Government Operations Committee on April 10th, 2019

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

We are now meeting in public.

I would like to thank our witnesses for being here today for our continuing study of the hiring of veterans for public service positions.

We've had a bit of a struggle over the last couple of days trying to get witnesses and committee business going while bells are ringing and votes are taking place, so I'm hopeful that we won't have any interruptions today.

I don't have any particular speaking order, so with your permission, witnesses, we'll go in the order on the agenda that I have in front of me, which means our first speaker will be Mr. Richards.

My understanding as well from our clerk is that all of you have brief opening statements of five minutes or less. We will go immediately from there into questions from our committee members.

Mr. Richards, the floor is yours.

[Andrew Richards, As an Individual]

Thank you.

I'd like to thank the committee for providing me the opportunity to appear today.

As this committee is looking at the process of hiring veterans for public sector positions, I may be able to provide some insights, as I am a veteran of the Canadian Armed Forces who is now employed in the public sector.

I served for 18 years in the military as both a member of the regular force and the army reserve. During my service, I deployed overseas as a peacekeeper to Bosnia-Herzegovina and to Afghanistan during Canada's combat mission there.

I have now been employed in the public sector for six years, where I work as a border services officer with the Canada Border Services Agency.

I voluntarily chose release from the military to pursue a different career. I applied on an external posting to a border services officer recruitment process. It was not an internal posting, and I was not medically released from the Canadian Armed Forces, so there was no expedited request or priority hiring process in my situation.

In anticipation of transitioning to a different career path from the military, I decided to first obtain post-secondary credentials. I live in the Vancouver area, and at that time the British Columbia Institute of Technology, BCIT, had just started a program to assist veterans wishing to attend post-secondary school. BCIT, with support from the Royal Canadian Legion, was helping veterans apply and transfer their military training and experience to relevant post-secondary credentials and fields. This was called the Legion military skills conversion program. The program was presented to the Senate Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs and subcommittee chair Roméo Dallaire in 2012, I believe.

I attended BCIT in the business management post-diploma program and graduated with distinction in 2012 with a diploma in technology in business management.

It was my desire to continue a career path in the government after serving in the military. There's a knowledge benefit to be gained in the public sector by hiring veterans, in retaining the skills, training and experience they have obtained through their military service.

There is also a cost benefit to the public sector by hiring veterans, in that time and money has already been invested in them through their training and things as basic as, for example, valid security clearances they already hold.

The policy announcement in 2012, on the“recognition of prior service in the Canadian Forces for vacation purposes, was a great incentive to encourage veterans to transition into the public sector after their military service.

There are still barriers to entry for veterans seeking to enter the public sector that are worth addressing. There are programs in place to assist veterans with career transition who have been medically released from the Canadian Armed Forces, but there does not seem to be similar assistance available to veterans who are voluntarily looking to change careers. Public sector postings will list experience or post-secondary requirements and will say, “or equivalent military experience” and that eligible Canadian Forces veterans may apply. What is that experience equivalent to with regard to the public sector?

With the policy on prior service for vacation purposes comes the challenge with the collective agreement environment among the various groups represented in the public sector. The question that comes up is whether military service should be counted as service in the public sector, or is it only to be recognized as policy as service for vacation purposes. Some groups count it as service towards seniority, the same as the policy does in their collective agreements.

In the group I am represented by, prior service did count. Then, as of the current collective agreement, it does not count.

Most recently, the question put to a vote among the union membership was whether military service should or should not be counted under the definition of prior service in the public sector. This vote made by members—the majority of whom are not veterans themselves—resulted in a “no” vote with regards to military service counting as prior service towards the public sector. You can imagine the animosity a vote like this creates in a workplace, and it could make it difficult to promote a future career in the public sector to veterans currently looking to transition from the military.

It would be my pleasure to provide any additional feedback or input to assist veterans in their endeavours to transition from the Canadian Armed Forces to the public sector and to assist the government in future policy creation and implementation.

Thank you for your time in hearing me speak today.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Next we have Mr. Wolfgang Zimmermann, representing the National Institute of Disability Management and Research.

Mr. Zimmermann, the floor is yours.

[Wolfgang Zimmermann, Executive Director, National Institute of Disability Management and Research]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

Please let me start by offering my appreciation for the opportunity today to offer a few thoughts on the employment potential that the federal civil service presents for veterans. In this context, I would like to focus especially on veterans who have acquired a mental or physical health impairment, either on or off the job, during their employment with the Canadian Armed Forces.

As a brief personal introduction, I'm privileged to wear two employment hats at the moment, one being president of the Pacific Coast University for Workplace Health Sciences, Canada's only statutory university ever created by private legislation and unanimous support of all members of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia and dedicated to education and research on all aspects of the workplace health cycle. We currently offer academic and continuing education programs in return to work and disability management.

My second role is as executive director of the National Institute of Disability Management and Research, established some 25 years ago by a significant group of employers, unions and government representatives with a mandate to drive innovation, thought leadership and best practice economic and social outcomes following onset of a mental or physical health impairment, creating win-win situations for disabled individuals, employers and society.

In this context, and to achieve these results consistently, we developed professional and program standards in return to work and disability management, created an ISO-style organization, the International Disability Management Standards Council, and today, the professional disability management competency standards are formally licensed in 64 countries around the world.

To bring the tremendous opportunity that continued employment within the federal civil service represents for disabled veterans, I draw on my own experience from many years ago working for MacMillan Bloedel, then Canada's largest forest products company, when, on my fifth day on the job, a 50-foot alder tree barber-chaired, came down on me and broke my back. The support of both the company and the union, now the United Steelworkers, and the B.C. workers' compensation board allowed me to continue working for the organization, first in forestry administration, a field I initially graduated from, and then, after retraining, as an accountant.

This was after my successful return to work, which also entailed developing physical accessibility to the administrative building of a completely inaccessible logging camp of almost 500 workers on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Much like a diverse corporation such as MacMillan Bloedel, then with over 20,000 and operating across a broad spectrum of businesses requiring both blue- and white-collar employees, there is absolutely no reason why the federal civil service, with about 260,000 employees across Canada, could not accommodate most disabled veterans for continuing employment.

Successful job retention with the pre-disability employer, in this case the Government of Canada, following the onset of a mental or physical health impairment requires three components that are a basis for any return to work effort anywhere in the world. These are creativity, because no two disability situations are alike and can vary based on a number of circumstances; collaboration between various stakeholders; and open and transparent communication.

At this point in time, assuming that Bill C-81, Canada's national accessibility legislation, is proclaimed, its requirement to hire 5,000 individuals with disabilities over the next few years creates a unique employment opportunity for disabled veterans. It does, however, require flexibility and creativity on the part of the Public Service Commission, thinking outside the box to review and remove, if necessary, bureaucratic impediments that take any number of forms from unnecessary educational requirements to more flexibility in delivering additional training.

There are a couple of suggested concrete steps. Effective job retention with the pre-disability employer requires early intervention, an absolutely necessary first step to ensure that psychosocial compounding of, let's say, a physical impairment does not render the individual ultimately unemployable.

Individuals who acquire a mental or physical health impairment, regardless of causation, need to be triaged successfully at the earliest possible time. This simply means determining the likelihood of continued employment with the old job, or if a change will be necessary, which could mean retraining or redeployment to another position either within DND or the broader federal civil service.

The current interface between DND and Veterans Affairs is often detrimental to the continuing employment prospects of disabled veterans, and could be dramatically improved. This is not to say that landing a job within the federal civil service is the final piece in the puzzle. When 70% of disabled individuals currently hired into the federal civil service don't make it through their probationary period, systemic issues well beyond this conversation need to be addressed.

Based on experience in many other jurisdictions, we are certainly most willing to provide a number of additional concrete steps that could contribute towards achieving much improved socio-economic outcomes for disabled veterans.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Our final intervention in this first hour will be from VETS Canada. VETS stands for Veterans Emergency Transition Services. We have Madam Debbie Lowther.

Please, ma'am, the floor is yours.

[Debbie Lowther, Chair and Co-founder, VETS Canada]

Mr. Chair, ladies and gentlemen of the committee, my name is Debbie Lowther, and I am the chair and co-founder of Veterans Emergency Transition Services, known commonly as VETS Canada. Here with me today is Walter Semianiw, who sits on our board of directors, but who was also responsible for developing the priority hiring policy at Veterans Affairs Canada.

Thank you for the invitation to appear before you today, and thank you for undertaking this very important study regarding the hiring of veterans for public service positions. It's a privilege for me to be here to share some of our insight, as it pertains to the topic.

VETS Canada is a federally registered national charity dedicated to addressing the immediate needs of veterans of the Canadian Armed Forces and the RCMP who are homeless, at risk of becoming homeless or are otherwise in crisis. We were founded in 2010, and are located across the country, with hundreds of dedicated volunteers who directly assist veterans. Most of our volunteers are veterans themselves.

With our headquarters in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, and our volunteers across the country, we have responded to over 7,000 requests for assistance from veterans and their families, from coast to coast to coast, 24 hours a day and seven days a week, including holidays. We are currently taking between 200 and 300 requests for assistance each month.

The veterans we work with are at various stages of their transition from military service to civilian life, and we have worked with many who have been part of the priority hiring process. Additionally, many of our veteran volunteers have also been part of priority hiring. To date, however, none of these veterans have been successful in obtaining employment in the public service through the priority hiring process.

When some of those veterans who competed unsuccessfully for positions questioned why they were not chosen, they were usually given a very vague answer, something along the lines of, “You weren't a good fit.” One of our veteran volunteers competed for a position with Veterans Affairs Canada through priority hiring. When he was unsuccessful, he asked why he didn't get the job. He was told it was felt that he didn't have sufficient experience in communicating with senior military officers. This veteran served for 23 years and released at the rank of major. For those of you unfamiliar with military ranks, a major is a senior officer.

It's our belief that the priority hiring policy is strong. It seems, in theory, to meet the needs of veterans, but in the end, the final hiring decision is left to hiring managers who have no obligation or interest in actually hiring veterans. We believe that when the policy is strong and the process is good but the implementation is poor, perhaps we need to move toward having targets, or quotas, similar to our neighbours to the south. It's much easier to determine the success of a program or initiative when there are measurable outcomes in place.

There has been much debate about the Government of Canada's sacred obligation to those who have fought and been injured for our country. We believe that the men and women who are willing to put their lives on the line for their country must know that the nation that sent them into harm's way will be there for them when their service is complete. One small way that we, as a country, can fulfill the sacred obligation is to provide employment for those who are employable.

Mr. Chair, thank you. I look forward to any questions from the committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

We'll start now with our seven-minute round of questions, beginning with Monsieur Drouin.

You have seven minutes, please.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks to all of you who are hearing me.

I'm not really interested in success stories; I am interested in what's not happening on the ground and, Ms. Lowther, I think you've laid it out for us. I'm certainly flying at 10,000 feet and we don't always see what's really happening.

Mr. Zimmermann, when you said that 70% don't make it through the probation period, that's seriously an issue. When you say that, I think about the fact that they're not properly welcomed into their environment.

In your experience and in your studies, what steps could we take to ensure that those who are hired right now make it through their probation period and that we reduce that number? I ask that because 70% is too high.

Feel free, Ms. Lowther, to jump in.

[Wolfgang Zimmermann]

The 70% refers to individuals with disabilities and the real challenge in this regard is that is very consistent. If you look at the employment equity numbers for individuals with disabilities, the outflow rate right now in the federal civil service—and we're talking about an organization as you know of 260,000 employees—is that for every individual with a disability who's hired, two of them leave the federal civil service.

Where I think all of you can play a tremendous role is that we are lacking within the federal civil service, as with a number of other organizations—and some are very different—a culture of accommodation. That's really the key. When you look at the number of individuals with disabilities, 80% of individuals acquire their impairment during their working life. They don't get accommodated. They frankly get turfed.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Do you know of organizations where they got it right and their performance is not 70% but much better and they provide proper accommodations to ensure that disabled individuals keep working in the organizations?

[Wolfgang Zimmermann]

There are a good number of organizations.

A good example of that is Canada Post. Some seven or eight years ago, they established a national program where they're saying no individual who acquires an impairment is going to lose their job. The Irving Group in the Maritimes is a private sector organization that does a tremendous job in this regard, whether it's a mental health issue or a physical health issue.

What that does is.... Particularly in large organizations, one day you may need to accommodate someone with a mental health issue, and the next day it could be a physical health issue—it could be cancer—which require you to address the challenge of episodic disabilities. You build a tool kit within the organization and then you gradually open up the door to the organization becoming conditioned to retiring individuals with disabilities from the outside.

I just happen to understand the interface between Veterans Affairs and DND because I had the privilege of spending over six years on the Veterans Affairs advisory committee in the late 1990s.

We have some huge opportunities and you folks can drive this.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Okay. Thank you for that.

Mr. Richards, in your testimony, you said that the union voted against recognizing years of service as seniority, essentially. Were you part of that campaign to.... I'm assuming somebody said they'd have to bring it to a vote. Do you know if members of the said union were properly educated on the reason that you wanted this?

[Andrew Richards]

My understanding is that it was in the last collective agreement. For whatever reason it got written out of, or somehow was written out of, the current agreement.

The union put out an email and information and said that they were taking, in their opinion, the unprecedented step of putting it to a vote. They don't usually put things like this to a vote. The union would just take a position or a stand and represent the bargaining agent in the negotiations. They put it to a vote.

If the wording in the collective agreement should remain as it is, in which case it is not included service in the federal public sector, or if they should try to reword it to put it back in, to include it, that vote went out. I don't know the exact number of border services officers across Canada but there were 1,150, give or take, who voted no and 850 voted yes. That represents, as a total, less than 50% of any and all eligible voters.

I've talked to officers and many have apologized to me. They said that they didn't see how this could happen, that it seemed ridiculous. Fair enough. There were other officers who said they didn't even hear about the vote, and they wondered when it happened, how it went out, and how the information was disseminated.

There was also misinformation. The Treasury Board policy for annual leave is on a scale. It's not day for day. There are different classes of services—regular force, reserve, reserve overseas deployed. There's a whole scale and you submit your paperwork. If you get hired in the public sector, you submit your paperwork from the military and they calculate it and give you annual leave based on that. It's not day for day.

I don't think that was clear. The biggest concern, unfortunately, on the part of a lot of officers was about losing seniority, in picking their holidays or their shifts, to guys from the military, guys who chose to be in the military. There have been negative comments made publicly, out loud on the work floor, amongst officers. That's where I get the animosity. They tell us that, after all, we chose to be in the military, and the military's not the public sector, so it doesn't count. They say we were never in the union or part of the collective agreement.

I don't know what the information was. I don't think that if it had been better disseminated.... Only a fraction of the officers would actually be military members. For military members, not all their service counts, so you're talking a fraction of a fraction.

[Lieutenant-General, Retired) Walter Semianiw (National Director, VETS Canada]

I'll make a tough comment here. When we were developing a policy in 2011, it was the public service union that came to the department and would not allow us to expand the policy. All they would agree to at the time was to open it up for medically released veterans, who then had a statutory priority, as opposed to a regular priority. The public service union said no, they were not going to push it, and the public service itself agreed. The public service did not want it to go beyond medically released veterans.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

We'll go now to Mr. McCauley.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Welcome, everyone. Thanks for your testimony so far.

Mr. Richards, I'm a fellow BCIT grad, although I suspect I graduated many years before you.

When you left the military, did you go straight into border security, or was there a gap period? Did you leave to take that position?

[Andrew Richards]

I stayed part time in the reserves, but very part time. As you know, the reserves can be full time or part time.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Did you know about the opening and then you left the military to do it? I want you to walk us through your hiring process into the public service.

[Andrew Richards]

I'd finished my last tour in Afghanistan. I was looking to get married and settle down so I started to explore options. I worked part time as a paramedic with the B.C. ambulance service out in the Fraser Valley and I started to look at some other opportunities. Everything seemed to require post-secondary education to even get in the door. Lots of places love that you have experience in the military, overseas or peacekeeping, whatever it may be, but getting in the door without post-secondary credentials in this day and age is really difficult, so I decided to go back to school.

They happened to be starting up that program, and I took it. While on the program, I started applying for public sector jobs but I did it as an external applicant. Basically, I was no more or less than a civilian when I applied.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Was CBSA the only one that called you back?

[Andrew Richards]

They were the first.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Can you walk us through the process with CBSA? What was the longest process? Was it an easy process to follow?

[Andrew Richards]

At that time, they had just developed a new officer induction training program, which came into effect in 2013. I was one of the first graduates of Rigaud on that program, which had recently been revamped. It was about a year-long process. I found that there were a lot of times where paperwork and things were redundant because I had already done it in the military, things like applying for a 10-year background check for a secret-level security clearance when I already held a top-secret clearance.

When I was away with the military, I might receive an email on my phone as a corporal in barracks saying they needed documents filled out and returned to the recruiting group by the end of the week—this when I had no access to a computer or a printer—or I'd get an email telling me I was scheduled for an interview at such and such a time, when I wasn't even in the province.

The military was the most accommodating in that—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

—but the bureaucracy was not.

When you left the military, was there any instruction, any training, on transitioning or how to apply for public service jobs?