Evidence of meeting #26 for Veterans Affairs in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was board.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
David Sweet Conservative Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON
Of the decisions that were made, could you tell me the percentage of favourable decisions for the veterans? Were they consistent with the average percentage of favourable judgments from the past, when there were multiple members of the board hearing these cases?
Chair, Veterans Review and Appeal Board
In my rapid review of those statistics, favourability rates are slightly higher with single-member panels.
Conservative
Conservative
David Sweet Conservative Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON
Finally, we've had a lot of conversation around the committee about the fact that a lot of the benefits that go to an armed forces veteran also extend to their family now, with the new suite of services that are offered. That said, we don't want to make the bill of rights too convoluted. Do you think the bill of rights should mention veterans' family members?
Chair, Veterans Review and Appeal Board
I think veterans' family members are an integral part of a veteran's compensation and care package, so I would, indeed.
Conservative
David Sweet Conservative Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON
You feel that should be right in the text of how we actually craft that bill of rights.
Conservative
Conservative
David Sweet Conservative Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON
A minute and a half?
Do you have a question, Colin?
February 15th, 2007 / 9:50 a.m.
Conservative
Colin Mayes Conservative Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
To get on to the veterans bill of rights, when you have rights, they have to be defined—things such as reasonable access, reasonable timelines for response, reasonable representation for the veterans. Do you see any challenges in defining what is “reasonable”, and could that slow up the process for a bill of rights?
Chair, Veterans Review and Appeal Board
Well, that's the balancing act. You're asking a lawyer, and if you ask a lawyer to write down in black and white how something should be defined, you're in trouble, basically, because it could be very lengthy. But it will also be very precise.
My understanding of the efficiency of a bill of rights is that it's basically its simplicity in comprehension, so that the buy-in from the vets and from the people who inhabit the system of Veterans Affairs will be easy. The trade-off is there. I don't think you want to become extremely complex legally, but simple and clear, from a common sense point of view, so that people can relate to what's in it. I think that's the ideal.
It's a balancing act, I admit, but it's an important one for people to understand what's involved.
Conservative
Colin Mayes Conservative Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
It's a symbolic message to the veterans of the concern the Government of Canada has for their rights.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rob Anders
Oh, that hang noose doesn't apply to you, Mr. Marchand, just to the committee members. You can carry on and finish your response.
Conservative
Colin Mayes Conservative Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
I was so caught up in the answer, I lost track of time.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rob Anders
We have to keep our members in line--not so much our witnesses, thank goodness.
Your response is finished? Okay, fair enough.
Mr. St. Denis, for five minutes.
Liberal
Brent St. Denis Liberal Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to both of you for being here today.
Taking a cue from Colin's questions, I don't think we know today exactly what the final recommendation will be from this committee on a bill of rights. But there's access, and wait time guarantees if that's possible, and I imagine it might include something along the lines of benefit of the doubt.
Generally speaking, how do you handle it now? And under a bill of rights, if that were included, how do you see that notion of benefit of the doubt handled? If I'm a veteran and I'm applying, always the expectation is that I'm going to win my case. Obviously that's why a person proceeds with an application. They're not happy if they don't get it, but they're not as unhappy if they have been dealt with efficiently and they feel they've been treated fairly and so on.
Could I have your comments on that, please?
Chair, Veterans Review and Appeal Board
Again, I'll answer as a lawyer, and then I'll try to move on to comprehensive things.
Benefit of the doubt is basically an onus of evidence rule that lies in many aspects of the legislation dealing with veterans affairs. In a nutshell, the legislator is saying forget the normal rules of preponderance in civil cases. In other words, in civil cases when you're a plaintiff, the evidence you bring forward has to be preponderant. It has to be higher than that of the individual you're suing or pursuing a case against.
What the benefit of doubt does in the situation of a tie, say, where the evidence is relatively equal on both sides, is that the legislator says you go to the vet; forget the normal preponderance issue as being determinative of whether or not you win your case.
To try to write that into a bill of rights might be just too complex to do, to my mind, unless you understand these various preponderance issues. I think it would be more useful to simply reiterate the principle that from an evidentiary point of view, the proposition that somebody brings to the table when they're presenting their case, there is a presumption that the evidence is there to grant. In other words, it's the bill of rights itself that is the message, versus that simple evidentiary rule.
So I think it's a question of choice. If you want to build a very complex evidentiary preponderance rule into the bill of rights, or simply state in the bill of rights that this is done in order to make sure that the veteran has available to him every recourse possible and imaginable, and that the system is to deal with the claim or the representation accordingly, I think it's probably more efficient from a perception point of view and a practical point of view also.
Liberal
Brent St. Denis Liberal Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON
Certainly I accept.... And I'm sure all of us around the table know the simple rule in baseball that if it appears the runner got to first base at the same time as the ball from, say, the shortstop, then the runner is safe. Obviously that's a very physical act. It's not so easy to do that when it's with evidence. So I appreciate your comments there.
With the expectation that the government will proceed with an ombudsman's office and an ombudsman, there will be some sort of interplay, presumably, between your office, the future bill of rights, and the future ombudsman. Have you thought through the complications or benefits, or both, in that interplay among the three?
Chair, Veterans Review and Appeal Board
Yes, we have. As I stated earlier, the board is a quasi-judicial, arm's-length, independent board, so it would be inappropriate, to a certain degree, for an eventual ombudsman to get involved in the decision-making of its members. The member who hears and rules on a case has the quasi-judicial benefit of being independent. He's arm's length from the minister. He's also arm's length from an ombudsman. He's also arm's length from the chair of the board. He has to be secure in the fact that he makes his decision impartially and independently. From a member's perspective, that has to be protected for the board's credibility as an independent agency.
That is not to say that an ombudsman could not bring practical, realistic, pragmatic comments and criticisms to the board. He could obviously come to the chair. He could easily come to the deputy chair, for that matter, and say that our scheduling could be done better, that he's getting complaints from veterans that we're not doing enough hearings in their locations, or that we're too slow when we prepare our cases. In that sense, not only would it be important, it would also be very useful for an ombudsman to give us feedback on how we do our job, on whether our process is good and if it is working. I don't think the ombudsman could get involved in the particular cases.
Conservative