Government Operations Committee on Sept. 24th, 2026

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Jessica Fancy-Landry, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

—but I wanted to say that it's an absolute privilege to be here and to help figure this out, because it's been way too long in terms of what the deal is here.

That being said, outside of Nova Scotia, we have Ms. Blackburn here in terms of good-news stories that we would love to hear.

Ms. Blackburn, what difference does it make when a veteran has access to wraparound services alongside stable housing rather than receiving housing support in isolation? As well, from your perspective, being out west in Alberta, do you have any good-news stories that you can maybe provide for us today?

[Marie Blackburn]

There are so many good-news stories. I think the bottom line for us is that our mission was simple. We just wanted to prevent homelessness, hunger, isolation and ultimately veteran suicide. That was as simple as we made it. I can tell you, because we have a new system now where we can track things better, that in the last two years, we've helped over 1,900 veterans with food, housing, making a car payment, paying for a dog's surgery or whatever the case may be.

I can tell you about a veteran in the RCMP who called about a month ago. He said, “Today is my last day. I'm done.” I said, “What is it you need?” He said, “I'm living in a tent in Fort St. John and I have nothing. I'm done.” I said, “What's the most critical thing you need today?” He said, “They're going to repossess my truck.” That cost our company $4,700, but that was okay. Winter was coming, and that was the only other option he would have had if he'd refused to get help from us, so we paid his truck payment. We got him out of the tent.

He was living in a hotel—I'll tell you that hotels are not cheap; they run about $3,500 to $4,500 a month—but he is now in stabilized housing. He calls us every day. He sent me a letter the other day. I think the most powerful thing about that letter was that he said, “Marie, my kids may never meet you, but they will know that you saved their dad's life.” Those kinds of things are so important to us. It was a truck payment. It was a vehicle, but that was all that man had left.

Mr. McCauley has seen how our Edmonton office runs and has heard from different people at Tuesday coffees about how we've saved their lives or changed their lives. When we're talking about surplus housing, that's just one small part of it. The more we can gather together to support our veterans, that's what we need to be doing. Yes, we have lots of great stories, but we have a lot of tough ones too.

[Jessica Fancy-Landry, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you very much, Ms. Blackburn. I think it's the narrative that we have in telling those stories of people.

For our final question today, I think I have less than a minute left.

Ms. Blackburn, let's do the wish list question. If you had a wish list outside of.... We've had communications issues, and we know that the federal government.... You want that capital funding. What else do you feel we can do to help shrink some of those gaps?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Before you start, I think our questions have run their course. I was going to turn it over to the guests to offer parting thoughts.

Perhaps each one of you can have a turn, Ms. Blackburn and Ms. Smith-McCrossin. Are there any final thoughts you might have?

Ms. Blackburn, you can go first.

[Marie Blackburn]

Our wish list, for the sake of the veterans, mostly, is that the government pays better attention to what their needs are. We are continually fighting with the government over their denials of Veterans Affairs claims. We fight and we get them, so why is it that the veterans are not getting the claims when they ask for them? Why are we the ones who are actually getting the claims settled for them?

I would like to see a little more community engagement from politicians like all of you. Come and check out some of these organizations that are doing good things for veterans so you can understand that when we say we need additional funding or we might need one of these buildings or something, you understand and see the people we work with. I think that would be my greatest wish list item: Just pay more attention to these veterans who have served this country. They deserve a lot better than some of them are getting. That's my wish list.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thanks.

Ms. Smith-McCrossin, we cut you off in an earlier reply. Feel free to fill that in as well.

[Elizabeth Smith-McCrossin]

Thank you.

I'll finish off my comments, first of all, by thanking you for being here and being able to bring these concerns.

Thank you, MP Fancy, for recognizing rural parts of Nova Scotia and all of Canada.

Our veterans do deserve better. They do deserve support for housing, as well as the supports that our veteran here today, Justin McKay, has talked about. That's who we need to talk to. Those are the people.

I will add a comment on one of your questions from earlier. There was a group of veterans who met every week in our armouries for coffee and provided support to one another. It was already being used a little bit, and that was taken away from them. A lot of them have since reconvened at the Legion.

I also want to mention two more points, if I may. One is with regard to MP Fancy's comment about rural areas.

One of the reasons our people were so upset in 2017 by DND's decision to remove the ability for our Canadian military to train and to divest our armoury is that at the exact same time, they made a decision to invest $130 million into restoring an armoury in Halifax. That's gone over budget by $30 million, so they're up to $160 million. Meanwhile, they shut down or tore down—whatever—our armoury in rural Canada.

The men and women from our area who serve our country are just as valuable as anyone from urban parts of the country who serve. Four hundred and eighty-six men who trained at our armouries lost their lives—North Novies. Those 486 men should mean something. We just want the same treatment. We just want to be treated equally to those from other areas across the country.

I hope that we can do more for our veterans, for people like Justin, who have served this country. We can build housing and we can provide those supports, but we can do it without tearing down and removing the ability to train reservists in our armoury.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thanks.

Mr. McKay, go ahead.

[Justin McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank you all for the chance to appear in front of you today and speak on these issues.

To help see an end goal with this study, all levels of government need to be involved. I know veteran stuff is not under provincial or municipal purview. However, we're in their constituencies, and in the sense of the word “health care” provincially....

When I was doing my first part of my PTSD treatment, I went to Nova Scotia Health. It was a self-referral. They told me they may see me in six to nine months. When I called Veterans Affairs, I was in the OSI clinic in probably three weeks. That's the difference in the services. We need to be able to have the same service level all around for everyone in that matter. That shows the need for the mental health part of it when they say “wraparound services”, because for a lot of it, if your mental health's not good, your own health is not going to be good at the end of the day.

I hope we can come to a conclusion on saving our armoury and getting some meaningful work out of it at the end of the day.

I'd like to thank you all.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thanks.

Mayor Small, we'll finish with you.

[Robert Small]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll bring back into the focus of this standing committee the use of underused and surplus federal lands and buildings for services for veterans. We've made a proposal that we believe would be a success story for everyone. I've heard comments made that would allow us to rethink the project to allow for more wraparound services, which we could partner with Nova Scotia Health on and our federal partners as well.

I'd like to see the committee make a recommendation to proceed with the project we've proposed, because I believe it would become the success story for application across all of Canada, especially in the rural areas.

On a side note, I thought Ms. Fancy was going to make a “small” joke because my name is Robert Small and we were talking about small communities, but as it stands, I guess that wasn't the purpose of her making that chat about Nova Scotia.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I'm regretting giving you extra time now.

[Robert Small]

You're welcome. Thanks very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thanks. Was there anything else, Mayor Small? Okay. Wonderful.

Witnesses, thanks for being with us today.

Ms. Smith-McCrossin and Ms. Blackburn, thank you for coming all the way to Ottawa. We sincerely appreciate it.

We will dismiss you, and the report will be public relatively soon, especially compared to what we normally do.

Colleagues, thanks for allowing us a rather unorthodox meeting and allowing the extra time for our witnesses to speak from their hearts.

Quickly, our next two meetings will finish off M-16. We've set aside the 20th for the report stage. Hopefully, we can finalize it in one day. We will send out a reminder after the final meetings. We will be asking for recommendations back by noon on October 13. We will do our final two, and then we'll need our recommendations by the 13th. We'll then be back on the 20th to hopefully finalize the report.

Thank you very much, everyone. If there's nothing else, we are adjourned.