Public Accounts Committee on Nov. 27th, 2014

[Michael Ferguson]

No, it wouldn't.

Again, I think the important thing to remember is that the disability benefit program is there and the services that are available under it are services that are dealing with mental health conditions that are chronic and long term, whereas the rehabilitation program is trying more to help the veterans manage more of a short-term condition. These people who are applying under the disability benefit program are trying to access these longer-term services. In the meantime, 3,600 of them get access to the shorter-term services in the rehabilitation program.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Those people don't wait eight months, do they?

[Michael Ferguson]

No, for the people in the rehabilitation program, the access there is timely.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

In fact, I noticed at paragraph 3.29 that Veterans Affairs Canada asserts that delays in determining eligibility do not prevent veterans from obtaining mental health services. Did I read that correctly? Is that what Veterans Affairs Canada says?

[Michael Ferguson]

Certainly, and of course, everybody who's a resident of a province has access to provincial health care services, including what might be available through the provincial plan for mental health services. Nevertheless, we feel the important point here is that there are specialized services available that the veteran can't access through, say, a provincial system.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Some of them access those through the rehabilitation program.

[Michael Ferguson]

They access some specialized services available through the rehabilitation program, but that wouldn't necessarily be all of the services that could be available through the disability benefit program.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

All of the mental health services, however, are available through the rehabilitation program. I think we determined that at the outset.

[Michael Ferguson]

No, I don't think the services are all exactly the same under the two programs. Again, under the rehabilitation program the services are more of a short-term nature, helping the veteran manage a short-term condition, whereas under the disability benefit program they're dealing with more chronic conditions. There might be some overlap in the types of services that would be available, but there would also be some differences.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

The way I see it, people are concerned about veterans being left entirely without support until their disability claim is allowed. The way I hear your evidence, that's not the case. In fact, veterans do have support before their long-term disability claim is allowed.

[Michael Ferguson]

Again, many veterans would be able to get access to some mental health services, either through provincial systems or through the rehabilitation program. I think the services offered through the disability benefit program are obviously important or they wouldn't have to be there. They're there for veterans with chronic conditions, so it's still important for them to be able to access those services even if they've been able to access some shorter-term services in the meantime.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

I'd like to go to exhibit 3.2 in your report, which sets out the relative timelines for disability claims. In that respect, I'd like to refer you to the document that Mr. Allen mentioned earlier, which I prepared. I'll begin by asking you whether or not, with the exception of the percentages that are on the document I prepared, the other information is in fact the detailed numbers behind the graph in exhibit 3.2.

[Michael Ferguson]

I think the numbers under the column “VAC” on the left-hand side were the numbers that supported the completion of this graph. I believe the numbers under “Redress” were also numbers that we supplied to you.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Sorry, Mr. Woodworth. Time has expired, sir.

We're going around again, so Mr. Bevington, you have another kick at it. Go ahead, sir.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Northwest Territories, NT]

Okay. Stay away from that voting.

I have a number of questions still.

I want to go back to the communities, because there was something interesting in your report. You said that the department hadn't done the assessments of all the communities. Is that correct?

[Michael Ferguson]

I'm just trying to locate exactly where we have it here. My recollection is that it is part of the program for the department to establish whether the communities have the need, so to assess the need of communities, but what we found is that they're not actually doing that.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Northwest Territories, NT]

In another part of your report you say that the department told you there were 50 communities that could be serviced by this program, and that they estimated the cost of servicing them was $7 million. If they weren't doing assessments, how did they know what it would cost to service these communities? I am curious about that. They must have done some work on it, and if they had done work on it, had they passed it along to their masters?

[Michael Ferguson]

I'm not sure how precise an estimate that is. I think what it's saying is that's what it would be if they were to add 50 fly-in, isolated northern communities. Obviously they have not done the full needs assessment. They were just identifying that there were another 50 fly-in communities that could be considered for the program. Then, I suppose, probably based on the size of those communities and what they know about other communities, they were able to put together a rough estimate of what it would cost.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Northwest Territories, NT]

But they had never taken it any further than that, so these communities that needed it were not dealt with.

[Michael Ferguson]

I will ask Mr. Campbell to answer that.

[Ronnie Campbell, Assistant Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

There are two things. One is that before paragraph 6.17, at the beginning of the part about the nutrition north program, it says we didn't do an assessment of communities to determine who had the need and who would be eligible. It just went with communities that had usually gone with a food mail program extensively. So when it started the program, it started with those communities and eliminated the rest of those communities. Later on I think it asked what it would cost to bring in 50 of those communities, but it hasn't done anything with that yet.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Northwest Territories, NT]

If there were communities in need, why wouldn't it have recognized that? Why wouldn't those have been a high priority within the department if the goal was affordable food for these communities and it knew that 50 of them were not getting the subsidy and yet it didn't deal with that? How long did it know about this?

[Michael Ferguson]

Well again, as I think Mr. Campbell explained, it just went with the communities that were already part of the food mail program. It has said that one of the things it needs to do is assess communities on the basis of need as a regular part of its administration of this program. But it's not doing that. I think there is no more explanation than that.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Northwest Territories, NT]

I want to talk about the global number here of $60 million. If you look back at the food mail program in 2009, I believe it was, the food mail program went over budget and it cost about $60 million. So here we are in 2014 and we're still only spending $60 million on a program that's equivalent to the food mail program. Obviously, you're not going to get the same results out of this program as you did out of the food mail program. The money isn't there.

On the other side of it, is it usual for a government subsidy program to be taking 10% for administration?

[Michael Ferguson]

I think in paragraph 6.53 we identify that the subsidy expenditures were $6.2 million more than the program's fixed budget of $53.9. So it was roughly $60 million that they spent. In terms of the percentage that should go to administration of a program, we really don't have a benchmark available for this type of program to say whether that's appropriate or not.