National Defence Committee on Oct. 25th, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Welcome, everybody, to today's defence committee meeting.

I offer my apologies for our being a little bit late today. We had votes until about five minutes to 11:00, and we had to get ourselves here.

I'd like to thank the Canadian Forces ombudsman, Gary Walbourne, for being here today.

Without further ado, sir, I will give you the floor for your opening remarks.

[Gary Walbourne, Ombudsman, National Defence and Canadian Armed Forces Ombudsman]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning to all.

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to you about my work as National Defence and Canadian Armed Forces ombudsman. I propose to briefly review what my office has been doing lately, describe some major projects we are working on, and indicate the critical focus we are placing on problems faced by members of the military when they transition to civilian life. I will then of course be happy to answer any questions you may have.

My office was established as a neutral and objective mediator, investigator, and reporter on matters related to the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces. I also hold the role of special adviser to the minister.

Our investigations, reports, and educational pieces are not intended in any way to diminish this organization. Rather, as ombudsman I am here to provide independent, evidence-based recommendations intended to contribute to substantial and long-lasting improvements to the defence community. It is not part of my mandate to discuss theatres of operation, strategic defence policy, or military procurement.

Three weeks ago, during the Minister of Veterans Affairs' stakeholder summit, the deputy commander of military personnel command, Major General Eyre, stated that our country’s security is threatened by systemic personnel issues because they directly affect recruitment and retention. I have long held the position that outdated policies and procedures hinder the engagement of capable and committed personnel.

I am now halfway through my mandate as ombudsman and have had the privilege to meet members of the defence community across this country from coast to coast to coast. Wherever I go I find members of the defence community working hard and professionally to defend Canada. Since 2014, my reports to the Minister of National Defence, which have been publicly released, have included recommendations on a wide range of topics, including priority hiring in the public service, operational stress injuries, compensation options and periodic health assessments for reservists, and an investigation into the tragic events at Valcartier in 1974.

Many of the complaints we receive can be solved quite easily. Wearing the uniform, for example, should not require a member to suffer unreasonable financial loss on the sale of their home when they are posted. The home equity assistance program exists for this purpose, but it provides insufficient protection.

This is fixable. Members and their families should be properly protected from the impacts of huge variations in the cost of living when they are posted across this country. The post living differential program exists; however, it has been bounced between the Department of National Defence and Treasury Board since 2008. I ask why.

These problems are not beyond comprehension, nor are they too tough to crack. The military that landed on Juno Beach can surely figure out whether a loaf of bread costs the same in Shilo as it does in Esquimalt, Borden, or Bagotville. We cannot keep playing musical chairs on this issue. We must sit down and make a decision. Working together, we know what to fix and in most cases how to fix it.

In the coming months, I will submit reports to the Minister of National Defence on the care received by ill and injured cadets. I intend to shed light on the maze of administration facing parents and guardians of these young people should tragedy strike while they are in the care of the Canadian Armed Forces.

My office is also conducting a systematic review on Canadian rangers, whose vigilance and service is often little known in the southerly parts of this country. In this report, I will touch on chronic understaffing, equipment support, compensation challenges, and other personnel and logistical issues.

Finally, in the new year I plan to issue a report that flows from our study on boards of inquiry, which was published in 2015. Developed in collaboration with the Canadian Armed Forces, this update will address issues faced by grieving families during and after a board of inquiry. The report will include concrete recommendations aimed at ensuring that everyone involved is treated with respect.

Ladies and gentlemen, earlier this year the Minister of National Defence made a call for submissions from a variety of stakeholders to help inform the government’s defence policy review. My office prepared a comprehensive submission highlighting concerns related to our defence community personnel serving both at home and abroad. It is my sincere hope that this submission is being taken seriously at the right levels. Today I would like to highlight some of our findings.

Just over half of all contacts made to my office deal with the issues of transition from military to civilian life. Both medically and non-medically releasing members of the Canadian Armed Forces face a daunting administrative process at end of career. In order to provide a clear picture of this complexity, my office, working in partnership with the Office of the Veterans Ombudsman, mapped out the release process in September.

We published this educational piece to inform our constituents, the Canadian public, officials, and law-makers such as yourselves on the process that is often the root cause of many of the issues surrounding transition. I have provided copies to the committee.

In keeping with the mandate letter of the Minister of National Defence and the direction to work with the Minister of Veterans Affairs to reduce complexity and overhaul service delivery, my office has recently published two reports that speak to simplifying the release process for transitioning members.

In the first report, released to the public in early September, I recommended that the Canadian Armed Forces determine whether an illness or injury was caused or aggravated by that member's military service and that that determination be presumed by Veterans Affairs Canada to be sufficient evidence in support of an application for benefits.

In conducting their adjudication under the new Veterans Charter, Veterans Affairs Canada, as the administrator, considers mostly documentary evidence generated by the Canadian Armed Forces. The evidence consists largely of the member's medical records and possibly other career-related records. Given that the Canadian Armed Forces has control of the member's career and has responsibility for the member's medical health throughout that career, such a determination can and should be presumed to be evidence in support of an application for benefits.

The second report, also released in September, proposed a new service delivery model for releasing members. The report contained three straightforward, achievable recommendations.

First, the Canadian Armed Forces should retain all members until all sources and benefits have been put in place prior to release. Second, a single point of contact, a concierge service, if you will, should be established for all medically releasing members to assist in their transition. Third, the Canadian Armed Forces should develop an electronic tool that is capable of providing members with information so that they can best understand their potential benefit suite prior to release.

These three recommendations are founded in evidence and focused on members and their families. They are easy to understand and could be implemented rapidly if the will exists to do so.

My recommendation of having the Canadian Armed Forces determining service attribution in conjunction with a change to the service delivery model could cut wait times at Veterans Affairs Canada by 50% or more.

Ladies and gentlemen, I truly believe that these recommendations, if implemented, would be game changers.

Improving the transition process should be a real no-fail mission. I believe that many of the reports submitted by my office have served as a strong blueprint for change within the Canadian Armed Forces and will have positive downstream effects especially at Veterans Affairs Canada.

It was recently reported that there was a backlog of 11,500 applications at Veterans Affairs. This means many releasing members will experience moderate to extreme psychological and financial stress while awaiting adjudication of their files. Many will fall through the cracks. Many already have.

As former deputy veterans ombudsman, I have seen this backlog of applications at Veterans Affairs rise and fall, but never by more than a few thousand. These are not people issues. These are process issues. Fixing the service delivery model will mean real and positive change for the people who have served, sacrificed, and suffered on our behalf.

I want to conclude my remarks by highlighting a theme that runs through much of the work we do, the need for benefit parity for all those who wear the uniform. The concept of benefit parity is not new, but in my four years as deputy veterans ombudsman and two and a half years as the Canadian Armed Forces ombudsman, I am constantly reminded of the inequity. Whether it be regular or reserve force, Canadian rangers, junior Canadian rangers, cadets, or even veterans, benefit disparity continues.

My position has always been that a soldier is a soldier, an aviator is an aviator, and a sailor is a sailor. Once you put on the uniform, you are in service to Canada. If you get hurt while you are in uniform serving Canada, you should be treated equally.

I have promised still serving and former members across this country that I will strongly advocate for benefit parity. I have produced a number of reports that contain evidence-based recommendations on what needs to be fixed; we just need to do it.

I doubt there is not one of you who does not have a current or former Canadian Armed Forces member or a DND civilian living in your constituency. You play a vital role in their lives, as does my office, and I enjoy working with many of you on personnel issues, both individual and systemic. I believe that I have a duty to keep you up to date on my activities so you can feel confident to refer your constituents to my office should they feel they have nowhere else to turn.

Mr. Chair, distinguished members of the committee, I thank you and I stand ready for your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you very much for your testimony and your work on this important file.

We'll start off with our seven-minute round of questions and I'll turn the floor over to Ms. Romanado.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

I'd like to thank you again, Mr. Walbourne, for being here today, and to members of the audience, I know we have some students in the crowd, so it's a great honour to have you here today.

Mr. Walbourne, it's a pleasure to see you again. You and I have had some conversations in the past. As you know, I'm a parent of two sons currently serving in the Canadian Armed Forces, so this issue is definitely near and dear to me.

As well, there is the work that you do with our cadet program. Prior to being elected, I was vice-president of a civilian committee in my local cadet corps in Greenfield Park, so I'm proud of the work that you have done in terms of recognizing the incident in 1974 and I look forward to reading additional outcomes coming out of that.

I'd like to talk to you a little about the transition from active service to what we will call non-active service. As you know, the decision to join the Canadian Armed Forces is one of immense pride. Members of the Canadian Armed Forces wear the uniform. They take a lot of pride in the fact that they are wearing that uniform, and it's part of their identity. When the decision for them to leave the Canadian Armed Forces is taken out of their hands, i.e., medical release due to no fault of their own, it is a real struggle for them and their families.

I'd like you to talk a bit more about the work that you have been trying to do and to talk about the attribution to service injury and how we can fix the wait time by identifying it earlier, attributing it when they're in the Canadian Armed Forces, before their release. It's definitely something you have been working hard on and I'd like to make sure that we understand it fully.

[Gary Walbourne]

Thank you for the question.

As you say, the transitioning piece is very difficult at times, especially when the end of a career is not your choice, and you have to leave because of a medical reason.

I think that because of the process we have in place, we aggravate that whole episode. If someone has had to leave the military and doesn't understand what the financial support is going to be or what the medical support looks like, then that adds an extra burden of stress. If I lay that over an operational stress injury, then I can see where I'm very quickly creating a formula where there could be problems. The fallout of that is that these things are usually felt on the home front long before even the ombudsman's office hears about them.

When members are releasing, I think that they need to have stability. They need to know what the future looks like, and they can go home and have those conversations with their families of what the new world order will be for them all. That's a major concern for me.

The Canadian Armed Forces has total responsibility for providing medical health care for a member. We know when, where, and how a soldier has become injured. If we know when, where, and how, that's adjudication. It's already been determined. I struggle a little with why we have to take a medical file that's been managed over the career of the member and then send that medical file to an outside organization, Veterans Affairs Canada, and have them adjudicate. That's my problem, and I've been pushing hard on this point.

I think we can really make the member understand what the future looks like if we do the adjudication. Before the release, if a member knows everything is in place, then I think that brings stability to the member and that helps ease transition. More importantly, it gives stability to the family, and I think that's a very important piece that we sometimes do not pay close attention to.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

That leads me to my next question.

Thank you very much for the process mapping, by the way. When you do look at the documentation and see the steps people have to go through, whether they're reservists or full-time members, it is quite alarming. Thank you, also, for the recommendation of the new process mapping.

In your briefing, you talked about the creation of a family coordinator position. I wasn't clear if that position dealing with families had been created, or if it's something that will be created.

[Gary Walbourne]

That is specific to the boards of inquiry. We released a report back in 2015 highlighting some of the issues surrounding the boards of inquiry. We were very pleased at the time that the chief of the defence staff accepted our recommendations to do a further review, and we've been working very closely with the department.

This will be a collaborative report that we're about to release. One of the recommendations in there will be to set up an entity that can take families from the start of a board of inquiry through to the end. We're getting very positive feedback from the department that the working group has been extremely helpful. I'm optimistic that when the report is released, the recommendations will be readily accepted. I think maybe there will be some plans to start moving forward.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

I met with the Centre de ressources pour les familles des militaires in August to talk about the support families get in Quebec, specifically. I noticed in your document “Constituent and Stakeholder Engagement”, that you hadn't visited yet a base in Quebec. I'm hopeful there will be a visit coming up soon to a base in Quebec.

[Gary Walbourne]

When I took over the position, the first thing I wanted to do was find out where the ombudsman had been. We're located in Ottawa, and we do a lot of engagement in Ontario and Quebec. In each of those provinces we attend at least 15 to 20 separate committees, organizations, and family resource centres, or whatever it might be.

What I did find was that from the coasts inward there had been very little engagement, so in my first year I went to both coasts. This year I'll be doing Manitoba and Nova Scotia. Next year my focus will be back to the centre.

We do about 40 or more engagements between Ontario and Quebec every year.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

When I spoke to the Centre de ressources pour les familles des militaires, they said that one of the issues that doesn't get talked about a lot is when the members of our Canadian Armed Forces move within Canada, such as when they move from Kingston to Valcartier. What happens is that there's a real difficulty for families to find services, whether it be new family doctors, dentists, and so on, and because that is provincial jurisdiction, there's a bit of a problem for supporting families that move along with their Canadian Forces members.

I'd like to know if that's something your office is thinking about working on a little more with the total support families receive from the Canadian Armed Forces.

[Gary Walbourne]

In 2013, this office released the military families report, which was a very large, extensive review done on families and their concerns. Several of the issues were highlighted. Some are still ongoing, and one was finding services when you move to another location.

What we will do when we release the report of those recommendations is to keep following up with the department to find out what the latest report has in it. We're hoping for another update on that report, because there are, I think, seven recommendations that have not been addressed, with that being one of them. It is one of the concerns we have had.

It's not only about finding additional services, it also creates spousal unemployment or underemployment. We have different jurisdictions across the provinces that determine the criteria to be accepted into a program, so it does cause a lot of grief. It's not only about receiving services. For someone with an autistic child who has to move.... Finding those types of services in any location is difficult for any Canadian, but more so when we see the frequency of the moves and how we ask families to move.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Mr. Chair, could we ask if it might be possible for this committee to receive this update, once it's available, once it's public?

[Gary Walbourne]

Once we receive all updates we publish them, but I will make sure the committee receives a copy.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you for that.

Ms. Gallant, you have the floor.

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

Mr. Chairman, speaking through you to Mr. Walbourne, first of all it's a pleasure to welcome you here today on Navy Day. You work on behalf of all the armed forces, but it is especially fitting that you're here today. Thank you for all the work you've done on behalf of our Canadian Armed Forces personnel.

Having Petawawa in my riding, as you well know, I've heard rumblings that benefits and services under SISIP may be folded into Veterans Affairs Canada. As the Canadian Forces ombudsman, have you had many complaints surrounding SISIP and the services they provide, and what is your opinion on the notion of merging the two?

[Gary Walbourne]

I did specifically look at how many complaints we've received on SISIP. We have received 14 complaints on SISIP over the last two years. Eight of those were for information purposes, and in the remaining six cases, it was just a question of getting the right people to speak.

What my office has found in looking at SISIP is that they seem to have a very quick turnaround time—within two weeks. The establishment of the vocational and rehabilitation program seems to run fairly well. We have not done a deep dive. We get very few complaints about SISIP.

As for folding them in, if we're going to do it, let's be cautious about which process we're going to apply to the program in its entirety. I think SISIP works fairly well. They are fairly agile, responsive. There are other benefits inside SISIP other than just LTD and vocational rehabilitation, so I urge caution. I would make sure that we fully understand what the consequences of folding it into any entity would be. Those would be my concerns.

My opinion? That and 50¢ will get you a coffee somewhere.

My opinion is that if you have something that is working, why not emulate it instead of taking it down? I see good response, good performance, so I'd be a little reluctant. I'd like to know a little more before I decided to fold SISIP under anything.

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

You said in your report that having the attribution of service conducted by the Canadian Forces for all releasing members may cut wait times at Veterans Affairs.

Can you elaborate on that point and explain how specifically it would reduce wait times?

[Gary Walbourne]

Right now, when a member is medically releasing, the first thing that has to happen is that they have to adjudicate the file to determine whether or not the illness was caused by service or the malady has been aggravated by service. Veterans Affairs Canada does that adjudication. They have a 16-week service standard. During those weeks they have to wait, and there are another three weeks to wait until they get their medical files from the Department of National Defence. If you add that to the 16 weeks, now we're at 19 weeks and looking forward.

If the adjudication is done, the question at Veterans Affairs is yes or no: is he in or out? The question now is on the impact. What is the impact on quality of life? Now we can start having a conversation on how we bring benefits and services to bear for that particular member's need.

Right now we waste an inordinate amount of time doing work that has already been done. My premise is that if we take the adjudication piece off the table, it should reduce that service standard by half.

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

You were the deputy veterans ombudsman for nearly four years. Have you seen costing for the Liberal government's platform promises, and if so, how realistic do you think it is for the government to afford these promises?

[Gary Walbourne]

I haven't seen any costings.

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

The government has hinted that it may be making significant changes to VAC and DND programming soon. What is your biggest fear?

[Gary Walbourne]

My biggest fear is inertia. We talk and talk about doing things, but nothing happens, so that's my biggest fear. If someone asked me what keeps me awake at night, it's just that.

I'll go back. It's not only Veterans Affairs and the Canadian Forces getting closer together to do work. Let's talk about programs that are inside the Canadian Forces. I used the post living deferential as an example in my opening comments. There is a program that's available for members, should they have to move from one location to another, to help balance the basket of goods, as it were, but it has not been updated for eight or nine years.

When I'm on the road doing town halls and talking to the constituents and the families, I believe the point of frustration now has gotten to “We don't care what it is, just tell us what it's going to be”, because people are making life decisions.

My biggest fear, whether we get closer to working with Veterans Affairs and the Canadian Forces or whatever we're tackling, is inertia. We talk a lot about a lot of things, but I never see a lot of things happen on the ground.

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

What happens if they overlook recommendations in your reports and go down a road that you don't agree with? What can we expect from Gary Walbourne?

[Gary Walbourne]

Well, if somebody can build a better mouse trap, I'll be the first champion. If we can come up with a program outside what I've considered that is more efficient and more effective, then you'll hear me. I'll be a champion across the country saying we have it right, but I'll also put a critical eye to anything we're going to introduce. I think that's my role: to make sure that any policy or procedure we put in place is both of those things, both efficient and effective.