more effective and useful management tool for deputy heads as well as the PSC. Reducing our reporting footprint will allow organizations to put their efforts on addressing their own specific risks that reflect their operational realities and staffing challenges.

Mr. Chair, we have nearly 10 years of experience with a fully delegated system. Our staffing system is maturing and is working well.

Organizations are building their internal capacities to monitor their own staffing processes, and we are confident that this will lead to improved effectiveness and efficiencies. The Public Service Commission is ready and able to assist organizations in further developing these capacities, which would be more targeted to their needs. At the same time, we have invested considerable efforts in developing our own capacity to better utilize the staffing data collected by the commission, which further alleviates the reporting burden while ensuring the overall accountability of the system.

As I mentioned earlier, our audits and investigations also provide important staffing information. ln addition, we have a survey conducted by Statistics Canada that gathers feedback from hiring managers as well as applicants on their experience within the staffing system. Instead of getting their staffing statistics from the Public Service Commission as part of the annual reporting cycle, organizations can now access the latest staffing data through an online portal.

Where we find problems, we work with organizations to resolve them in real time, as quickly as possible. We are therefore moving more and more towards an approach based on identifying horizontal systemic issues.

ln all of our activities, from outreach to oversight, we look for lessons learned, to identify areas for improvement and to take concrete actions. We share good practices to foster continuous improvement. We are also continuing to adapt our requirements, consistent with the recommendations of the Auditor General.

For instance, this year, we asked organizations to focus their reporting on only three key indicators, in areas of particular relevance, based our integrated information. These are official languages qualifications in staffing, areas for ongoing improvements identified in our audits, and priority entitlements.

As you may know, the Public Service Commission is responsible for administering priority entitlements, and we work closely with departments and agencies to ensure that the rights of priority persons are respected. This collaboration will be critical for the implementation of the Veterans Hiring Act, which will provide medically released veterans with greater access to public service jobs.

Let me now turn to the Auditor General's recommendation to systematically adjust required reporting on the basis of its effort, cost and value. PSC is reviewing our policy and oversight frameworks. Our consultations with federal departments and agencies are now underway.

We would like to simplify our policies to remove duplication and minimize overlap while upholding the fundamental principles of the Public Service Employment Act. We also want to more fully integrate all of our staffing information to help organizations and the PSC identify areas where we can improve staffing management and performance.

We will also be looking to remove any unnecessary requirements and to make sure that any reporting considers effort, cost and value. We expect centralized reporting requirements to be reduced, which will reduce the efforts and costs to organizations. With the more fully integrated staffing system we have available, it will be of more value to organizations. We are still at an early stage but we expect that a more integrated approach to the delivery of our policies and oversight functions will provide further opportunities for increased effectiveness and efficiencies.

ln closing, Mr. Chair, we will be working closely with departments and agencies to help them build a stronger culture of prevention while we continue to deliver our fundamental responsibility to provide independent oversight to Parliament on the integrity of the merit-based staffing system and non-partisanship of the public service.

I would be pleased to respond to your questions.

Thank you.

[Christine Donoghue]

Again, thanks for having us. I'd like to take this opportunity of meeting with you today to discuss our main estimates, as we are required to do, and our reports on plans and priorities.

The Public Service Commission is responsible for safeguarding merit-based appointments and making sure that appointments are free from political influence and, in collaboration with other stakeholders within our system, to protect the non-partisan nature of the public service. As you may know, we report independently to Parliament for our mandate, and we also administer programs on behalf of departments and agencies in order to recruit qualified Canadians from across the country.

Under the delegated staffing system that we manage, it is set out under the Public Service Employment Act. The Public Service Commission fulfills its mandate by providing policy guidance and expertise, conducting effective oversight, and delivering innovative staffing and assessment services.

Now, I would like to turn to our strategic priorities for this year.

Our first priority is to provide independent oversight on the health of the staffing system and protect merit-based staffing and the non-partisan nature of the public service. Those are our main principles. The commission oversees the staffing system through regular monitoring, and conducting audits and investigations, where needed. Based on these oversight feedback mechanisms, we are able to assess the management of staffing and identify areas for improvement.

Throughout the year, we will continue to provide policy guidance and advice, and work collaboratively with organizations to enhance our support to address not only issues detected through our oversight, but also to promote innovation in all aspects.

We are adapting our approach to auditing small and micro-sized organizations, which have significantly fewer staffing activities. That means we are distancing ourselves from the standardized approach—the one-size-fits-all approach—and adapting our mechanisms to the organizations' needs and structure.

As for political impartiality, we will continue to engage with stakeholders on issues related to merit-based staffing and non-partisan public service.

The Public Service Commission has developed a number of tools available on our website to inform public servants on both their legal rights and their responsibilities related to political activities. These tools are redistributed across a number of departments. For instance, we have an online tool to help public servants self-assess their own particular circumstances in order to make an informed decision about whether to engage in a political activity. We also launched a video to inform public servants of the process involved should they wish to become a candidate in a federal, provincial, or municipal election, and we are working on other tools presently for other portions of our mandate.

Our latest staffing survey found that employees' awareness continued to increase. Over 75% of respondents were aware of their rights and their responsibilities with respect to political activities, which is up from 72% in a previous survey.

Our second priority is to enhance our policy and oversight frameworks to ensure that they are fully integrated, thus improving the staffing process across the public service. It is important for us to be consistent in the actions we take with our partners, the departments.

We have more than 10 years of experience with full delegation of staffing authorities to deputy heads. Our staffing system is mature and works well. Organizations now have in place strong internal capacities to monitor their own staffing processes. The operational realities and staffing needs of organizations have evolved.

As a result, we are currently reviewing our policies and associated guidance with a stronger focus on our role of providing expert advice and support to enable deputy heads to exercise their delegated authorities.

As part of our focus on integration and modernization, we are also adapting our oversight mechanisms to a risk-based approach, while providing support through outreach activities and training sessions for organizations and stakeholders.

Our third priority is to offer support and expertise in staffing assessment to delegated organizations and stakeholders. We are modernizing our processes, systems, and tools in close collaboration with stakeholders, based on a single-window approach. We continue to modernize our services, to expand the use of technology, and to make it more user-friendly.

Over the years, we have made significant progress in moving from paper-and-pencil testing to online testing. Approximately 70% of PSC's tests are now administered online. This means reduced operational costs, better security features, faster scoring, and quicker communications. The results are now available within 24 hours, as compared to 15 days, which was the case prior to online testing.

For the post-secondary recruitment campaign, the use of paper-and-pencil exams was reduced by more than 90%. We went from 33,000 exams in 2010-11 down to 2,600 in 2014-15. Operating costs were reduced by over 29%, from $736,000 in 2010-11 down to $500,000 in 2014-15. We saw similar efficiencies in our second-language evaluation testing. More than 92% of them are administered online.

We also support departments with their own online testing, which are on our testing platform, by hosting their standardized online tests. We currently host 14 standardized department tests on our platform. For fiscal year 2014-15, we estimate that these tests will be administered to more than 20,000 candidates.

Other key innovations include unsupervised Internet testing. This allows organizations to identify candidates early in the hiring process who are more likely to succeed in subsequent supervised testing. This type of pre-screening reduces costs and time to staff, while increasing the quality of hires. We estimate that, during the fiscal year 2014-15, unsupervised Internet tests were used in 35 recruitment processes. We believe that the use of unsupervised Internet testing for those processes reduced the cost of testing by over $500,000 for hiring departments.

This type of testing has two other important advantages. First, it increases access to public service jobs by allowing applicants to take the test at the location of their choosing, no matter where they live in Canada. Second, it provides greater accessibility by removing testing barriers for persons with disabilities, who can now use their own adaptive technology at home to do their exams.

We will continue to look for ways to innovate, to improve user experience and expand access to opportunities in the public service.

Staffing and recruitment are an important part of the commission's role. Last year, we reported an increase in hiring and staffing activities for the first time in nearly four years. While student hiring was up by 8.6%, permanent hiring of new graduates was down.

We are concerned that the portion of employees under the age of 35 is also down. Those trends have implications for the renewal and future composition of the public service, and we continue to look for the best mechanisms to attract and recruit graduates.

Our post-secondary recruitment campaign is one of the tools that we use to recruit graduates. Last fall, the commission, in collaboration with departments and agencies, participated in more than 20 career fairs in all regions of Canada.

This year we have aIso focused on preparations for the implementation of the Veterans Hiring Act, which received royal assent on March 31. We are continuing those preparations in order to move to full implementation of the legislation. Once it comes into force, this act will change different mechanisms that support the hiring of veterans and current members of the Canadian Armed Forces into the federal public service.

We have been working very closely with our colleagues at Veterans Affairs and the Department of National Defence, and are ready to implement these changes. The draft regulations are now close to completion.

Given our responsibility for administering the priority entitlements within the federal public service, we want to make sure that the entitlements of the medically released Canadian Armed Forces members are fully respected. We are considering additional initiatives to support veterans as well as current Canadian Armed Forces members in bringing their valuable experience and skills to the federal public service. For instance, the commission itself is looking to hire veterans to help Canadian Armed Forces members and other veterans to navigate the Canadian public service staffing system. We're also working right now to finalize training modules and to help human resources advisers and are hiring managers to apply these changes in the system.

Finally, I would like to speak to you about our financial situation. In our main estimates for 2015-2016, the commission is authorized to spend $83.6 million. In addition, it has an authority to recover up to $14 million of the costs of our counselling and assessment products and services provided to federal organizations. We have sufficient resources to deliver on our mandate, and we will only spend what is needed.

For the commission, the most serious risk would be not being able to fully respond in a timely manner to government-wide transformation initiatives and to realize efficiencies. However, we continue to closely monitor all possible scenarios in our planning.

Mr. Chair, we recognize that our responsibilities form but one of the many elements of the overall framework for people management in the public service. ln order for that whole to remain modern, effective, and responsive, we continue to explore ways in which we can better perform our roles with respect to the merit and non-partisanship of our system.

We look forward to working with departments and agencies to achieve the priorities that we have set out. We will continue to foster strong collaboration and relationships with parliamentarians, bargaining agents, and other stakeholders, so that Canadians will continue to benefit from a professional and non-partisan public service.

Thank you very much. We're ready to take your questions.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Order, please. I have the honour to inform the House that a communication has been received as follows:

Rideau Hall

Ottawa

March 31, 2015

Mr. Speaker:

I have the honour to inform you that the Right Honourable David Johnston, Governor General of Canada, signified royal assent by written declaration to the bills listed in the Schedule to this letter on the 31st day of March, 2015, at 5:02 p.m.

Yours sincerely,

Patricia Jaton

Deputy Secretary

The schedule indicates the bills assented to were Bill C-27, An Act to amend the Public Service Employment Act (enhancing hiring opportunities for certain serving and former members of the Canadian Forces)—Chapter 5; Bill S-218, An Act respecting National Fiddling Day—Chapter 6; Bill C-54, An Act for granting to Her Majesty certain sums of money for the federal public administration for the financial year ending March 31, 2015—Chapter 7; and Bill C-55, An Act for granting to Her Majesty certain sums of money for the federal public administration for the financial year ending March 31, 2016—Chapter 8.

Veterans Hiring Act

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak in favour of Bill C-27 at third reading. However, like my colleague from Windsor West, who just finished speaking, I regard it as a positive, but also largely a missed opportunity.

My riding in Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca is what most would call a military riding. Together, the base and shipyards make up the largest employment site in my riding. I do not want to neglect to mention that health care and education are also large employers, and in those areas the provincial government is the main employer. I should also mention the very vibrant small business dominated tourism industry. My point here is that the base and shipyards are at the heart of my riding.

As the home of Canada's Pacific fleet, we have 4,000 active members stationed at CFB Esquimalt and there are an additional 2,000 civilian employees at the base. When we add on another 600 and soon to be 1,000 people working in the shipyards, we have nearly 7,000 people commuting to work everyday in the centre of my riding.

I do not want to veer off-track here. I will save for another day the discussion of ensuring the federal government and VIA Rail keep their promise to get the E&N railway up and running again so we can help get those people to work. Another day, we can talk about things like HOV lanes to help with the traffic.

What the employment structure of my riding means in terms of this bill is that I have a riding with lots of veterans. Many of them served at CFB Esquimalt, coming originally from all over the country and then staying on after leaving the forces, either for better job prospects than at home or maybe in some cases because it does not snow very often in my riding, but most often because their spouses and families have put down roots in Victoria. It also means we have a lot of injured and disabled veterans in greater Victoria, again both because of the availability of medical services and also, for those with mobility challenges, the lack of snow is a significant factor.

Unfortunately, it is a fact that the federal government is now a shrinking employer in my riding. With nearly 37,000 jobs already lost across the country, we are only going to see more shrinkage in federal employment. I say “unfortunately” for two reasons.

One is that almost all of these were good, family supporting jobs that contributed to a healthy community, and those jobs will no longer be available to veterans in my community.

The other reason is the loss of federal jobs almost always means a loss of federal services locally, like my colleague from Windsor West was discussing with the closure of the veterans office. In fact, in my riding we have just learned that we are about to be the next to lose more federal jobs, as home delivery of mail is up for elimination early in the next year in my riding. When Canada Post officials say that no jobs will be lost, what it means is it will do its best to ensure it keeps its existing employees. The positions, those good-paying, stable jobs will be lost in my community and, again, they are jobs that were often very valuable to veterans who wanted to stay in greater Victoria.

The result of the shrinking public service combined with the shrinking employment in crown corporations, like Canada Post, creates what economists like to call a more competitive job market. In plain English, that means it is tougher for everyone to find a job. It will be tougher for veterans in my riding, but especially for injured veterans, and it will be tougher for everyone to find a full-time, permanent job that pays a living wage.

Let me be clear. Before I begin talking about some of the concerns I have about Bill C-27, I do support this bill, even if the result ends up being just one more injured vet getting a good job in my riding. I hoped this bill would do more than that, but I fear its results will be quite limited.

The bill is in fact quite narrow in its proposed impact. Not only will the bill's potential impact be limited to those who want to work in the public service, but its impact is further limited to those who already have the qualifications often required for public service employment, like post-secondary degrees. There is no provision in this bill for those who might want to retrain to get those better jobs in the public service, and the length of the qualification period for being on the priority list also works against those veterans who want to retrain.

While I would like to believe that public service employers already place a high value on veterans' military experience in providing good employees with positive qualities like an understanding of the value of discipline and the value of teamwork, clearly this is not always the case. I accept that this bill will help bridge that gap by giving explicit priority to injured veterans.

We hope the Conservative government's intention with this bill is not simply to mask the general shortcomings of its programs for veterans and, even more specifically, the limited success of its career transition services. The minister has already received useful advice on how to improve transition services for veterans from both the Veterans Ombudsman and the Auditor General. There are many good recommendations from both of these officers of Parliament: the Veterans' Ombudsman's report in 2013 and the Auditor General's report in the fall of 2012. Unfortunately, these good recommendations are still awaiting adoption by the government.

Today, Auditor General Michael Ferguson released his report on mental health services for veterans, something that is very closely related to the ability to get good family-supporting jobs. His conclusion is that there are too many barriers to veterans receiving mental health services, and that waits for both assessments and services are far too long.

Some of the things he talked about seem like they should be easily fixable. I hope that the Minister of Veterans Affairs and the Minister of Defence will act quickly to end the delays in transferring records from the Canadian Forces and DND to Veterans Affairs. Ferguson noted that it still takes 16 weeks to get records transferred and that nothing can happen on a file in terms of getting veterans services until those records are transferred.

He also criticized the application process for disability benefits at Veterans Affairs as too slow and unnecessarily complicated. I hope the minister will act quickly on the recommendation to simplify the application process. Ferguson noted that the wait for an assessment, once records have already been transferred, can take another four months. Therefore, the average wait time for a referral is three months, not the three weeks the department set as its own service standard.

Until veterans get the services they need to deal with their physical disabilities or with their stress-related injuries, they cannot really get started on these employment placement programs. Certainly, we can all agree that taking eight months for the assessment that establishes that a veteran is even eligible for services, before any treatment can actually start, is far too long.

Even once that assessment is finished, the delays are not over. The wait for treatment at the operational and trauma stress support centres, where mental health services for conditions such as PTSD are delivered is nearly two months at more than half the centres.

Therefore, I was glad to hear the government announce additional funding for mental health services for veterans yesterday, but I am sorry to see that it was done only in the face of the impending report from the Auditor General that points out the lack of services and the failings of the government in this area.

While I do support the bill, limited as it is, it remains clear that the government could have gone much further. It could have looked beyond the small number of veterans in transition who have the qualifications, training, and experience necessary to pursue a job in the public service.

The bill does, however, contain a flaw that we in the NDP have opposed wherever it has appeared. Specifically, the the bill creates several categories of veterans depending on where and how long they have served. It even creates separate categories of surviving spouses, with differential benefits and qualifications, based on where and how long their spouses served. This violates what should be a basic principle. We in the NDP have always argued that a veteran is a veteran, and we will continue to do so. Also, the bill excludes ex-RCMP members. We can see very little reason for treating ex-RCMP members differently from Canadian Forces veterans.

However, I do not want to lose sight of the chief virtue of the bill, which is giving the highest priority to injured vets for public service jobs. Nor do I wish to diminish the importance of lengthening the eligibility period for placements from two to five years. These are significant improvements. However, we also have to remember that the existing priority hiring program has managed to find jobs for only a little over half of those added to the priority list each year. Between 50% and 80% of those hired each year were hired by DND. In my riding that is significant, because there are a lot of civilian employees of DND, but most other government departments have hired fewer than 10 vets under this program. The government can and must do better.

When I talk with veterans about employment for injured vets, they have a lot of other concerns on their minds before the priority placement program. That became very clear when the NDP leader and I sat down at the Esquimalt Legion last year to talk face to face with injured vets. The vets started with a condemnation of the unseemly rush to get injured Canadian Forces members out of the forces. Also, they always touched on the number of homeless vets in my riding who are either couch surfing or living in basements or garages of family and friends, or living in tents in the bush in rural parts of my riding.

My recent conversations with injured vets have included questions about how the Conservative minister could have returned $1.1 billion to the treasury last year, unexpended.

Let me just make one last statement on Bill C-27. I hope that we will honour our veterans by giving them the assistance they need and deserve in return for their service to Canada, whether it is injured vets getting back to work or those who have left us getting the respect they deserve with assistance for a dignified burial.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech.

There is no doubt that with Bill C-27, the government has once again created a huge gap between the reality my colleague mentioned, that is, the many cuts to the public service where our veterans should have been able to find work, and this bill, which suggests that these veterans can go work in the public service.

My colleague talked about that during his speech, but he did not mention the fact that the government did not include the RCMP in this bill. What are my colleague's thoughts on that?

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to split my time with the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca.

I am pleased to rise on a subject that hits close to me.

Bill C-27 is a missed opportunity. Bill C-11 was significantly flawed, and Bill C-27 is flawed as well. There may be some improvements for veterans services at some point, but they will be almost accidental.

I take issue with the parliamentary secretary when he says that to show leadership, we just have to pass the bill. I think he said “symbolism”. No, we need legislation that works for our veterans. We need legislation that would actually get them employed. We need legislation that would change their lives. We need legislation that would let them and their families reach their full potential. We do not need legislation that is just symbolic, like words on a piece of paper, and then put on a shelf somewhere in a book of legislation. It has to translate to something real.

I grew up with some of this. My grandfather was John Clifford Addison. He died on HMS Scorpion during the fall of Burma. My grandmother in London married Fred Attwood, who became my grandfather. He came over to Canada, and he was lucky he came to Canada. I say he was lucky because he had transferable skills. He had been an electrician on a number of different naval ships, including HMS Ark Royal. He got a job at Hiram Walker. Being an electrician gave him a great skill set, and the company needed people.

Before I came to this place, I used to work on behalf of persons with disabilities at the Association for Persons with Physical Disabilities of Windsor and Essex County. I dealt with people with different types of disabilities, such as cerebral palsy, spina bifida, brain injury, and a number of different things.

The investment in that program was made during the Mike Harris years. We had to prove, and we did prove, that the government saved money by making a mild investment into the association to have that program running. It was just myself working for the association, and later on we grew to two. We protected the program by showing the type of services offered, whether it was resumé writing, life skills, or on-the-job training. I would go on site and work with an individual, and this gradually paid off over time. I am raising this point because that type of support system was necessary for those individuals to maintain their employment. It also led to better workplaces. Later on I did the same type of work with Youth At Risk. The investment was significant.

Bill C-27 contains some provisions, such as the five-year sunset clause, that could cause structural problems if people need to be retrained. Some people cannot get trained in five years because they need post-secondary education or because the job requires additional education on top of that. If someone is suffering from some sort of problem, he or she might not be capable of taking a full course load 100% of the time, so that individual might divide it up, whether it is college or university or some type of training. I do not like this element of the legislation.

It is important to note that the veterans affairs office was closed in Windsor. I take issue with that, because we have in my riding the Essex and Kent Scottish Regiment and HMCS Hunter, two armed forces units that have been strong for this country.

Canada was recruited very heavily for Afghanistan. I remember the billboards. Members of the recruitment office attended festivals, fairs, and a number of different places where that would not normally be seen because Windsor had high unemployment. Windsor has contributed quite a bit, and to lose our veterans office is a shame. According to government data, the office had 2,600 clients with over 4,000 inquiries, generally speaking, so people have been affected by the closure of the office.

It is important for people to understand what a veterans office does. These offices help our veterans facilitate their lives so they can focus on looking for employment or getting into educational programs. I am not speaking only of World War II vets, Korea vets, or our men and women in peace missions. I am also speaking of our Afghanistan vets and Gulf War vets.

They had a choice, and losing that office was significant. Yes, one staff person was moved over and there is a kiosk. Great. That is not enough. That is not good enough. There were 14 effective people. It was not just me saying it. The legion was saying no, the North Wall Riders were saying no, Afghanistan veterans were saying no, and the City of Windsor resolutions were saying no, all at a time when there was over $1 billion in available funds for veterans.

What were employees doing at the veterans office? They were helping people with pensions, disability or death benefits, economic support in the form of allowances, and health care benefits and services; assessment services for Canadian Forces and Merchant Navy veterans who served in the First World War, Second World War, the Korean War, and the other wars that have taken place, including Afghanistan; civilian war allowances for wartime services; and assistance with filing forms. Those are just some of the things veterans actually got in the Windsor veterans office.

The government closed a bunch of offices around the country, and New Democrats asked what the savings were, because according to the government, it had to close the offices out of fiscal prudence. What did it save? In Charlottetown, it saved less than $1 million; in Corner Brook, it saved around $360,000; in Sydney, it saved less than $1 million; in Windsor, it saved less than $1 million; in Thunder Bay, it saved $650,000; in Kelowna, it saved $667,000; for Prince George, data was not available; in Saskatoon, it saved less than $1 million; and in Brandon, it saved just over $300,000.

That is what happened, and now there is a contraction of other civil service jobs and positions. In Windsor, the most efficient service station in terms of sorting mail at Canada Post, which won awards, was packed up and moved to London, Ontario. Now the mail goes to London on trucks and comes back after being sorted. It is terribly inefficient, and we lost a bunch of jobs. There are also the impending cuts in home delivery. Again, these are missed opportunities for veterans to be part of the civil service.

The Veterans Affairs offices closed, as I talked about already. Veterans could have worked there, but they are closed. The Canadian Forces recruitment office was the first to go. After being poached for so many years, the recruitment office was closed, so there are no jobs there for veterans.

The consulate office in Detroit was a great opportunity. That was a very effective office and did a lot of good work in economic development. A lot of veterans with international experience would be well suited to serve in that office, especially in the Windsor-Detroit corridor.

There is a new border crossing. We have many languages and some of the most diverse cultures in the country and the world. Language skills would have been great, very effective, and important for our economy. There are cuts coming to VIA Rail, and there have been cuts to Service Canada as well.

The bill truly is a missed opportunity. It is a missed opportunity, because structurally, it is set up in a way that is not going to take full advantage of what we could do for veterans. I am sad about that. I am sad that we are not going to improve that. Again, this cannot be symbolic; it has to have real results. Maybe the government will actually measure the results and do the right thing to fix the legislation when it fails.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Trade]

Mr. Speaker, to be honest with the House, I was not at first going to rise to debate Bill C-11 because I spoke at second reading on this bill. However, I stayed after question period to hear how much discussion of veterans hiring and the veterans hiring act there would be. Because so many members of the House chose to say quietly that they were going to support the bill, but then used it to talk about a range of other issues, I decided to speak yet again.

It is always an honour for me to speak in the House on issues related to the Canadian Forces and our veterans, and particularly to try to raise the level of debate, to try to bring some statistics and facts to bear on it, as well as to highlight some of the amazing work being done by non-governmental actors in both the rehabilitation and particularly the retraining and employment of our veterans. I did that at second reading, highlighting some exceptional Canadian leaders in that regard. I will do a bit more of that today.

Going back to Bill C-11, as I said in my previous speech in the House, this has an important impact on a small number of veterans, but perhaps more importantly, it is massively symbolic, as the Canadian government is one of the largest employers, if not the largest employer, in the country. Bill C-11 states that after three years of honourable service in the Canadian Forces, people who transition out of the forces and become veterans will have priority one hiring in the rest of the civil service for a five-year period. We have heard some members of this House state that they still have to qualify for the position; of course they do. Veterans who leave the Canadian Forces, when they hang up their uniform, have an amazing range of skills and experience.

In fact, last night after I appeared on a panel and tried desperately for the second time to explain how the estimates process in the House works to my friend from Guelph, a retired Canadian Forces captain from Chester, Nova Scotia, emailed me to say he shared my frustration with the lack of uptake with my friends. He told his story to me of how he served for several years in the Canadian Forces and then transitioned to 20-plus years as a foreign service officer for Canada. Certainly, it has been the experience, from the Great War right through to today, that we have seen a lot of citizen soldiers, and soldiers who become corporate leaders and productive business owners and entrepreneurs. It is up to the veterans to qualify for positions, but they will get priority one hiring, meaning that if there are several eligible candidates, veterans with service-related injuries would get the priority hiring.

It is important to see who could be impacted by this because it is not a couple of people, as some of my colleagues in this debate have suggested. There are about 4,000 men and women who release from the Canadian Forces each year. The majority of those are regular retirements or completions of service contracts. When I left after 12 years, I would have been among the several thousand people that year to transition out. However, there are over 1,200 members of all ranks who leave because of medical release. That could be everything from those who have had an injury right through to those whose medical category might have changed, like a pilot's vision declining before getting his or her wings. Twelve hundred is a big number, and the vast majority of those would have post-secondary education, because now both non-commissioned members of the Canadian Forces and officers tend to have at least a college or a bachelor's degree. In some of the specialized trades within the Canadian Forces, the members have some of the most cutting-edge training in technology, intelligence-gathering, communications, and signals. These are in-demand services also used by other departments within the government. Many of them would also be bilingual, having either joined the Canadian Forces with a bilingual background or received training over the course of their time in uniform, therefore making them even stronger candidates for some of the work with the federal government.

The bill puts a five year time frame on it because that is an appropriate time frame for the priority hiring. That five year period would allow that veteran to accept the training or vocational support as part of their retirement or departure from the Canadian Forces. They would be able to educate, potentially move back to their place of enrolment or place in Canada, and that period gives them that chance.

I am proud that our government has dramatically increased what a veteran can get in terms of retraining and education assistance. There are higher numbers of education assistance while they are in uniform in the Canadian Forces and there is more outside. In fact, the total envelope that an individual veteran could get, depending on their background, their time in, what courses they take is in the tens of thousands of dollars of that retraining and re-education assistance. This would be accomplished within those first five years and that would be the period of time that priority hiring would be held for that veteran.

Now I will talk a bit about some of the other items people have addressed in the debate today to show that overall our government is making tremendous strides, particularly on the transition of men and women from uniform in the Canadian Forces to civilian life as a veteran.

In fact, one of the things the Auditor General's report from today highlights is that our government has invested heavily with Veterans Affairs and is working and meeting its objectives in rehabilitation and vocational assistance.

One of my friends in the House suggested that was focusing on a small in the Auditor General's audit on veterans mental health. No, that was one of the two major categories at which the auditor looked. He looked at 4,600 veterans with a mental health condition of some sort. The department's goal was to ensure that veterans could qualify for this rehabilitation and vocational assistance. The goal was 80% to qualify and be on the program within two weeks within the department. The Auditor General showed that 84% were getting on to that program within the two week goal.

In the case of rehabilitation and vocational assistance, this is directly germane to this debate because it is about transitioning and allowing veterans to get the education or training to become a priority hire of the federal government, or a great hire for the private sector. The Auditor General is saying that we are getting that pretty much right. As a veteran, I would love to see 100% within two weeks. We should always strive to do a little better, but in the House, we should also strive to actually look at a report that comes out like this.

It is important, because we asked the Auditor General to look at mental health. We wanted to see where we were doing well and where we had to improve, because we are investing heavily. The Auditor General suggested $500 million each year earmarked specifically for mental health support.

On the weekend, there was a new announcement about even more money, but it is also about performance and whether that money is making the intended impact. That is why our government asked the Auditor General to look at this area. That is important context.

Another thing about the Auditor General's report that I take as a good indication is some of the statistics. The big one shows that we are finally addressing the issue of stigma, which haunts mental health, not just in the veterans community, but the mental health discussion across the country. Stigma affects the ability of somebody to come forward and ask for help.

I have spoken in the House before about the MP from my riding 100 years ago, Sam Sharpe, who served at Vimy as a sitting MP and took his own life on return from World War I at the Royal Victoria Hospital from shell shock. We have not been dealing well throughout our history with post traumatic stress, with mental illness as a result of service. We still have a way to go, but we are getting better.

What did the Auditor General say?

Ten years ago, there were only about 2% who would identify as a medically-released veteran with a mental health injury. Now, it is 12%. There has been a 10% increase. Some of that would be attributable to the fact that we were engaged in a combat mission in Afghanistan, certainly, but I think all members, and certainly any advocates in the mental health community, would also say that the reason we are seeing that higher number over such a short period of time is we are finally getting to the stigma issue and more Canadians are willing to come forward to seek treatment, some of which is innovative and can really help them get back to leading a fully productive life as not just a soldier but as a father or a mother. Getting rid of that stigma allows them to get the support quicker.

I read in the news the other day about a veteran who was concerned that he went undiagnosed from his tour in Bosnia years ago. That is likely because the Canadian Forces, and really society 20 years ago, was not doing well in this area. The first operational stress injury clinic for the Canadian Forces was not opened until 2002. There were two, perhaps a third almost opened under the previous government. We have opened an additional 12 to 14 in that time. On the weekend, we that a new one would open in Halifax and satellite offices in another seven communities, bringing the total up to 25, to spread that operational stress injury clinic network across the country. Therefore, when men and women leave the Canadian Forces, they have support regardless of where they live.

The Auditor General has shown that more Canadians are coming forward to get the help they need. That training and educational assistance, which I said numbers in tens of thousands of dollars, can help them retrain and be ready for an opportunity in the federal public service as a priority one hire under the veterans hiring act, BillC-11, or within the private sector.

I would like to showcase some of the leadership going on across the country when it comes to hiring our veterans.

Non-profit charitable groups like Canada Company has a hiring program with employers, engaging them, reaching out to veterans and trying to plug them into opportunities. Someone I served in the military with, Walter Moniz, works diligently on that program for Canada Company, and I would like to thank Blake Goldring for starting Canada Company and this program on hiring and transition for our veterans.

True Patriot Love, a charity that I had been involved in forming prior to my time in Parliament, hosted a conference called “From Battlefield to Boardroom”, It was focused at human resources leaders within companies so they could learn about the value of hiring a veteran and learn what the difference between a corporal and a colonel was. This is self-evident when one is in uniform, but it is not as evident to civilian employers or an HR department if they have no familiarity with military service and the experience that those Canadians would have. At that “From Battlefield to Boardroom” conference were veterans who secured jobs when employers realized what a tremendous opportunity they were for their company.

Finally, I have also spoken in the House on a few occasions about a really exceptional group called Treble Victor. That is a group of former military members, not just from the Canadian Forces but also from our allied forces. There are some British, French and South African veterans who are volunteers. They served some time in uniform and now want to help men and women leave and transition into meaningful post-CF employment. These people have busy careers and lives but volunteer their time to meet with employers and to mentor the men and women of the Canadian Forces transitioning

I have had the good fortune of working with Treble Victor for many years and want to applaud it on its efforts, again. Tim Patriquin is the current head of Treble Victor, and I want to thank them for their work.

I should also add that one of the carpenters' unions and its members have also done a tremendous job in reaching out directly. I have met some of their leadership who are reaching out and giving opportunities within the skilled trades.

With all of these groups, such as non-governmental operators, charities and people volunteering their time, is it not important that the government shows that it is also putting the hiring of veterans as a priority? I think I said at second reading that whether Bill C-11 hires 10 people or 100 people, the symbolism of it is as important as the men and women who may benefit from it. It shows that the federal government, as one of the largest employers in the country with coast to coast reach, puts a priority on hiring our veterans, particularly those who exit as a result of an injury or a medical category change of some sort. The federal government has the obligation to show leadership on this front, and Bill C-11 is the embodiment of this.

I would like to return to a subject that I have spoken about several times in the House and that, sadly, has become so politicized we cannot even have an honest debate about it, which is the nine regional Veterans Affairs bricks and mortar offices that were closed. I asked the members for Guelph and Random—Burin—St. George's if veterans in their ridings used a bricks and mortar office. I would invite Canadians to check Hansard. They will see the members did not answer that question.

In fact, while I was on a political panel with the defence critic from the Liberal Party, I suggested the Legion played an important role in helping veterans access their benefits and services. I was mocked for that position. I think she said something like I was outsourcing to the Legion. The Legion, which was created in 1925 and in 1926 became incorporated by a special act of Parliament in the House, was empowered from its start to help support our veterans.

There is actually no better network of people helping our veterans than Legion veterans service officers. They have done it for generations. That is the real answer to the question that my friend from Random—Burin—St. George's did not want answer. In small communities like Stephenville and Marystown in her riding, there was never a bricks and mortar office. Were the veterans not helped or ignored for 50 years? No. In the vast majority of cases, they were helped by their veterans service officers, who have a direct link into Veterans Affairs Canada.

In the Auditor General's report today, the Auditor General asked some of the veterans service officers their thoughts on some of the cumbersome administrative forms used in their help with veterans. The Auditor General asked the Legion about how we could maybe make some of these administrative forms and the delays from them shorter. Our Conservative government already moved on that to reduce the application from seven pages to three, or something like that. The Auditor General went back to veterans service officers from the Legion to once again ask if the changes had been beneficial. It is in his report.

This is the issue that we do not talk about in a rational way. Our government has the obligation to provide support and access to that support for veterans who are in their late 20s from Afghanistan to veterans in their 90s, some of whom are in Italy right now, visiting Ortona and the places that they helped to liberate. We have to do that, not by staying put with the way things were done in the 1950s. As a veteran, it is important for us to do what we are doing, opening 18 to 25 operational stress injury clinics across the country that actually deliver services. We are not doing things in a way that involves only eight or nine people walking into an office to fill in forms.

I hope the veterans hiring act is not just an opportunity to revisit why it is so important for the federal government to lead in this category and this issue. I hope it is a good opportunity for all members of the House to try to bring a much more informed and dedicated debate to the House when it comes to veterans.

[Judy Foote, Liberal, Random—Burin—St. George's, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in support of a measure that would provide support for the brave men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces and Canadian veterans, to whom we owe so much. My concern is that while Bill C-27 may provide support for a small number of service members and veterans, it would not do nearly enough.

Bill C-27 is designed to amend the Public Service Employment Act to provide increased access to hiring opportunities in the public service for certain current and former members of the Canadian Armed Forces. In Random—Burin—St. George's, over 700 men and women are serving in all branches of the military, and it is those young men and women and the repercussions of the experiences they have that I think about whenever we talk about veterans or going to war.

The proposed legislation in Bill C-27 would ensure priority is given to Canadian Armed Forces members who are released because of service-related illness or injury, and would extend eligibility to reservists and Canadian Rangers.

Bill C-27 would also provide increased access to internal public service postings for eligible members and veterans and increase their period of eligibility. This all sounds very good. We can all agree these changes are indeed positive steps.

However, what they are not is a substitute for a real plan to ease the transition of service members and veterans into civilian employment. The government can and must do more to assist veterans in finding work following their military service. Unfortunately, nothing in Bill C-27 actually ensures that veterans will get jobs.

We know that helping veterans find jobs is a crucial step in their return to civilian life and well-being upon release from the military. Under normal circumstances, placing injured veterans at the head of the civil service hiring line and increasing access for veterans of the Canadian Armed Forces would be considered a valuable commitment and something to be applauded. In this instance, however, the promise is being made by a government that has already cut 20,000 public service jobs and is on track to cut 30,000 more.

Regrettably, Bill C-27 appears poised to have little impact on the day-to-day lives of the majority of Canadian veterans. In the words of Jerry Kovacs, a director with Canadian Veterans Advocacy, “In theory, it's a good bill. ... Initiatives to hire veterans are good initiatives. [But] if there are no jobs, how can there be any priority hiring? So it's kind of a hollow promise."

After years of cuts and hiring freezes, there are fewer civil service jobs for veterans to fill than ever before. Bill C-27 would do nothing for veterans who may be too ill or too injured to work.

In his recent report, Guy Parent, the Veterans Ombudsman, stated that “Severely impaired Veterans can face a lifetime of loss of employment and career progression opportunities". Simply put, even injured veterans who are already entitled to government assistance are not receiving it. The Veterans Ombudsman's report indicated that nearly half of the country's most severely disabled ex-soldiers are not receiving a government allowance intended to compensate them for their physical and mental wounds. The ombudsman also concluded that many of those who are receiving the permanent impairment allowance are only being awarded the lowest grade of the benefit, which is the minimum amount.

The federal government also has an obligation to assist injured and ill veterans to find jobs when they are released from the Canadian Armed Forces, but Bill C-27 should not replace the government's responsibility to help injured CAF members stay in the forces when that is their wish.

Furthermore, there is a genuine concern that soldiers may hide health problems so that they will not lose their income. The Conservative government must do everything it can to ensure Canadian Armed Forces personnel suffering from physical and mental injuries need not fear being set adrift and having to keep their wounds secret in order to qualify for their pensions.

Recently released government statistics show that approximately 1,100 of the 6,200 soldiers discharged because of health conditions since 2009 were unable to serve the 10-year minimum required to collect a full pension.

Under the existing policy, many Canadian Armed Forces personnel face the dilemma of having to choose between risking their physical and mental health or risking their financial future. Soldiers suffering from PTSD and other ailments can either avoid seeking help in the hope of making it to pension eligibility, or seek necessary care and risk losing their pensions. Bill C-27 is clearly just the latest example of the Conservative government attempting to hide its inaction on the many issues affecting CAF members and veterans today. The Conservatives boast how much they support our soldiers and care about veterans and their families, but the facts show otherwise. Shamefully, the Conservative government continues to abdicate its responsibility to care for Canadian veterans.

A few months ago the Minister of Veterans Affairs called into question the social and legal responsibility Canada has for its soldiers. On at least two separate occasions since then, the Minister of Veterans Affairs has literally turned his back on veterans and their families who have come to Ottawa to voice their concerns about the lack of respect and support they have been receiving from the Conservative government. When it closed nine regional Veterans Affairs offices throughout the country, including one in Corner Brook, Newfoundland and Labrador, and committed to eliminating 781 jobs from the Department of Veterans Affairs by 2014-15, it claimed it was doing so in an attempt to cut costs. Meanwhile the Conservative government continues to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on partisan advertising while neglecting Canada's veterans. Then, at the last minute, when it knows the Auditor General's report is coming out, it comes out with a pot of goodies that we know are promises and only promises.

In his report today, the Auditor General concluded that Veterans Affairs is largely unconcerned with how well veterans are being served and whether programs are making a difference in their lives. While $1.13 billion in funding for veterans having gone unspent since the Conservative government took power, veterans have been forced to wait months for the mental health services they so desperately need. According to the Auditor General's report, about 15,000 veterans and serving military personnel were eligible to receive health support from Veterans Affairs through the disability benefits program at the end of last March. The number is expected to increase as more veterans of the Afghanistan campaign leave the military for civilian life in the coming years.

Over the past decade, 160 Canadian Armed Forces members have died by suicide, and 158 died serving in Afghanistan. Many more continue to struggle with mental health issues, such as post-traumatic stress disorder. The Auditor General's report confirms what Liberals have long maintained, that the Conservative government simply is not doing enough to help our veterans and their families who have sacrificed so much for their country. They have put their lives on the line and some have made the ultimate sacrifice, yet we are not there for them in the way they need us to be.

As Canadians we owe a debt of gratitude to our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and their families. They require assistance in so many ways. Unfortunately, because the Conservatives are refusing to respond to the needs of our veterans, the latter are being forced to mobilize in a variety of ways to get their message out about how unfairly they are being treated. Bill C-27 does very little to address a much larger problem. This bill is a step in the right direction, as my colleague has said, but there is much that still needs to be done. It is time for the government to start treating our veterans and their families with the respect they have earned and deserve from those of us who get to live a much better life, and those throughout the world who get to live under better circumstances because of their efforts. This begins by listening to the concerns being raised by those who have already sacrificed so much, instead of ignoring them when they reach out for help, which unfortunately the Conservative government continues to do.

[Sylvain Chicoine, NDP, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased today to be speaking to Bill C-27 at report stage, which gives veterans hiring priority in the public service.

First of all, I would like to remind Canadians that it has been a long road for this bill. Bill C-11 was introduced over a year ago. However, the government left out certain details and made some mistakes. As a result, the bill was abandoned and the government came back with Bill C-27, which is being studied today.

This new bill was introduced in response to certain criticisms of a less-than-stellar record concerning our veterans' employment and return to civilian life.

According to certain statistics, between 2006 and 2011, 2,000 veterans took advantage of the hiring priority and 1,024 of them obtained a job in the public service. Of these 1,024 veterans, 739 were hired by National Defence, which makes it the largest employer of veterans. The Department of National Defence tries really hard to hire veterans. Unfortunately, it is the only department that is making a significant effort to hire veterans, since the Department of Veterans Affairs provides the majority of the jobs, or 72%.

At Veterans Affairs, which should be quite open to hiring veterans, the situation is more disastrous. During this same service period, from 2006 to 2011, only 24 veterans managed to be hired by Veterans Affairs, which represents less than 2% of all jobs.

The second largest employer of veterans is Correctional Service Canada, which, in the same five-year period, hired 54 veterans, or 5% of all veterans hired. Not far behind is Human Resources and Skills Development, with 44 veterans hired, or 4% of all hires.

When we look at these figures, we see that few departments are making an effort to hire veterans. Most of the other departments did not hire even one veteran, while a few hired less than 10.

This means that a major change in culture is needed within the public service. I am not sure that this bill will be able to reverse the trend and ensure that many more veterans are hired, especially since so many cuts have been made to the public service in recent years. I think it will be many years before this bill has any effect on the hiring of veterans in the public service.

True to form, the government has introduced a bill that I feel is incomplete. This superficial bill is primarily designed to give the impression that the government is taking the necessary measures to help our veterans transition to civilian life. However, that is not the case. This bill is incomplete because it would have a limited impact, as I mentioned.

We will still support this bill, since in the long term—but not in the short or medium term—this bill will still help our veterans find good jobs and seamlessly transition into civilian life.

In this bill, the government did the bare minimum of what it could have done for our veterans who have been injured in service and are looking to get back into the job market. It can be extremely hard for veterans with disabilities to find suitable jobs.

Not only do veterans have to deal with physical limitations, but some may also face a number of prejudices related to operational stress. They must face many challenges to find a good job once they return to civilian life.

A survey of private-sector employees indicated that it would be essential to improve co-operation with the private sector, since they have very little knowledge of veterans' skills.

Human resources staff do not know how to read the resumés of military applicants. This same survey indicated that, of the 850 employers surveyed, the majority had little or no understanding of veterans' skills. Only 16% of companies make a special effort to hire veterans. Nearly half of employers believe that a university degree is far more important than the skills acquired by military personnel during their time in service, and only 13% of them stated that their human resources departments knew how to interpret the resumés of military applicants.

Given this situation, the government needs to accommodate these veterans and make it easier for them to join the public service. However, it is clear that this alone is simply not enough. The government decided that not all veterans would have access to priority hiring in the public service.

According to this bill, only military personnel who are medically released will have that priority in the public service. That is far too restrictive. It in no way takes into account our veterans who are not granted a medical release, but who, after launching an appeal with the department or the veterans board, are then recognized as having a service-related injury or disability.

Many veterans with physical and psychological symptoms would not be given immediate medical release. They have to appeal to the Veterans Review and Appeal Board to overturn those decisions and acknowledge the link between their injury and their military service. However, even once the board recognizes that, these people would unfortunately not receive hiring priority under this bill.

Unfortunately, the government chose not to include these people in this bill despite the fact that we proposed amendments to include them. The Conservative members of the committee simply decided to reject the amendment. To me, it was a no-brainer to grant hiring priority to that kind of veteran as well. The government just decided to turn its back on them.

Some injuries, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, do not show up until years later and can have a major impact on veterans' work. The Conservatives think that all the veterans have to do is sign up for a transition program and hope to find work that is a good fit with their condition, which is not always easy, especially in the private sector. As I mentioned, too few civilian employers truly recognize veterans' skills. The government's decision not to include them is shameful.

The public service would have been a very appropriate environment for these kinds of veterans. Working conditions and the duty to accommodate would have really helped these veterans maintain suitable, stable, long-term employment in an environment where they could properly adjust to their situation.

Furthermore, the Conservatives changed the definition of “veteran” in the Public Service Employment Act, so as to exclude the spouses of veterans from the preference list for jobs in the public service. This preference for the spouses of veterans, who would come before other Canadian citizens, was offered to the spouses of our Second World War and Korean War veterans.

Why did the government decide to exclude those spouses from the preference list? We might have thought that it was simply an oversight, but the government also refused our amendment that would have corrected the situation. Once again, the Conservatives decided to ignore these entirely reasonable requests.

The government says it wants to help families, but excluding spouses from the preference list is certainly no way to help families. On the one hand, the government accepted the recommendations of the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs regarding families, but on the other hand, its actions go against those principles.

Once again, the government has abandoned veterans. In my opinion, the Conservative members of the committee were never interested in discussing the amendments with other committee members. I will even quote something the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Veterans Affairs said when the committee was examining the bill:

...right now obviously the intent is to get this bill through as quickly as possible. With regard to other suggestions and I think wonderful initiatives that you brought forward, we are happy to look at those, moving forward.

He will be happy to look into those suggestions, but he will do it later. He cannot be serious. Once this bill is passed, I doubt we are going to come back and amend it. What a joke. He just said that to get rid of us.

We also unanimously supported the report on the new charter, and we got the same type of response: later. The government said that it would examine the recommendations later, not now. That is nonsense. The Conservatives are not showing any real willingness to do anything that would actually help our veterans. The only amendment they made after the bill was examined in committee was to clarify who would be responsible for establishing the link between the injury and the military service. It is a good thing they did that because the bill was rather vague in that regard when it was introduced. That was also one of the ombudsman's major concerns.

The Conservatives were also unable to conduct a decent examination of this bill because the shooting in Parliament took place on the first day this bill was scheduled to be examined in committee, and the meeting had to be cancelled. Unfortunately, instead of adding another meeting when we returned to work, the Conservatives decided to hold only one committee meeting to examine this bill. We were therefore unable to hear from anyone other than representatives of Veterans Affairs Canada and the Treasury Board. We were unable to meet with veterans groups that could have also presented some amendments and spoken to certain aspects of the bill. In my opinion, the bill was not thoroughly examined.

Some veterans groups had reservations about the bill. A member of the Canadian Association of Veterans in United Nations Peacekeeping said:

I am uncomfortable about the distinction made between service-related and non-service-related causes, and to the lack of recognition for RCMP members.

RCMP officers therefore have the right to be treated in the same way as members of our military. Unfortunately, the government did not want to include them in the bill.

What is more, the veterans ombudsman said the following on his blog:

...all medically releasing [sic] Canadian Armed Forces members should be treated the same way, because there is an inherent service relationship for every Canadian Armed Forces member who is medically released because the individual can no longer serve in uniform.

The Union of National Defence Employees had this to say:

Disabled veterans, especially those with stress-related injuries, who return to the workforce, must have access to reintegration services. Bill C-27 includes no such provision

To come back to the study in committee, unfortunately we were unable to have a meaningful study because the government did not schedule at least one meeting to hear from people who may have also been able to recommend certain changes. As I was saying, no changes, except for one minor one, were approved in committee.

This is a joke. Veterans' representatives should have appeared before the committee as witnesses, but the Conservatives wanted to pass this bill as quickly as possible. I think they have proven time and again that they have nothing but contempt for the legislative process and for Parliament.

As I said at the start, they did the bare minimum. The bill excludes soldiers who have non-service related injuries. It excludes veterans whose injuries are recognized later and it excludes veterans' spouses from the preference list.

The bill also leaves out RCMP officers. Half measures like these are no way to properly honour our veterans.

Mr. Speaker, we are going to support this bill, but we are a bit disappointed with its final draft. As they did with the committee report on the new charter, the Conservatives made promises they did not keep. They take far too long to make good on those promises.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Trade]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to personally thank the hon. member for Sault Ste. Marie. I had the honour of sitting on the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs when I first joined Parliament in 2012. His passion and commitment to the Canadian Forces and our veterans, and his family's service in the Canadian Forces, have been clear to me from the first time I met him, as it has been to all members of the House.

He has raised some of the fundamental reasons why the veterans hiring act is before Parliament. There are groups of Canadians in Canada Company; True Patriot Love; and Treble Victor, a networking group of former men and women of the Canadian Forces and allied services, already doing veteran hiring, networking, and connecting. There are employers across the country hiring veterans not only because it is the right thing to do, but also because it is accretive to the bottom line of the company, because are hiring people with training, loyalty, and the inherent ability to stay on the job and complete tasks.

My question for the member stems from the comments of the member for Guelph, who seems to think that a lot of people might not be hired through this. I would like to ask the member how important it is that one of the largest employers in the country, the Government of Canada, puts as a top priority the hiring of veterans. The symbolism of that action, showing that we are putting veterans as a top priority for hiring and encouraging other employers to do that, is as important as the dozens or several hundred who might be hired as a result of this program. Could the member comment on that?