National Defence Committee on March 20th, 2013

[Bronwen Evans]

Each year we put together a business plan. That plan sets out what our disbursements are going to be for the year. For example, our goal for disbursements for this calendar year is $2.5 million.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

You collected $2.3 million at one event in Toronto.

[Bronwen Evans]

That's right.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

On average, what would you expect to get every year for the next few years?

You started in 2009. You seem to be doing well in terms of the events, and I congratulate you on it. Don't get me wrong. I'm not....

I'm just wondering, is your plan to disburse all of the funds you receive in a year, or do you have a longer term plan?

[Bronwen Evans]

Our plan for the moment is to continue as a foundation and not run programs ourselves. That's how we are set up with CRA.

Our goal is to keep our expense ratio at a reasonable level that's acceptable to CRA and disburse funds in a responsible manner. Our—

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

I'm sure you do all that. Do you have any particular amount that you disburse?

[Bronwen Evans]

So....

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

As a percentage, I mean.

[Bronwen Evans]

I stated this year our goal is to disburse $2.5 million. Last year it was about $2.1 million. Our goal every year is to increase it. Ongoing I don't have the numbers right here in front of me, but we have put a business plan together for the next couple of years where we would see disbursements increasing each year as we bring in more money.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

I'm not trying to be difficult, but if you were disbursing $2.4 million a year, and you've been around for four years, and you've collected $14 million, I know you have expenses, obviously.... I'm just trying to get an idea whether your plan is that, if you take in $3 million and you have $500,000 in expenses, you disburse the other $2.5 million. Is that the way it works?

[Bronwen Evans]

Basically our goal is to keep our expense ratio below 35%. This year we're likely going to come in under 30%. Our disbursements are obviously based on cash flow, partly, so a big part of our mandate is to raise money to support the charities. Another big part of our mandate is to bridge the gap—we do this partly through funding the charities—between the civilian and corporate worlds.

For example, a program we've just taken on through the direction of Minister Blaney is to put together a veterans transition advisory council. There are different programs. Our goal is to disburse as much as we can while also fulfilling our mandate of bridging the gap between the military and civilian worlds by creating some awareness.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you. Time has expired.

Go ahead, Mr. Alexander.

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Thanks very much, Chair.

Thanks to our witnesses for being here today.

The story of True Patriot Love is really inspiring, I think, for all of us who work on defence-related and military issues in this committee, because it shows how deeply rooted the support for Canada's military is in Canadian society. The government does a lot, but you reflect how broad and deep that support is in the corporate sector and among individuals in civil society, so our hat is really off to you for that work. We're proud. We will be reminded of it on a continual basis, not only by our work in committee, but because we have one of our colleagues now in our caucus and in the House of Commons who was so directly involved in your work, as many of us have been.

I've had the pleasure of taking part in some of your events in the GTA, of being at that great seminar in Washington that showcased a lot of good things Canada has done in the field of mental health, but also the challenges ahead.

Tell us a bit more, though, as you are endeavouring to ensure your programming is focused and delivering results, about what kind of vetting you do and what kind of criteria you're applying today to identify the right charities. Obviously, there's a changing field out there. There were some available in 2009. It's a slightly different field now. How do you go about making sure that selection process is the best it can be?

[Bronwen Evans]

We have a fairly rigorous selection process for this. I would like to think that it's not cumbersome, but it is quite rigorous. It really depends on the area you're talking about. For example, right now we're working quite closely with Commodore Watson and his staff on the applications that are coming through for the MFRCs. They, as this group likely knows, are undergoing some funding cuts at the moment, so we want to make sure that we are focused on the right priority areas and that there's some consistency created in terms of level of service that's available across the country.

Certainly in our experience, when we deal with the MFRCs on an individual basis, the levels of sophistication of the MFRCs can vary, and the programs they offer can really vary. Our goal there is to make sure that, no matter where you live in Canada as a military family, you have access to that same level of service. We work very closely with the Canadian Forces on figuring out, when it comes to MFRCs and the MFF, what the priority areas should be there.

When it comes to mental health programs that fall outside of the MFRCs—well, actually even within the MFRCs—various mental health programs or supports, we have relied quite heavily on the advice of Rakesh Jetly, a senior military psychiatrist. We're in contact with him on a regular basis about the various applications that come in to get his view on what's happening there.

Then the way our process works is that we set out specific criteria. It's all laid out on our website in terms of what we're looking for, the kinds of things we'll fund, the kinds of things we won't fund. We say specifically on there that we won't fund anything that's covered by public dollars. It's quite clear on the types of things we'll fund and the things we won't. Then we draw on the expertise of the CF and other subject matter experts to look internally at the applications when they come in. Then finally, all of the disbursements go through our board prior to any of the money being released. It's quite an involved process to do it.

In fact, when we think about how we use our resources.... I was asked a few minutes ago about why we didn't just disburse everything we bring in. Well, the actual process of evaluating what the needs are and figuring out where the money should go in itself is quite a time-consuming thing to do because we do want to do it right. We're the steward of that money; we want it to go where it needs to go.

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

I think most of us understand that by defining yourselves as a foundation you want to have a capacity to be there over the long term and to have a solid basis for new and emerging needs that come out there.

Are there any needs that you see now emerging, from your perspective, on the mental health front, rehabilitative needs, etc., anywhere in the spectrum involving the ill or injured and indeed transitioning soldiers and veterans? You've taken this great initiative for the task force to engage the private sector in more targeted, more coherent, hiring programs for veterans, which can affect morale directly and indeed health. What do you see that we in the committee, we in government, may not yet be responding to as well as we might?

[Bronwen Evans]

One of the things we're working through, and we're certainly working with the government on, is that, you're right, as people are released or self-released from the military, it can be very difficult for them to go from feeling like they've had a career where they've been serving and it's quite purposeful, to all of a sudden not knowing what to do. That can be quite devastating for them. We hear about suicides, about depression, about all kinds of different things.

I don't know that there's a single answer to this, but we need to figure out some sort of coordinated system to get to those people before they are released, and help them figure out what their options might be upon release so they don't suddenly find themselves without a job. There's one individual right now who we've gotten to know. He stepped on an IED in Afghanistan and 80% of his frontal lobe was bruised. He came back and said, “I know I'm different; everybody's telling me I am. I can't see it for myself, but I know I am.” His wife left him. His family somewhat abandoned him. He almost committed suicide. He is really struggling to figure out what his place is in the world now, because he's not serving anymore and he's really looking for something meaningful.

We don't think government should do it all. There's a role for the charitable sector, and there's a role for the corporate sector, in all of this. If there's a way that we can cooperate among those sectors to figure out the right network for people leaving the military so they have a sense that there are jobs there for them and the corporate world wants to hire them, I think it would go a long way.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you. Time is expired.

Mr. McKay.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to you both for your work. I had the good fortune a few months ago to be at UBC and see that veterans transition program. I believe you are one of the primary funders of that.

[Bronwen Evans]

Yes.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Subsequently—I would like to say subsequent to my visit, but that would be a bit of a stretch—the minister came through and I think funded it for something in the order of a $1 million.

My impression was that this was a pretty good program; it was a leading-edge program; and it was an area of flexibility that the military just simply couldn't adjust to. I thought at the time that this was a useful model to push our care for the ill and injured out further than just simply.... Even if you can argue that the military has advanced light years from where they were 10, 20, 30 years ago, it still is quite a useful thing.

I'm interested in your comments with respect to that veterans transition program. I don't know much about your work but I saw that as a terrific success.

[Bronwen Evans]

They initially had some funding through the Legion. They had some, and then they didn't have some, so we stepped in to help out with that program. The most recent funding that we gave them was for a pilot program out east. They are affiliated with UBC; it's all out of UBC. We were looking at the work they were doing and thinking that this peer-to-peer support seems to be a really effective way of getting individuals who have been part of the military culture to talk about some of the challenges they are facing. They're not very good at self-identifying. They're not comfortable doing that, but when they can sit next to somebody and think, “This is a pretty neat person. I can see similarities, and he's getting help for his substance abuse, or he's getting marital counselling, maybe I can do the same thing and that's okay.” We've heard a lot of good things coming out of that. I know that the findings around it are still fairly preliminary. They need to look at the findings over the longer term. They assess the individuals when they come into the program to see where their level of happiness or depression is, and once they complete the program they do the same thing, and they're finding there's a remarkable difference.

Of course, you need to look at this over time, like you would with any new initiative that you're doing, but so far, the results are—

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

I assume that you're staying in the funding part of the program.

[Bronwen Evans]

That's our plan. We gave them money a few months back, and I think they're set for this coming year, but I'm sure we'll hear from them again.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

I agree entirely with your observations, particularly on the peer-to-peer point, that a lot of exploration could be done.

Given that you may be leading-edge in pushing a traditional institution along the path to caring for ill and injured, have you been looking into funding of other alternate therapies? For instance, this committee has heard about dog therapy and horse therapy and all that stuff. When you present to the military vote, they say, “We don't have any empirical evidence and therefore we can't fund it.”

I don't know that you are bound by that. I'd be interested to know whether you are pushing in that area.

[Bronwen Evans]

It's an interesting comment.

One thing we have worked closely with Colonel Jetly on is figuring out, if you think about health services that the CF funds, it's where there is that empirical evidence, and that makes sense.

I think the opportunity for an organization such as ours lies in the ability to take programs about which people such as Rakesh Jetly, when they look at them, will say there may not be any empirical evidence or all kinds of studies done to support them, but at the same time there are examples of positive outcomes coming out of them, and it doesn't seem to be harming anybody, and we think they're doing some good. There's an opportunity for us to step in to fund those things where government really can't do that.