Finance Committee on May 17th, 2017

[Ron Liepert, Conservative, Calgary Signal Hill, AB]

Mental health is a pretty broad term. What kind of treatment do your veterans with PTSD really require? Is it typical mental health provision, or is it more counselling? I just need to understand a little bit better. I think you mentioned that often you are sent to an addictions treatment centre. That's a totally different situation, in my view, from that of PTSD. What specific kind of treatment is required?

[Aaron Bedard]

I just put a name to it: the “reboot program”, as in rebooting a computer. It's a question of catching them as soon as possible, trying to encourage the use of biometrics so that we can immediately be tracking troops coming off a tour, right away.

There's one technique called M-wave. It has a part that can track your nervous system, and it's very plain to see when you're becoming highly triggered. People outside the unit can review data over the course of a week to see where people are having issues and then catch them at the earliest phase.

What happens is, they mask one symptom and more develop; they mask those—they mask everything they can—and they start self-medicating. As you're masking, it's coming out in bad ways: anger around the family—around the kids, around the wife. We need to catch it at square one. Rather than wait for a guy to go for five months or five years or more trying to just get to the end of their career, we need to catch it early on.

Educational systems don't necessarily focus these days very much on life skills. One foundational life skill I'd like to see more teaching of for soldiers concerns mental health. This might possibly be a point to catch them at the earliest phase, if you take them away for one month out of the unit and give them some good skills for how to cope without having to use pharmaceuticals per se.

[Ron Liepert, Conservative, Calgary Signal Hill, AB]

I just want to understand a little more, Mr. Campbell, about the pensions. I don't think it's any secret that the military is not a highly paid profession. I mean, your members are not what would be considered a highly paid profession. So, on that basis—given that most pensions are based on what you earn—in real numbers, what does a pension look like for someone who is coming out of the military?

[Mark Campbell]

Well, that's a good question. I guess it depends on the degree to which they are disabled. If we're talking about someone who is seriously disabled, then they are going to need, as a minimum, earnings at 90% or better. They are going to need what they were net receiving before they were injured as a minimum to continue, with some degree of financial security for life, to support their families.

The other thing you need then is what I would call the costs of being crippled. There is a distinct cost to being disabled. If you're severely disabled, then you lose the ability to do things like maintain your own household. I can no longer do the physical things I used to do, like swing a hammer and drywall walls. I have to throw money at every problem that occurs within my household. I can't take advantage of seat sales to go on a family vacation, because I have to have certain seats on the aircraft. I have to have a certain type of accommodation at the other end.

I just throw out those quick examples to give you an idea that there are costs that need to be compensated that are specific to being disabled, and they vary with the degree and the type of disability. That has to be added or factored into any pension for disabled soldiers being forcibly released from the forces under what we call a 3b medical release.

Then there are the family considerations. Right now, under the new Veterans Charter, there are no family benefits whatsoever. There are some being proposed—a caregiver recognition benefit—but there are very few, other than right now a caregiver relief benefit.

Most of the benefits for the spouse—most of the benefits that compensate them as attendants, and the benefits that accrue to the children—are gone. They have all been removed. Again, we have to look at some form of appropriate financial compensation for caregivers who give up their entire civilian careers. My wife gave up a $60,000-a-year career in order to care for me in the home. The government is now proposing under the current budget that she receive $1,000 a month or $12,000 a year, tax-free, for performing those services. Well, quite frankly, that is inadequate. It's a nice gesture, but it's inadequate.

We need to look at a whole package when we talk about a pension for the disabled. Right now there are critical elements missing from that package.

[Ron Liepert, Conservative, Calgary Signal Hill, AB]

Are you anywhere near that with Veterans Affairs? Where are you with that?

[Mark Campbell]

Well, I can put my—

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Mr. Campbell, tag on to the same question as Ron actually. One of our difficulties here is that we are dealing with a budget bill. Just going through your presentation, I don't think you have severe problems with this budget—with what is or is not in it—or I couldn't detect that. You have problems with the process of how some of the budgetary matters that come before us are being handled elsewhere within this government system, whether it's Veterans Affairs or under the charter or whatever.

I guess I'm betwixt and between, because I don't know where we can go on that. That's why we were hoping that you would end up before the Veterans Affairs committee, because then they could make a recommendation to us, but they could also deal with the real issues that you have put before this committee. We have to deal with the budget implementation act, and I don't know whether we can even make a recommendation outside that, to be honest, to say to a minister, these issues have to be dealt with by your department.

So, in part related to Ron's question, go ahead and answer it but that's where I'm coming from on this.

[Mark Campbell]

The biggest concern with the budget from the implementation perspective would be the pension itself and the question of a lifetime pension—the return to a lifetime pension—for disabled soldiers. What we see is a budget that makes mention of a pension, yet again, and makes promises of a pension down the road, yet again, but there is no meat. Completely absent is any meat to include, to my knowledge, any costing of what a pension like that might look like within this budget 2017.

That begs the question: when do we see a budget that addresses the pension? Is it 2018? Is it sometime after that? Is it leading into the next election so we can dangle the carrot some more? We don't really know. That's the problem. We don't really know.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

That's a valid point. We'll grapple with that too. I'm not sure where we're going to go.

Mr. Dusseault.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank everyone for being here. Sorry for the interruptions.

I want to talk again about the transition from military life to civilian life experienced by many military members each year.

Bill C-44 contains new measures, in particular regarding the education and training people can receive when they want to head in another direction or maybe change careers, and regarding the transition services that will be provided for veterans so they can look for jobs, and so on. I'll focus on these issues.

What's currently available to veterans and military members in terms of education and training after military service? How will the new benefit help better meet the needs of military members and veterans? Was this program requested by veterans? Is the request being properly addressed?

[Mark Campbell]

My apologies, but my French is really not that good, and the earpiece wasn't working. Is there somebody here who can perhaps process that in English? Can you help?

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

I can translate myself.

I was asking about the education benefit for veterans. Is this something that was asked for by veterans?

[Mark Campbell]

Yes.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Is this a good response, in your view, to what was asked, or can this committee look at some improvements to this program?

[Mark Campbell]

Absolutely this is something that the veterans themselves have been requesting for a long time, an education benefit something akin to the U.S. G.I. bill, as it's called, whereby they provide a college education or certain benefits towards a college education based on four years of service.

In our case, obviously the criteria have yet to be defined. We know some of the basic outlines. For instance, it's based on six years of service, which gets you a certain amount of money, $40,000. Twelve years of full-time service gets you access to $80,000. We're not sure about what those moneys can be spent on. The devil is always in the details with regard to this type of legislation.

When the guidelines come out, they have in the past—I must be honest—tended to disenfranchise more people than they helped. The regulations actually serve to exclude the majority of people who could probably benefit from those benefits. In the case of the education allowance, I don't know, because we don't have the details yet to parse in order to know whether or not it's going to serve its intended target audience completely, the way it's intended to. I can tell you that on the face of it, it is a very welcome benefit and is greatly appreciated.

[Aaron Bedard]

There's another issue with this, though. In 2015, we were in front of a minister of veteran affairs who was pushing an education benefit to us, trying to settle the Equitas court case. Four of the six plaintiffs were eligible and went through the advanced period and the election, but in the end all four of them were denied this new benefit.

It's always in the best spirit, I'm sure, that a government pushes out these new programs, but then you have to remember that they're going to be handed over to the bureaucracy. They design internal procedures behind them for eligibility criteria, and they're often very arcane, to the point that their own case managers don't necessarily understand who is eligible within the program. Very often they will just deny them a program rather than risk approving somebody when they don't really understand the benefit very well.

There's considerable problem with the delivery. I don't doubt that it's a great program up front, but a year or two from now is when we find out whether people are actually getting it.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

That's a good point. I think we can see this in the EI program. It's a good program, but only four out of ten workers can access the benefits.

Are you able to give the number of people who will be able to access this program? How many veterans would be going back into education?

[Mark Campbell]

Conceivably we're talking about hundreds or potentially thousands a year. Attrition rates are quite high; the turnover in certain trades within the Canadian Armed Forces is very high, particularly in the combat arms trades—the pointy end. There is more than 50% attrition in a five-year contract.

I know there was a lot of discussion with the Canadian Armed Forces when developing the new education benefit so that it would not exacerbate the attrition problem by encouraging people to get out too soon. That's why there is the six-year threshold and the twelve-year threshold.

I think, conceivably, when this thing gets up and running, you're going to see thousands of veterans taking advantage of it, and there are those who don't necessarily transition directly into school out of the military but have four or five years to make up their minds to go back to school when the time is right for them. There are thousands.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

The other point was the redesign of the career transition service for Canadian Armed Forces members' survivors—veterans' spouses and common-law partners—to give them expanded access to support coaching and job-search training. Is this also something that veterans' groups asked for? Is it something you think many veterans will benefit from? How is it comparable to the service that has already been given to the forces?

[Mark Campbell]

The service is up to date. In my experience, we're somewhat of a patchwork. There was nothing very coherent in the job search, resumé-writing assistance, and those other things. It varied from base to base across the country. I don't think there was a standard slate of services that were available to people.

Under the new, enhanced transition services, I think what we're going to see, if they come to fruition in the way that is envisioned, is a standardized suite, almost a concierge service, to assist people who are releasing from the Canadian Armed Forces. Part and parcel of that service will be referral to such things as resumé-writing exercises and job-finding assistance.

Will it be welcome? Absolutely. Have the veterans been asking for it? Yes, I believe they have, because it's a necessary component of a successful transition to life as a civilian. One has to have purpose when they leave the forces—a new purpose—and part and parcel of that new purpose is new employment.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

What do you think of the program now whereby we have to employ former military in the public service? You know that there's a new program. There are some reports that it's not working very well and that people don't get the job.

What do you think of that program? Should it also be considered?

[Mark Campbell]

I think the intention of preferred or priority hiring is good. The intention is beneficial, but again the devil is in the details, and it's the execution that has been the problem historically.

What you find is that the vast majority of your attrition is from among the junior ranks, the corporals and the privates. They lack bilingual skills, they lack university educations as they release, and therefore they're not eligible for many of the public service jobs that come up for hire.

That has always been a problem. It hasn't been a problem of accessing the program; it is, once you're in the program, actually qualifying for the jobs that become available, given the lack of experience and qualifications of the average applicant.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Then the training benefit could help—

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

I'll have to stop you there, Pierre, as we're substantially over time. We've found out that the bells for the votes have been moved up to 5:15, so we'll take two more questioners for this panel and then go to the next panel.

You have about four minutes each, if you can hold it to that.

Ms. O'Connell.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you all for being here.

I'll start with the mental health discussion and—I'm sorry, I forget who said it now—the testimony about going into debt for prescription drugs, or rationing of drugs. Obviously we're talking about the budget implementation act, but then, also recently, the Minister of Health announced a lowering of the cost of prescription drugs.

Is this part and parcel of that overall vision? Do you think it will be helpful, or do you envision some other strategy? I would assume, and I think we've heard significant testimony, that it's not “one size fits all” or one quick fix, but that more work will need to happen.

Is this part and parcel of what you see as a step in the right direction?