Veterans Affairs Committee on Nov. 1st, 2006

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Yes, so 10% of what you're doing.

[André Marin]

Yes.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

You talked about the Veterans Review and Appeal Board, and that there was the ability and the authority for an ombudsman actually to be involved with that. Does it matter at any particular stage of an appeal? Can you intervene halfway through when something starts to go off the rails? Do you have to wait until all options have been looked at? Or do you have to be right at the start of it, and then you have to wait until the end?

[André Marin]

As an ombudsman, you're an office of last resort. You would get involved if there's an issue that arises after you've exhausted internal mechanisms.

Now, that is not an absolute rule. If your issue is that your case has never been listed to be heard, then of course you wouldn't wait until it's heard, because you'd never hear the case. So there are exceptions to that rule, but normally it's an office of last resort. Until then, the function of the ombudsman is normally one of assisting complainants to use those mechanisms. There are a lot of exceptions, but that is the short answer. And it works.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

That's good.

St. Anne's Hospital has an ombudsman. When we develop an ombudsman for veterans affairs, how do you see that evolving? Do they still need an ombudsman?

[André Marin]

There's no doubt that whoever occupies that position adds value to the system. I don't necessarily see that it would affect their jobs, but they're not a classical ombudsman. They call themselves an ombudsman, but to be truly a classical ombudsman, you must report to somewhere that's outside your oversight ability. If you work at a hospital and report to the hospital CEO or the board, you're still too intimately tied to really call yourself an ombudsman. I want to say that doesn't mean they don't bring value. So I could see them continuing to co-exist with one properly constituted statutory ombudsman.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Is that it?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

That's it for you, sir.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

For now.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Now we have Mr. St. Denis.

[Brent St. Denis, Liberal, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Monsieur Marin and Ms. Finlay, for being here and for a very fascinating presentation.

In listening to you, it occurs to me that if our committee could agree on a framework for an ombudsman and have it actually implemented, then it may cause, hopefully, a ripple effect through other departments, eventually leading to an overall ombudsman for Canada. It's bottom up, absent the top-down approach, which, as you say, was proposed many years ago.

You mentioned the two international organizations, the association and the institute, the institute being the more professional. Are there standards? We see ISO standards for forestry, for trucking, for all forms of things. In other words, is there a standard for ombudsmen?

[André Marin]

Yes. The United States Ombudsman Association, which is the third organization I mentioned, publishes ombudsman standards. I don't have them with me, but they're available from their website, which is USOA.org.

Actually, I do have them here, so I would like to table these with the committee. They're excellent standards. The USOA president has written to this committee, with a copy to the Prime Minister, as well, which is in your folder. Those standards are excellent and they're very descriptive of how to set up properly an ombudsman's office.

[Brent St. Denis, Liberal, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Is there a system to maintain the various provincial ombudsmen's offices and elsewhere around the world? In other words, is one verified by the international institute as being up to standard, up to snuff? Do you have the backup of an international institution to say we had nine out of ten on this year's score? In other words, it gives you some strength to do your job.

[André Marin]

Yes, the International Ombudsman Institute, the IOI, states very clearly in its constitution--again, available on the Internet--how to qualify as an ombudsman, and there are different categories of memberships. The IOI carefully reviews ombudsmen's offices around the world to decide which ones qualify as ombudsmen and which ones don't qualify, and which ones have mid-status.

So the IOI would be the body that decides on proper accreditation for ombudsmen worldwide.

[Brent St. Denis, Liberal, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

We've heard from lots of witnesses, including today an excellent witness. If this committee were of a mind to put something on the table, that would be available to us so that we actually have something to propose to stakeholder groups. There's no reason, I take it, that we have to be talking in a theoretical way as we go along. I won't say we could actually adopt something, but we could have a pro forma example to use as a benchmark to move forward. We don't need to be doing this in theoretical terms all along.

[André Marin]

No, absolutely. As I mentioned in an earlier response, your best resource, really, is a Canadian one, and every single province in Canada has an excellent model to look at. The USOA publishes standards; the IOI provides accreditation and reviews characteristics for ombudsmen's offices. So those would be the natural resources to look at.

The IOA is an organization of “ombuddies”, and it's a very different approach. I would caution strongly to stay away from that particular model, unless you're into shredding and not keeping track of anything, never recommending anything. Their main motto is “Helping complainants help themselves”. In other words, if you have a problem, the problem may well be with you. The first thing is to project the problem back to the complainant. So it serves private corporations very well, but it doesn't help in getting into the public interest of issues.

[Brent St. Denis, Liberal, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Without casting any aspersions, I know the banks have ombudsman positions, as does the insurance industry, and some may or may not be in that category.

[André Marin]

My submission here is not to tell you that these people have no value to add to the system. If you want to follow your bank, and your ombudsman helps you, God bless him or her. The problem is that they're not ombudsmen in the classical sense. Some of them are more classical than others, and they're all very useful in our system, but when you're dealing with an issue involving Veterans Affairs and the pension review board, you want somebody who can dig a little deeper than these kinds of ombudsmen. That's my pitch today.

[Brent St. Denis, Liberal, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Thank you, Mr. Marin.

Now we go to Mrs. Hinton.

[Betty Hinton, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

I'm going to share my time with Mr. Sweet.

I have just a couple of things. I'm not sure if I said this to you before, but I agree wholeheartedly that if, as an ombudsman, you can't oversee VRAB then there's really no purpose to being an ombudsman. We're in agreement on that.

You're leaving me with a mixed message. I heard you say to look at the provincial models because you think those are a great starting point. I thought I heard you say not to bother looking at any other country's models, but then I also heard you recommend looking at the United Kingdom. I'm a little confused, and I'd like you to clarify that.

The rest of the time will be for Mr. Sweet.

[André Marin]

I would strongly advise looking at the provincial models. The U.K. model I'm very familiar with because I've had dealings with the U.K. ombudsman and her office. I'm aware of their constitution, and it's an excellent office. I would encourage you to look at that model. There are other international organizations, such as IOI and the USOA, that provide extremely good resources on where to go with the Veterans Affairs ombudsman. I would strongly recommend all those resources.

[Betty Hinton, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Thank you.

Mr. Sweet, go ahead.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Mr. Marin, you mentioned that in Ontario right now you handle 24,000 complaints with a budget of $9.6 million. Give me the aggregate staff that you would have for that budget.

[André Marin]

It's 85.