Evidence of meeting #33 for Public Accounts in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was applications.
A video is available from Parliament.
2:10 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Veterans Affairs
Well, that's a very good question.
I'd ask my colleague Mr. Adams, who works on this regularly, to provide some insight.
2:15 p.m.
Conservative
2:15 p.m.
Jonathan Adams Acting Director General, Finance, Department of Veterans Affairs
Absolutely.
In response to the question, as the deputy has highlighted, for Veterans Affairs Canada, quasi-statutory funding ensures that for all veterans who appear and who present with a need, there is sufficient funding for that. Right now we are working with the RCMP, and the RCMP is also working with central agencies to look at options of how they can—
2:15 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
I'm going to stop you there, because I'm not really hearing an answer when we just talk about “talking with” and looking at options. It doesn't look like there's anything concrete to fix this.
I want to go over to the RCMP, please. Do you have a sense of confidence with the Veterans Affairs' handling of retired members from the RCMP?
2:15 p.m.
Chief Human Resources Officer, Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Thank you for the question.
We are working very diligently—
2:15 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
I'm sorry, but I'm going to interrupt. I'm not asking—
2:15 p.m.
Chief Human Resources Officer, Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Yes, I do have confidence in our colleagues at VAC—
2:15 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
I'm going to stop you right there, please.
Auditor General Hogan, can I ask you? Do you have, from what you've heard today and what your report has seen and the amounts of delays...? They've accepted your recommendations. Do you have a sense of confidence that our vets will be served and that these recommendations will address our very major issues?
2:15 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
I do believe that both departments have a lot of work that they need to do. It's been over seven years that the service standard has not been met. Based on the fact that in 2018 there was an ombudsman report that raised certain matters, which we have raised yet again, that still exist.... Some of the matters we raised in a 2014 report related to mental health applications. I do believe the time is long past due to act on the commitments and the recommendations.
I think the committee has heard me say this before. Many government departments are excellent at developing action plans, but it's the implementation of those that really needs to be focused on. I'm confident that there's goodwill in these two departments to do that, but now it's time to act on all of those commitments.
2:15 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Great. Thanks.
Mr. Ledwell, what are the consequences for the various folks responsible for this if we don't meet our goals, if we don't start serving our veterans, if we don't, as Mr. Desjarlais said, serve our indigenous veterans or provide better French service? Is it just another Auditor General report years down the road? What are the consequences?
2:15 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Veterans Affairs
Honourable member, thanks for that pointed and important issue. I think our obligation is to serve our veterans. Our commitment is to get the support to veterans when they need it and where they need it, and in a timely fashion.
As we've indicated in both our response and engagement here today, we know that there is more work to do. We feel like we're on the right track. We do have action plans—
2:15 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
I'm going to interrupt, because I have one last really simple question.
You mentioned the issue of temporary employees. Can you provide to us the number of temporary employees who just leave and the number of temporary employees who transition to become indeterminate and permanent employees?
2:15 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
If you don't have the information now, would you provide it to the committee?
2:15 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Veterans Affairs
We'll be happy to provide that information to the committee through the clerk.
2:15 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
Thank you very much.
We'll turn now to Ms. Yip.
You have the floor for five minutes, please.
October 21st, 2022 / 2:15 p.m.
Liberal
Jean Yip Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
Thank you, Chair.
I'm not sure that I heard the reason why there are discrepancies between male and female applicant wait times. I'd like to hear clearly why female applicants had to wait longer. I'm going to direct my question to Ms. Hogan.
2:15 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
There was difficulty for us to identify all the reasons. As I mentioned, the three groups—francophones, women and RCMP veterans—all had different reasons.
When it came to women, we were able to identify at least two measures, and Mr. Ledwell was talking about one of them earlier. The information on how certain conditions impact female veterans is still missing, so figuring out the determination of the severity and the amount of a benefit takes longer for women.
The other matter that we saw was identified initially by the department through part of their GBA+ analysis, which was that their application forms didn't allow for an applicant to include a different name. Many women would have changed their names throughout their career in service, so, if you happened to enter into or exit a marriage while you were in service, there was difficulty in matching your medical records and your service records with different names, and that led partially to the increase in time for processing women.
2:20 p.m.
Liberal
Jean Yip Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
You first mentioned the severity for women in terms of longer wait times. Could you elaborate on that, please?
2:20 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
It's about the conditions and how a female service member experiences a condition and then the amount of benefits they would be eligible to receive. I believe that Mr. Ledwell is much better placed to explain it than I would be, but that was one of the reasons. It was sort of that impact that certain conditions have on women versus male service members.
2:20 p.m.
Liberal
2:20 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of Veterans Affairs
If I could, honourable member, I'll ask my colleague, Trudie MacKinnon, to address this issue.
2:20 p.m.
Acting Director General, Centralized Operations Division, Department of Veterans Affairs
In terms of the gap that we see between male and female veterans when they come forward, the deputy and the Auditor General have pointed out correctly that the biggest issue we face is that how military service impacts women veterans is oftentimes different from how it impacts male veterans. Much of the medical research that is done in Canada and around the world is very much focused on the male anatomy. There's more research coming out every day, and we are accessing that research. That is one component. We are also at the very early stages of going through a GBA+ analysis process in order to better serve our female veterans.
I will also say that, when the Auditor General's report came out, there was a fairly sizable gap between the processing times of male and female veterans. Last fiscal year, we reduced that to 39 weeks for males and 40 weeks for females. As of this year, as of September 30, we have eliminated that gap between male and female veterans, and they are both being processed within the 28-week time frame. We acknowledge that it is still not close to our 16-week turnaround time, but, nonetheless, it is progress. We made that progress as a result of standing up a female veteran benefit team responsible for processing only female claims, and we were able to successfully close that gap.
Like I said, we continue to update the tools that we use to make our decisions on female veterans' claims and ensure that, for example, our table of disabilities, which provides all of the medical information that our decision-makers use, includes specific medical research with regard to women veterans.
Thank you.
2:20 p.m.
Liberal
Jean Yip Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
Thank you.
I'm really surprised to hear your earlier comments about stressing.... It's not really the stressing or the importance, but just having the male anatomy information more readily available than that of women. You mentioned that there are tools that are now available. Could you further comment on that?