National Defence Committee on May 6th, 2008

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Thank you.

My next question is for Mr. Stogran. You mentioned that just prior to deploying to Afghanistan, you were going to implement a training module, the stress inoculation training package. Has it been implemented?

[Col Pat Stogran]

Mr. Chairman, my understanding right now is that the closest thing that exists is the package 5 Brigade had before it deployed overseas, called resilience training. I'm not sure of the actual content of it or whether it resembles in any way what we were doing for what we called stress inoculation, much of which we had gleaned from Lieutenant Colonel Grossman's writing and implemented into our training plan. I know that there is no omnibus approach to stress inoculation type of training.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Pardon me, 5 Brigade? Would you clarify, because I thought we had three brigades.

[Col Pat Stogran]

I'm sorry, Mr. Chair, 5 Brigade is the name of the brigade that is based in Valcartier with the vingt-deuxième regiment, which is now serving overseas.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Does a training module perhaps exist for the more specialized deployments for certain special regiments?

[Col Pat Stogran]

Mr. Chair, I'm not privy to what happens behind the gates of that particular regiment. However, suffice it to say that the special forces of the world put a lot of time and effort into training their soldiers psychologically for what they will endure in combat. I know for a fact that Colonel Grossman, for example, lectures all over the world, and at times here in Canada in certain places.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Then it is possible there is that package; it's just reserved for the special forces. I was just curious as to how, in that training package you were going to implement, you would balance the degree of stress in such a way that the training itself was not going to trigger some sort of OSI.

[Col Pat Stogran]

Mr. Chair, that was a risk I was prepared to take as a commander. I would far sooner expose my soldiers to some of the things like we were going to have when we arranged with downtown Edmonton for them to witness autopsies and that sort of thing, and we intended to have them kill a bird or a rabbit or something. But it would be under controlled conditions, where we'd actually practise some of the critical incident stress debriefing techniques that we would expect our soldiers to do. In fact our soldiers did do that debriefing after the friendly fire incident in April 2002.

So yes, there was a risk there, but I would far sooner have taken that risk under controlled conditions than in an operational environment.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Thank you.

You're very articulate. You have a working knowledge, obviously, of the military and the specific problems soldiers and veterans have.

I'm trying to understand what the delay is in implementing your office, having you stand up and actually be able to take in cases. Are the regulations in place? What is your understanding of what needs to happen for you to take full chairmanship or become the ombudsman in every sense of the word?

[Col Pat Stogran]

Our mandate is actually very complex, in that we're not allowed to dabble in areas of solicitor-client privilege between the Bureau of Pension Advocates and some of the parties that complain to us. We're not allowed to address individual decisions that are made in the review and appeals process. We are there to address systemic issues. So we can't approach our business in quite the same sort of free-style manner as other ombudsmen can.

Adding to that, the problems our veterans are facing are very complex. We have World War II veterans under one set of conditions; we have those who served on so-called peacekeeping operations, who are often forgot about as veterans; and then we have the current situation in Afghanistan.

When I arrived in the office I had two options in front of me. The recommendation was that we not open our doors until this fall, as was the case when the DND ombudsman stood up. I felt that would do a disservice to many of the veterans who were sitting on the edge of their seats waiting to bring their complaints to somebody. So we opened the doors. We have no staff. I've just taken on my senior staff right now because of the public service hiring process. We're in the process now of hiring the front-line operators who will actually deal with individual grievances from the veterans.

We are light years ahead of where we would be had I taken the second approach. We have war-gamed out 500 different types of cases legally, morally, and ethically--according to me--to identify how we can, within our mandate, address these things to the best advantage of our veterans.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Thank you.

We'll go to Mr. McGuire, and then back to the government.

Go ahead, Joe, for five minutes.

[Joe McGuire, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

There are veterans slipping through the cracks. They've been in here. If that's any indication, quite a few veterans are slipping through the cracks, even though people in offices in Ottawa and other places say they have these great systems in place. Our response is to get another ombudsman to get more grievance boards. You see these things going on.

Do you have any insight into how this can be rectified down here, long before they get up to you? This can take years. Some people can't last out here. When they know it's going to last three to five years, they just don't want anything to do with it. They'd rather take chances on their own than go through the military or anybody else.

Is there any way we can be more responsive when a veteran comes back and is told, “You're faking it. You're really not sick at all. You're looking for a pension.” He gets this kind of response from the first caregivers when he gets back. How can we get fewer people going to see you people? Do you have any idea how that can be done? We have to respond to those people when they need it, not two, three, or four years later.

Have fun with that.

[Rick Casson, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Who wants to respond?

[Mary McFadyen]

In theory, the complaint resolution mechanisms available should solve problems for people quickly and easily. We're an office of last resort. When they go to the system it should work; if it doesn't, that's when we step in. We also have a role to make systemic observations, and we have certainly observed delays.

The grievance process has improved in the last few years, and it isn't taking as long to get through the system. But something was added to our mandate that is different from other provincial ombudsmen mandates that look at administrative processes. We have the right to look at a case before it goes into the grievance or complaint resolution system if there are compelling circumstances. We have taken the position that we will use that very liberally. If we can help somebody quickly, we would rather do that than have them spend five years in a system. That's part of our role. It also helps the system and gives them more time to look at other cases.

[Joe McGuire, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Pat, do you have any response on that?

[Col Pat Stogran]

Mr. Chair, first of all, I think the situation I've been placed in as veterans ombudsman is not really terribly disadvantageous, although there have been some criticisms raised that I should be part of the decision-making process, that I should be reviewing individual cases. It's my feeling at this point in time that there are some very high-priced and very intelligent people who are serving on the Veterans Review and Appeal Board, and they have a tremendous cadre of lawyers working in the Bureau of Pensions Advocates, but there are some problems with the systems.

As I mentioned earlier to one of the questions, we've been studying this and we've actually got a bit of a game plan formulating amongst my senior staff right now to try to work with Veterans Affairs—and I say “work with Veterans Affairs” because although we're here to provide a service for the veterans, we're also providing a service to Veterans Affairs and the Veterans Review and Appeal Board by troubleshooting their situation and offering them recommendations that will allow them to service the clients in a much faster manner.

On top of that, we also have the clause of compelling circumstances, where, if we expect that the review and appeal process will take too long, we are allowed to intercede. It doesn't tell us how we can do that without getting into the actual decision-making process or the solicitor-client privilege. Suffice it to say, however, that I'm going to prod the edges of the battlefield in that area and see ways where we can do it, particularly for our war service veterans.

My four priorities are the veterans who are suffering potential harm or undue hardship and the aged and the infirm. Once we get the horsepower behind us, we intend to address those as a matter of urgency.

[James Price]

Certainly speaking from my perspective at the grievance board, I know the Canadian Forces are working very, very hard on alternate dispute resolution, finding ways of sorting issues out before they reach our board or even the grievance system.

I saw a grievance a few years ago for $150. It probably cost $50,000 to sort out a $150 issue. Somebody should have grabbed that thing and said, “Here's $150”, or whatever. It certainly should not have been percolating at the grievance board.

I know the Canadian Forces are working very hard to try to develop more and more alternate dispute resolution. We see, in fact, more informal resolution within the grievance business.

[Joe McGuire, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

I just know that as an MP, long before we got into Bosnia and so on, we were handling World War II and Korean veterans, and it was like knocking your head against the wall to try to get a fair deal for some of these veterans. The commissioners seemed to be under instructions--make it as hard as possible and maybe they'll go away, because we can't afford to give them a pension, or 5% or 10%.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Thank you, Joe. We have to move on.

Mr. Hawn, to end this round.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have a couple of quick questions or points. The OSI clinic—I believe this is true, Ms. McFadyen, and perhaps you can confirm it—is the first of five, I think, that are opening up across the country.

That may be out of your lane.

[Mary McFadyen]

The department would be better to answer that question.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Yes. It is the first of five, so it's just the beginning.

Going back to the ombudsman, Mr. Stogran talked about getting the folks out to work with VAC. Are you looking at putting some of your ombudsman staff at the various VAC locations around the country or centralizing it here?

[Col Pat Stogran]

We're actually trying our hardest to distance ourselves from VAC in terms of co-locating, and that sort of thing, in order to maintain our independence and, more importantly, our impartiality.

In my experience from talking to the members of VAC and VRAB, their hearts are in the right place: the veteran comes first. I think that as a result of that, because we are working towards the advantage of the veterans, there won't be an adversarial relationship. However, I don't want it to be a friendly relationship. I don't want it to be viewed as a collaborative relationship.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Mr. Stogran, you talked about the yellow ribbon campaign in the U.S. There has been some progress made on that kind of thing for the CF in terms of getting the folks back--mandatory counselling and all that kind of stuff. Do you happen to know if what we've been doing has been modelled on that, or should we be going down somewhere and getting somebody to talk to us specifically about the yellow ribbon campaign?

[Col Pat Stogran]

Mr. Chair, I couldn't begin to comment on what's actually happening within the Canadian Forces at this point in time.