Veterans Affairs Committee on May 8th, 2007

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

If a veteran finds that your judgment is not fair, can he appeal it, and is there a form of assistance for appealing from that judgment?

[Brian Ferguson]

We have a number of systems in place. One of them is to provide free legal service to anyone who wishes to make an appeal against a departmental decision. That free legal service is available to assist veterans in taking their appeals to the Veterans Review and Appeal Board. The board is an independent body from the department and in its role can make decisions based on the legal support the veteran receives.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Since you have a fixed budget, wouldn't you do well to try to direct certain aging veterans with health problems to the public services of the provinces rather than take care of them? You say that it's very complex and that there is office work, but a judgment has been rendered. Would the Department of Veterans Affairs do well to direct some of them to the provincial systems?

[Brian Ferguson]

No. I would say there's no incentive to do that. In fact, all our benefit payments are statutory, so the department is held harmless, in a financial sense. In other words, we have a fixed budget for our operations in terms of our staff and IT systems and things like that, but the payments to veterans are statutory. If someone has an entitlement, that person gets paid regardless. You can see from the statutory payments over the last several years that there have been quite large increases.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Do you make cash transfers to a province that provides long-term care for veterans? Is that statutory as well, as you say?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

The responders can take as long as they like, but the questioners have a time limit.

[Brian Ferguson]

Is that question still a part of the--

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

You can choose to do with it whatever you wish.

[Brian Ferguson]

I just want to clarify that. Provinces provide their citizens with certain health benefits. If they provide them to veterans, as citizens, that's an expense the provinces incur. But if the services the provinces provide are not in accordance with what the veteran has a right to under the Pension Act and other legislation, we will pay for additional services. We will pay the province for the top-up. There are variations of that across Canada, but the Veterans Affairs top-up makes sure that it's a consistent service.

[Darragh Mogan]

I'll add a supplementary comment that I think is important. For as long as I can remember--and that's a while, I'm afraid--there has never been a dispute, or there very rarely is, between the provinces and the federal government on veterans. Brian mentioned that Veterans Affairs will top up to the level that is enshrined in veterans legislation.

More importantly, using the community system is very important for good health outcomes for veterans and their dependants. Whereas we're a paying partner with provinces, we don't want to take somebody unless there's no care available in the community. We don't want to take a veteran out of the community and isolate that veteran from family and friends. This happens occasionally when the care isn't there. That would not be something we would want to be in the position of doing. It also creates federal-provincial friction, which I don't think anyone in this room, or any public servant or politician, would encourage.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Now we're going to move on to Mr. Shipley, who sadly only had a minute of the previous time.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

To follow up a little, I'm glad to hear that, in terms of cooperation with the provinces, that act of the federal government does top up and meet those needs.

At the end of my last question, Mr. Ferguson, you were talking about the needs assessment. Actually that was sort of my next question, and I'm glad you stepped into it.

One of the things you'd mentioned earlier--and we see it quite honestly time and time again--is that the applications become so complex that not only do the applicants not understand them, but neither do the staff people. The elevation of frustration tends to get pretty high when we cannot get consistent answers back from an applicant. You talk to different people and you get different answers.

I'm hoping that part of our discussion and your review, when you look at the needs assessment criteria...that they are clear and understandable, and not just to the applicant. Obviously now we'll have an ombudsman who will be there in part to help, but there always needs to be a consistent and understandable message coming from the staff. I guess that's not so much a question as it is a comment of mine, but you can make a comment on it. We see it in many departments from time to time.

[Brian Ferguson]

That's a very valid comment on something we constantly have to guard against. I can say that for the new Veterans Charter, the approach we took was to invest hugely in the training of our staff. That was one critical element.

The other element we tried, which really worked well, is a self-assessment tool that we put up on the Internet. We had thousands and thousands of downloads of that tool by presumably interested potential applicants, to do their own screening on their own assessment, based on what they understood to be the program benefits and requirements.

I would hope that we would be able to do that to some extent even with our traditional veterans. People will say they're not computer literate, but some of them are. Another thing is that a lot of their families use the tool to help them. I agree completely with your comment that we need to make sure this is as simple as possible for the client.

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

We've had witnesses, when we were talking about post-traumatic stress and about an ombudsman, and we started to look at the expansion and at the extension of health care services. As you've been going through the review, has the investigation also looked at the availability of the professional services that are going to be requested?

[Brian Ferguson]

Certainly that is an aspect of it, particularly with reference to post-traumatic stress disorder. A continuing concern that we have jointly with our colleagues in DND is the need to increase our capacity in that regard across the country. We've taken active steps. We've created a network of operational stress-injury clinics that operate there, which you've probably heard about. We've taken steps to create a common list of service providers among the Department of National Defence, RCMP, and us. We've introduced the concept that clinical care managers be assigned to more complex cases. I'm making that reference to indicate that we have responded in that area.

I'm not so certain in this area whether we're facing the same issue, but I think it's safe to say we will be addressing it.

[Darragh Mogan]

I think with larger numbers, and larger numbers in rural areas—you've heard that comment already—it's safe to assume we're going to have a little challenge with suppliers, especially as the basic home care isn't adequate and you have to move it up a bit, and you want to have the kind of medical and clinical assessment that guides public servants in what they might be offering. I think it will be a challenge down the way.

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

Again, governments have made, and likely will continue from time to time to make, some commitments that can't be carried through.

[An hon. member]

No, don't say it.

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

On this side they haven't. If one of those commitments is to provide it, but actually that service is not available, then we need to.... And that's all part of what I'm saying about prioritizing. It's good to say we're going to do all these things, but we need to make sure we can do them if we say we're going to do them.

[Brian Ferguson]

I understand.

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

I likely have a minute here just to finish off.

I'll just go back to some earlier questions about your review and the timing of it, and the input you want to have from this committee, which we very much appreciate. If you were to put a time on when you would want our input to be in front of you, if you're going to wrap this thing up in the fall--and we know how there's some time in the preparation of that--when should we be wrapping up ours so that you have that input for your study?

[Brian Ferguson]

In an ideal world, and this isn't a facetious comment, it would be yesterday. But in reality, sir, I think the sooner you can get it to us...if you could get input to us in the next few months, that would be exceedingly helpful to us.

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

I don't like to leave it as a few months, because if you want it.... We want it this fall, so I'm hoping that as a group we'll quickly bring in the witnesses who are needed and get the job done.

[Brian Ferguson]

Even if you wanted to give us something on an interim basis, it would at least give us a sense of your direction so that we could actually utilize it sooner rather than later.

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

Thank you.