Veterans Affairs Committee on May 8th, 2007

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

You'll have my full support in terms of making the changes, because it has been apparent for years that change has to be made. Mr. Stoffer mentioned his impatience. I share the impatience, but I recognize that to do it right, it takes a little time. So I'm pleased to see the direction.

The other question I was going to ask...oh, I'm sorry, I may have interrupted Mr. Mogan.

[Darragh Mogan]

I was going to add only one amplification, and that is if we looked at the entitlement cost alone, the way it's structured now, it has very complex eligibility rules and a whole bunch of footnotes at the bottom. If we were to implement that for all the survivors—which Mr. Stoffer has raised—who are entitled now, the bill for government is really high, and the satisfaction level about responding to need in a hurry would not be that great. It would take us a long time to get that through government, if we ever did. So I think that's certainly the context to consider, the alternatives that we would be putting forward in the fall to the minister.

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

You've been a part of the department for many years and you've served this country very well. When you say “very high”, you make me nervous. Are you talking $1 billion?

[Darragh Mogan]

I'll take that back. The entitlement costs would be considerably higher. I don't know how to qualify it without stepping outside the bounds that I'm contained by here. But it would be considerably higher than responding in a needs-based way, and it would be a slower system, with all the Byzantine rules we now have.

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

We don't want it to be slower--

[Darragh Mogan]

No, we don't, I don't think.

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

--we want it to be faster.

I'll pass the remainder of my time to Mr. Shipley.

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

Thank you very much.

We did have an interesting discussion with witnesses the other day, with Mr. Marshall of the GAC. I think when we look at that, we can be assured that this committee wants to work with you to bring this study to fruition for the veterans. That's what we're here for.

In terms of acting and timing, we've actually done a number of things, right from the bill of rights to the ombudsman who is coming in place, and we're now looking at the health care and the extension of the services that we really want to look at.

In terms of the VAC, you say you take their advice because you believe they are the experts and they're brought together. I appreciate that, and I think most of us around this table would share that view after their presentation the other day. How will that be compiled? We're going to have to make some priorities, obviously, at the end of the day. Are you compiling, then, the programs they have, and will you come with options?

[Brian Ferguson]

When we develop our analysis, we'll look at the available options in terms of addressing the needs that have been identified. They're helping us identify the needs and gaps in service, and the Keeping the Promise document does a really good job of that.

We're focused with them now on the needs assessment toolkit, because without that you have nothing to work with. You can say you're going to have a needs-based approach and you can say it's going to be disconnected from complex eligibility rules, but until you have something the staff can work with that is tried and true, you don't have a system that's capable of being implemented. So the primary focus of their latest work with us has been to help us design an approach that would work as a needs-based approach.

We're using a model from Quebec called Le système de mesure de l'autonomie fonctionnelle, which the council widely recommends be adapted by us to use.

I don't know whether that's helpful or not, sir.

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

I'll get it in another round.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Unfortunately, Mr. Shipley was only given a minute by Mrs. Hinton, so he'll be able to follow some of the questions subsequently.

Now over to Mr. St. Denis for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, gentlemen, for being here today.

Just a point of information for colleagues, who are probably aware that our committee meeting, as are all committee meetings, is broadcast on the web. After that meeting, I had a call from a brother of one of the nine soldiers who died on August 9, 1974, and he was appreciative of the work of the committee that day. So in cyberspace we are being heard.

On the notion of the overall review, ad hoc changes versus comprehensive changes, I think we appreciate that there's a time and a place for both. Ad hoc changes will sometimes provide for the patch that's needed to deal with an immediate concern, but every so often you have to step back and look at a comprehensive review. We appreciate the work of the department in that regard, and I hope what we do will be helpful. But it is a concern that, based on the five-year figure used for the charter, we might be facing more or less five years for this.

When did the clocks start on the department's review?

[Brian Ferguson]

Previously, I think we had been doing some preliminary work in this area for about a year prior to the minister's coming into the department.

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

Roughly sometime in 2005.

[Brian Ferguson]

Yes, but it wasn't this review; it was an analysis of current programs. Three programs constitute the whole package: VIP, the house program, and long-term care. I would say the start date was shortly after the minister arrived, and he asked us to launch a comprehensive review.

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

Just for the record, if it does take five years—and I hope it won't—that's 2011. The concerns of Mr. Stoffer and my colleague, Rodger Cuzner, who is Joyce Carter's MP.... As Mr. Stoffer said, it might be more urgent to get on with the commitment made by the government to the widows of—

[Brian Ferguson]

May I comment on that, sir, so as not to leave you with the impression that that's the timeline we're working under. We're working on a very compressed timeline. The report we're delivering in the fall places us on a completely different part of where we were in the previous.... For the one that took us five years, we didn't have the report for about four years.

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

Oh, okay.

[Brian Ferguson]

So we're in the latter stages of this one, even though we're moving faster. Through the previous review, we've gained a heck of a lot of information we can reuse, one being that when you move from an entitlement-based system to a needs-based system, it enhances the service. The new Veterans Charter is working, and we've gained a lot of knowledge from that that we're applying here, so we're saving a lot of time in that regard. It doesn't take us away from doing a comprehensive—

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

I appreciate that clarification and to know that the report is due this fall. Thank you.

In your presentation, you refer to the traditional veteran—we only have a couple of World War I veterans left—World War II, Korea, and so on. If I use the term “modern veteran”, the person who's leaving the military now, they are still your clients. Through this review, is there a consideration of the different paradigm within which the traditional veteran spent his or her time in the military versus modern military engagement and the needs of the modern-day veteran? I wonder if you could touch on how the review might deal with those two considerably different subsets within the veteran community.

[Brian Ferguson]

Darragh, do you want to respond?

[Darragh Mogan]

It's a very good question. Brian put forth the principle that a veteran is a veteran is a veteran. We didn't mean it only to a war veteran is a war veteran is a war veteran, because there are individuals, especially since 1990, who have had pretty harrowing service for this country.

The principles of a needs-based versus entitlement-based approach, according to the Gerontological Advisory Council and anyone we've consulted with, fit both groups. The new Veterans Charter was meant to provide services and benefits for immediate support for transition to civilian life of much younger veterans, and the health review is meant to finish that process off, as was done for the war veterans, by providing a needs-based approach when they need it.

Their average age is not 28 or 29; it's actually 56. There are 600,000 Canadian Forces veterans out there. There are 150,000 who are over age 65 and about 7,000 or 8,000 over age 85. So although the need is not great there, it's certainly there. The Canadian Forces veterans organizations, the three of them, which have been working with us on this, endorse—at least they do up to now—the findings of the Gerontological Advisory Council's report, Keeping the Promise, and they expect that the principle of a veteran is a veteran is a veteran will be addressed in the context of the review.

That's a long-winded answer, but yes, we're very much seized with the idea that this, to the extent we can do it, is a needs-based system that won't create new categories of veteran eligibility.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Thank you very much.

We're over time now, so we'll go to Monsieur Ouellet for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for being here today. Your contribution is important.

Coming back to a subject that was addressed by my colleagues, you say this in your presentation: It is often difficult to relate current health problems to a specific event or situation that occurred during military service 50 or more years ago.

How do you determine whether it's really a veteran's need or a normal need of an aging person? Is the choice made in standard fashion across Canada, or is it made based on the judgment of the persons responsible? Could that differ depending on whether you're in British Columbia, Halifax or Ontario?

[Brian Ferguson]

You've actually put your finger on one of the great difficulties of the current system, which is to be able to relate the current malady or illness back 50 years to the causal effect, a cause that determined that illness, which is why in the end we have a system that's based on collecting information that would make a connection between the disability and it being caused by service.

We go back into the archives and pull out all the relevant information, and our adjudicators will make an assessment based on that information as to whether there's anything on the record that might have indicated that the individual was injured or suffered some difficulty during military service that could be related back to the current illness.

That information is coupled with the medical reports that we pay for that are sought on behalf of the veteran to determine whether the medical doctor looking at the evidence would say that the condition could have been caused by that event that occurred 50 years ago.

Taking those two factors into consideration, our adjudicators will then determine whether they're eligible for the benefit. If they're eligible, there's a step taken to determine what is the degree of payment that would be made, and that degree of payment is determined through the level of disability that the individual has suffered.

That's the way the system works. It's very paper-heavy. It requires a lot of analysis and pulling information from files. We turn the system around as fast as we can. We average less than six months to get those types of decisions made, but they are difficult to make, quite frankly, given the lack of information. So we end up with individuals who can't pinpoint the particular evidence that they need to justify that, which is why this needs-based approach would do away with that.

The needs-based approach would say, okay, an aging veteran who has served in service would not have to relate that particular request for a disability benefit, which they could still apply for under a changed system, but would not have to achieve success in order to get other treatment benefits—the VIP program and other benefits that would be required.