Government Operations Committee on April 29th, 2019

[Kiran Hanspal]

I cannot pronounce or provide an opinion on that but—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

What is your opinion?

[Kiran Hanspal]

I can indicate that the Veterans Hiring Act is under the purview of the Public Service Commission and that all federal departments are subject to the requirements of the act. I'll be frank that before 2017, we had used the VHA support material to support the departments. With the veterans in the public service unit, we've really worked hard to bring the departments together to work with the Public Service Commission, because we can't do it alone; it's an exercise in learning.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

That's why I'm asking the question. We've asked, and he believes he's doing his job. Everyone we've talked to believes they're doing their job, but I'm looking at an article from the well-respected David Pugliese. He comments that 75% of vets who have applied have had their five-year priority period time out before they can actually work. We have a problem, which is why we're doing this study. We're just looking for honest opinions.

Where are we dropping the ball? Is it at the hiring manager level, who is perhaps given too much discretion not to hire a vet so he's hiring a preferred person? We have the law, but obviously it's not being followed. Should Veterans Affairs be doing more?

[Kiran Hanspal]

As head of human resources, I can speak to what the department, Veterans Affairs Canada, is doing. I'll tell you that within our division, we make sure we consider veteran priorities first, as per the law; that we consider mobility and preference, as per the law. We've launched the veterans in the public service unit and the strategic initiatives. We take it seriously. We're taking leadership and working with the Public Service Commission and bringing—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Should we have hard-coded quotas, do you think, per department?

[Kiran Hanspal]

It's under each deputy's purview to decide how they staff—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Should we have a hard-coded quota for Veterans Affairs then?

[Kiran Hanspal]

—under the auspices of the Public Service Employment Act and also the Veterans Hiring Act. Our deputy minister put out the challenge of an aspirational goal, so we're pursuing that rigorously.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

You talked about your units and your subunits getting veterans into the public service. How difficult are we making it if we actually need units and subunits to help them into the process?

I want to follow up. You talked about the Invictus Games at which you had what almost sounded like a hiring fair going on.

[Kiran Hanspal]

It was a career summit.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

We heard from other witnesses who were talking about hiring into the public service. They said they went to McGill and were offering jobs on the same day to people. Can we not do the same thing? Were we doing that at the Invictus Games? Can we not do something similar whereby we bring them into a job fair and hire them on the spot or offer them something on the spot?

[Kiran Hanspal]

We did work with the departments and we provided conditional on-the-spot offers at the Invictus Games.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

How many did we get?

[Kiran Hanspal]

I'll tell you something very interesting, and this is an experience we've also had at the career transition services. Of the 684 people who have reached out to the veterans in the public service unit, a significant proportion are having exploratory conversations. They're just trying to understand what the entitlements are and what kinds of benefits they can get. They're just trying to understand what kind of career they want to pursue and whether the public service is a match for them or the private sector is a match for them. They're just thinking it through, and a lot of them are just trying to figure out what their next career will be. Once they do figure that out, then we step in and we provide them support.

The other part of the challenge is also that when veterans release and leave the forces, they want to land in a certain location, so they're looking for jobs that are close to home, somewhere they want to stay. That's what we've been trying to do, to find ways to have local career fairs.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Blaikie, you have five minutes.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you very much for being here today.

One of the recurring themes in the testimony we've heard is that a real barrier or challenge to veterans successfully finding employment in the civil service is that the training and credentials they receive in their military life don't transfer well to civilian life. That's not because the skills don't work or aren't a match for the work they're going to perform in a civilian job, including in the public service, but because the credentials just don't hook up and aren't recognized in civilian life.

As a department that is aggressively pursuing ensuring the hiring of veterans, as per the act, as you said, is there anything you do as a department to try to recognize military credentials within your own department and that you believe is exemplary but is not already being done by other departments, or do you encounter a challenge in recognizing military credentials for veterans who you may be trying to hire? You know they have the skills, but you're not able to recognize those credentials.

[Kiran Hanspal]

I think a big part of the translation is taking the military credentials or even the experience, translating it into public service language and then also explaining that to the veterans. It's a two-part conversation.

On hiring, what we've done is to use Canadian Armed Forces backgrounds as asset qualifications, and now we've gone one step further. We have certain sets of jobs that we hire on regularly. We actually did three competitions just for veterans as an essential qualification. The statement of merit criteria were articulated in language that was plain and that did not exclude as much. In terms of “recent and significant experience”, we didn't use that; we used “experience”. Also, we did this in plain language.

Furthermore, to support this, in our strategic initiatives part of the veterans in the public service unit, we're holding management community fairs across the country precisely to educate managers on how they can write better statement of merit criteria to do precisely that, to educate people so they can do a better job.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

One of the things we've heard is that the military has a comprehensive list that details coursework and training that members of the military would take. I think it's called the NOC list. We've heard that the public service has its own kind of list that's not exactly the same, but there are recognized training courses within the public service and there is overlap.

Have you guys pioneered any work in trying to formally establish permanent equivalency so that as a civil service employer, when you get the list of military training, you can hook up what that means in the civil service language and, for instance, not put the burden of doing that on the veteran?

[Kiran Hanspal]

Thank you for that question.

We actually have an important partnership with ESDC, the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence. We developed an important online tool called the skills translator. It basically takes a military occupational structure identification code and translates it into a civilian national occupational code equivalency tool. This tool is a military-to-civilian and civilian-to-military job translator. It's based on the CAF job-based specifications.

ESDC has a list of civilian occupations, so the Canadian Armed Forces members or veterans can use this tool to produce a civilian resumé or CV. On the flip side, hiring managers can use this tool to gain a deeper understanding of a variety of trades within the Canadian Armed Forces.

We are promoting this tool even within the public service, because it's fairly plain language. While we haven't developed a public service translator, this is pretty good. This is a very good tool.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much, Mr. Blaikie. That's the end of your time.

Madam Mendès, you have five minutes.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

Thank you very much.

I will pursue this, because that's exactly where I wanted to go, to that aspect of it, the equivalencies of experience in the military and how they translate into public service, because the bottom line is that service is service, and military service is no less dedicated to the common good than public service. I think the element of commonality here is service.

[Kiran Hanspal]

Yes.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

You have people who are trained on a variety of domains that should translate reasonably well into civilian life. We've had examples such as ambulance drivers. An ambulance driver in an operational situation in the military can be an ambulance driver in the city. I don't think there's a big, big difference in terms of skills needed, but they have trouble getting their skills recognized by civilian society. I'm not just talking about public service, but civilian society in general. On the ambulance driver issue, for example, we get into provincial jurisdiction, which is another added burden to this.

It seems that because maybe it's very new, this skills translator that you just talked about, it's been a big issue for veterans so far. That five-year window to make a decision about where they want to go career-wise in the public service is sometimes not enough for the processing they need to do after they get out of the military. That skills translator doesn't help them—or didn't, because it probably didn't exist—to find the right window of entering the public service. A lot of them miss the five-year chance because they weren't accompanied until then in translating their skills into appropriate skills for the civil service.

You have that translator, but you told us that it's not in the public service.

[Kiran Hanspal]

This is a translator for civilian...so public and private sector opportunities.