Veterans Affairs Committee on Nov. 22nd, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

That's perfectly fine. I'll just let you know that you're a minute and 46 seconds over.

All I was indicating was that we're moving on to Mr. Stoffer's time, but I would be more than happy to have Mr. Côté back again. That's not a problem.

[Yves Côté]

And from my point of view, I'm here to serve. So any time you want to meet with me—for example, after the letter is made public, if you want to discuss it—I would be happy to appear.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

That's fine.

Now on to Mr. Stoffer for five minutes.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you both for coming to the committee today.

Sir, in your mandate book in paragraph 3, it says off the top: “The Ombudsman shall, on the Minister's behalf”. Then in the report here, in the part you didn't go over, but the part that would be right here, it says: “I also have the authority to investigate matters on my own initiative upon notice to the Minister.”

Then for recommendations for the veterans independent ombudsman, you say: “full ability to decide what complaint or issue to investigate and to determine how any complaint will be investigated, and when a file will be closed”.

It appears to me, and correct me if I'm wrong, that an ombudsman should be completely independent of the department. But right off the bat, your mandate says “on the Minister's behalf”. Does that not handcuff you a bit in this regard? And are you recommending to us that the veterans ombudsman not have this in the mandate—that instead it would say “The ombudsman shall”, and forget the minister altogether? Are you saying that this should be also written for the ombudsman?

[Yves Côté]

Mr. Chairman--

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

It just appears that your restraint.... The minister can ask you to investigate things, even though it says here that you're the office of last resort. I find it rather unusual that the Minister of Defence would need an ombudsman to investigate his own department, but there are obviously special circumstances that may come up now and then.

So do you not feel constraint in that regard? Would you like to see a veterans ombudsman--I guess for lack of a better term--have more latitude or freedom to determine what he or she can decide to do?

[Yves Côté]

Mr. Chair, I am certainly not recommending that the words the member has raised are found in the mandate of the veterans affairs ombudsman.

In the remarks that I haven't read, or maybe also in the parts that I have read, I think I made the point that as far as our office was concerned, there are issues that should be addressed, and certainly legislating our mandate would be one of these. That's one part.

The second part, I would also like to mention, Mr. Chair, is that since I've been ombudsman, since August 3, 2005, although these words are present in the mandate, there has been absolutely no attempt in any way, shape, or form by any minister or by his staff to interfere with our ability to do things.

Another point I would make, and it's also very important.... The member asked why the mandate would say that the minister could refer issues or questions to the ombudsman. Actually, I think this can be a very helpful tool for a minister to have, because it may be that at some point in time a minister would look at what his department was giving him or her and say, “You know what? This is not exactly what I need. I think the work that has been done here was maybe not as complete as it should have been.” Or maybe there is a risk that the work the department did will not be perceived as being independent.

One good example from the history of our own office is the Wenzel case. Mr. Wenzel, as you know, was a retired pilot from World War II, who for a number of years had been fighting to get a pension. Many ministers had tried to resolve the issue, to no avail, and at some point in time a minister said, “Okay, enough of this. We will refer this case to the ombudsman, because he is independent and he is outside, and we'll look forward to what he finds.” In fact, what we found was that there had been something wrong. In that case, I think, the end result of the minister having the power to give us a file like this was that we were in a position to accomplish a result that simply was not accomplished before when it should have been. So I think there is something useful in having that.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Did you need the minister to give you that formally? Why couldn't you just go to Cliff Wenzel and do it yourself, without the minister giving it to you? Did you have the ability to do that?

[Yves Côté]

Technically, the answer would be no, because somewhere in our mandate it says that for matters that occurred before 1998, this office--I--may not investigate unless I obtain the minister's authorization. So in this particular case, Mr. Chairman, I would have had to go to the minister, or my predecessor, and seek the minister's authorization to do that.

By the way, I think that as long as this office has existed, any time the ombudsman has gone to the minister asking for that kind of authorization, it has been given.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

That's very good, but the reality is that the minister could say no. Are you suggesting, then, that a veterans ombudsman have no restrictions in terms of what he or she investigates? If, for example, a case happened in 1975--

[Yves Côté]

Or in 1955.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

--or in 1955, or whenever, that person should have the full freedom to investigate whatever he or she determines is worth investigating without restrictions imposed by a department or a government.

[Yves Côté]

Mr. Chairman, this is exactly my view, and I'm totally in agreement with this. I think there should be enough confidence put in the new ombudsman that they should be allowed to run their offices and their files the way they see fit, as I think I mentioned in my opening remarks.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

I believe Mr. Cuzner has passed his time to Mr. Valley. Is that right?

Oh, I'm sorry, it's the other side of the table.

We'll go to our injured colleague, and bless her for being here. Mrs. Hinton.

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

I see you're under the false impression that there is favouritism given. I don't think so.

Thank you very much for appearing, Mr. Côté. It's been extremely interesting to listen.

I'm a little bit confused, and you may be able to help me. On one thing, by the way, Mr. Perron beat me to the punch, because I was going to ask you the same thing: what would be your rough guess as a cost estimate? So you're saying it's $6.5 million for the defence ombudsman, and that's with 50 staff. Do you think that would be in the ballpark? That's the first question about the veterans ombudsman.

The second part is that ministerial directives indicate that your reports concerning investigations can be published 28 days after they have been submitted to the Minister of National Defence. Do you have to notify the minister about exactly when a report concerning investigations will be made public, or does your office determine independently when this will be done? I ask that question because in paragraph 27(g) you say that one of the things you believe should be part of this is the “full ability to make findings and reports public without having to obtain any type of prior authorization”.

I'm sorry, those are a lot of questions.

[Yves Côté]

Actually, this is quite manageable for somebody like me, so let me take a stab at it.

I'll start with the second one, if I may, Mr. Chairman. Concerning the 28 days that you find in the mandate, which you have referred to, it is very important to realize that the only thing this is, in a way, is a heads-up to a minister that 28 days later, or perhaps after that, a report will be made public. And it is by no means a clause that has the effect of giving the minister the power to say “I agree” or “I don't agree”. It's simply given to him--in that case, to him--so that he can staff it through the department and so that when it is actually made public, the minister knows what he should be saying publicly.

Throughout the history of this office, reports that have been issued have always been reports as approved by the ombudsman, without any changes imposed or suggested by any ministers or any members of DND or the CF. Let me be very clear about this.

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

And I'm assuming you like that, in support of veterans.

[Yves Côté]

I like that, and to me it's absolutely essential that any veterans ombudsman has exactly the same power--28 days, or it could be 21 days. I do think that a minister needs some time, but 28 days is not the big thing.

The second point is the issue of budget. Yes, I did say that we had a budget of about $6.3 million. It's very difficult for me to even guesstimate what would be the right amount or the right level of resources for a veterans ombudsman, but there are at least one or two things that I would like to put on the table. One is that it seems to me that when the government decides to go ahead on this, what we want to have is an effective ombudsman. We want to have an office that can take files, can answer the mail, make a difference, and produce results. What this means to me is that this has to be properly resourced. You can have the best mandate in the world with all the bells and whistles that anyone can imagine, but if you don't have the gas to put in the engine, so to speak, you won't go very far.

It seems to me that what should happen, once the new ombudsman has been appointed, is he or she should be given some time to consider what kinds of resources they may need. Speak to people in the department. Speak to people outside of the department. For example, I know they have a toll-free line within Veterans Affairs that people can phone 24 hours a day. Well, let's get a sense of how many calls they are getting and so on. And then it would be an iterative process in which the ombudsman would say, “Well, you know what, to start for the first year I think I may need, let's say, $10 million, but after that, it may have to be adjusted upwards or perhaps downwards. I don't know.” I think the department and the ombudsman should then engage in this healthy dialogue between the two of them so that the ombudsman gets the level of resources he or she needs in order to be what I think the ombudsman should be.

And as I think I mentioned earlier today, if there were to be disputes or disagreements between the ombudsman and the minister or the department on what would be the appropriate level of resourcing, then it seems to me that this committee could be brought to bear to listen to the various points of view and then perhaps issue a report or make a recommendation as to what should be the appropriate number of resources.

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

Okay, I have one really quick one and then I'm going to pass to Mr. Sweet.

What do you believe, based on your experience as a defence ombudsman, is a reasonable amount of time? You keep talking about it taking some time. What do you think is a reasonable timeline for the veterans ombudsman to be up and running? Are you talking three months, six months, twelve months? What's your reference there?

[Yves Côté]

Mr. Chairman, I was afraid, in a way, that this question would be asked, but there it is. It has been asked.

It's very difficult. When you think about it all, this person would start from scratch. There would be nothing. So first of all you have to decide what kind of organizational chart you're going to have. Do you have one DG for operations and one for something else? You have to think about this and presumably you have to consult maybe with offices like ours and provincial ombudsmen and ask to be given a sense. This takes time.

Once you've done that, we are part of the Public Service of Canada, and we have to have those jobs classified. The classification process takes some time. I don't want to bury you in bureaucratese, but I just want to emphasize the fact that it takes time.

And then you have to do the recruiting, and speaking from experience, recently we have been trying to hire good, solid investigators who have the right background and the right approach to things, and these are not easy to recruit. You have to launch a process and you get applications in. It takes time.

But the one word of caution, as I think I said earlier, that I would really leave with this committee and with the decision-makers is that the word should be given to the ombudsman that they should move quickly but also that they should get it right. Imagine if, let's say, they are up and running after six months or four months or two months and they realize that they don't have the right structure and that their people have not been trained.

That's the other thing. The veterans affairs world is a very complex world. You have the new charter that just came in. You have all kinds of programs and legislation. The people who answer the phone must be familiar with what they are talking about, so you have to train them in addition to having selected them. That takes a bit of time.

My advice would be the Latin maxim, festina lente, hurry up slowly. Well, the word to the ombudsman should be to do exactly that--festina lente. Get going, but get it right and don't waste time.

And I'm sorry that I cannot be more helpful in terms of giving you precise data, but that's the best I think I can do.

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

Thank you, Mr. Côté.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Ms. Hinton was thinking of splitting her time, but unfortunately it's over seven minutes, so Mr. Sweet will have to wait. I apologize.

Now over to Mr. Cuzner, who has referred his time to Mr. Valley, for five minutes.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

Thank you.

That's what happens: when you took her time away, she ran long.

I appreciate your comments. Far too many of us have sat on too many committees where we didn't know exactly what had been said after we'd had the presentations. I thank you for being clear on who you see this ombudsman should report to. Like Mr. Perron, I'm not sure I totally agree with you yet, but that's why we need your advice at this point.

You do say they have to have complete independence from departments and agencies. We would always hope that would be the case, but you have experience of two ministers, and it worked well, and we thank you for giving us that advice. You're obviously there, you understand the system, and you understand what success is. From that side of it, thanks for the advice and we're not sure where this is going to go. We would hope that with every minister you have to work for, and that Veterans Affairs has to work for, there would be that relationship.

You mentioned in your comments that a number of times you've phoned the minister and you talked to the chief of staff. Is that a common occurrence? Is that some way you solve problems before big investigations come about? Would that be common?

[Yves Côté]

It happens on a regular basis. I don't know if that's common or not. It happens when we sometimes have files that deserve ministerial attention and I'll pick up the phone and speak to the chief of staff, or my folks will speak to people in the minister's office and we get the ball rolling.

Certainly I can also say that any time I've asked to meet with either minister, they have been able to make time very quickly. So it happens on a regular basis, if you will, and it works.