Thank you very much.
Good day, members of the committee, and thank you for inviting me to attend and speak on my own behalf and that of other Canadian Forces veterans with regard to the government's strategy for hiring veterans for public service positions.
I am a seventh generation Canadian, a 21-year veteran of the Canadian Armed Forces, a 12-year corporate executive, and I have been unemployed for 18 months. In 2006, after 21 years of distinguished service, I was 3b medically released from the Canadian Forces, a medical release classification placed upon me for a lifetime due to the numerous operational injuries I sustained during my air force career in domestic search and rescue operations. I retired with the rank of sergeant as a SAR tech team leader.
I was fortunate that, due to the economic boom in Alberta at the time of my medical release, I secured a very good middle management position with a very large corporation in Edmonton that sought to exploit my military expertise in critical thinking and problem solving. I went seamlessly from working with the military one day to civilian work the next, due to the successful application of the SISIP vocational rehabilitation program.
Due to the quality of my military training, I consistently scored the highest yearly evaluations among 1,200 employees and was described as a valuable asset to the executive branch in my civilian occupation.
When the economic downturn hit Alberta in 2015, the effects finally hit me directly in November 2017, when the company I worked for began to significantly downsize. My position was eliminated after 12 years of service. I was very confident that I would find employment quickly because of my extensive experience and background and because I was a veteran. I knew that I would not be eligible for the priority entitlement program, but that did not mean I was any less a veteran. I decided to apply to every Government of Canada job that was appropriate to my level of experience, and in doing so I applied to more than 30 positions.
Applying for any position through the Government of Canada website meant potentially spending an entire day filling out a single application online. It is a very exhaustive process and pulls no relevant information from a well-prepared and detailed resumé commonly accepted by most non-governmental job postings.
I passed all but two screening processes for all 30 jobs I applied for. Ironically, after serving 21 years in the military, the two jobs I was screened out of were for Veterans Affairs Canada. For all the others, I was informed through the Government of Canada website that my application was being retained until a position was available.
After one year, I was finally selected to attend two separate RCMP interviews at the CR-4 entry level. These were exhaustive interviews conducted by three HR staff. I passed both, only to be advised by email that I was a successful candidate and, although I was not being offered a position, I would be added to a pool of qualified candidates and that this pool would only be valid for a three-month period, at which time I would have to restart the process from the beginning.
At the end of my last RCMP interview, I asked the RCMP HR staff, if they were only conducting these interviews to fill a pool of qualified candidates, how often did they conduct interviews? Their response was that it was their full-time job. Every response I provided during the interview was recorded in writing by each person on the panel and I had to speak very slowly. I personally found this to be very labourious and inefficient.
In August 2018, I applied as an integrity services investigator with Employment and Social Development Canada. This was a very long, full-day online application. After waiting a few weeks, I was informed by email that I did not meet the required criteria, even though it was detailed in my application that I had extensive related experience, both military and corporate. This was the catalyst that forced me to contact my member of Parliament to seek guidance on this matter. I felt that I had been dismissed prematurely from this application.
After I contacted Employment and Social Development Canada, they got back to me to ask if there had been an oversight in my application. They stated that I was an unsuccessful candidate because I lacked investigative experience, even though my online application clearly detailed that I had thousands of hours performing that task. They then concluded that I would not be contacted further.
To my complete surprise, just this past month I was contacted by this same department that had dismissed me. Suddenly I was now deemed qualified, even though I had not reapplied. I attended a three-panel interview and an in-depth security screening process within a week and passed all levels of the screening.
I have now been advised that they are pleased to inform me that I am part of yet another pool of qualified candidates and that I may be offered a position in the future. However, the application will expire on September 4, 2019, with the possibility of extension.
In conclusion, my value as a veteran is no different from any other veteran, regardless of how long I have spent away from the forces. Canadians have invested millions of taxpayers' dollars in training me to be a critical thinker, to make life-and-death decisions and to operate a business with the same fiduciary and human resource responsibilities as a civilian executive. One would think that hiring a highly skilled veteran, regardless of their entitlement priority, would be the most prudent financial option since the return on investment is significant. This is especially true in my case, with my additional years of executive/corporate experience.
From a strictly a human resource standpoint, I am surprised that the Government of Canada has not adopted this common sense, logical approach to the strategy of hiring a veteran first.
Thank you.
