Veterans Affairs Committee on June 5th, 2007

[Pierre Allard]

I would like to add one more thing. We also believe that we can act now to at least take some interim steps and not wait until we have this perfect screening process in place, and we can look after the 85-year-old veteran who is frail and who needs VIP.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Now on to Mr. Gaudet with the Bloc for five minutes.

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Are you a member of the Gerontological Advisory Council?

[Pierre Allard]

Yes, sir, I am a member.

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

If I can read the following:

“Keeping the Promise” recommends that Veterans Affairs Canada combine its three existing health and social programs to create the Veterans Integrated Services.

Did you work on that as a member of the Gerontological Advisory Council?

[Pierre Allard]

That is the model we developed in our report, and we are continuing to work on this. We have more meetings to establish the process to be adopted for providing the services needed. To do that, we first determine whether the person needs a higher level of care, and we then designate a case manager to see that the client's needs are met.

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Was your solution included in the report?

[Pierre Allard]

Yes, it is included in the report.

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

That answers my questions.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Thank you, Mr. Gaudet.

Now we'll go on to Mrs. Hinton for five minutes.

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

I'm actually going to pass to Mr. Sweet.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Mr. Sweet.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Allard, thanks. It's interesting to see you in a different chair today. You've mentioned the PRISMA screening tool, and in fact I questioned Dr. Marshall on that specific thing. He was mentioning to me that there's still some work, and it's going through an evolution. We have the PRISMA that's in the report, but do you have a revised one that you can present to the committee?

[Pierre Allard]

It's still a work in progress through committees of the GAC. I think we are getting closer to a final product. I think we're getting closer to a fully developed process. But that fully developed process is remaining within what I have described as an integrated process of the initial screening, identifying people with high-care needs and then assigning them a case manager. How all that plays out we'll have to see when it comes to its ultimate conclusion. I'd like to add that there is also an essential health promotion element to these integrated services. If we look after promoting health from the get-go, then we can minimize the demands on an integrated service delivery program.

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

For all three of the past witnesses we had, one of the most encouraging things to me was that this was part of the integrated services.

[Pierre Allard]

The difficulty will be that we keep hearing the term “evidence-based health promotion program”. It is very difficult to design and prove that you have an evidence-based health promotion program because what you see is the lack of success, if you want. It's difficult to gauge success and to have the evidence you need to prove that this health promotion program works. That will be a challenge, I suspect.

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

I don't think it'll be that big of a challenge. I think if you get some people who are moving on in age and they get them moving and they develop some muscle mass and they're able to accomplish some things that they couldn't before, then hopefully it will be self-evident.

[Pierre Allard]

By the way, there are opportunities here for us at the Legion, because where we are in these more isolated localities, if there was a health promotion program, let's say, for not only veterans but for seniors, we could probably integrate that within our branches.

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

If not, just some good dancing, I guess.

You mentioned some interim steps.

[Pierre Allard]

Yes.

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

Have you presented those to Veterans Affairs?

[Pierre Allard]

I think we keep saying, very consistently, that we have high-priority advocacy needs, and that is VIP for frailty and VIP for pre-1981 spouses. We also keep getting messages that the ongoing health benefits review will allow options to provide those services. Then we hear that the other analysis is because we have all these veterans out there and we don't have a good appreciation of what the total number is; we have to decide how we are going to approach this problem. As I pointed out a while ago, we need to take two steps. We need to convince Stats Canada to revise their census, but we also need to realize that not all those veterans will come forward with high needs.

Going back to my comparison that 12% of seniors are identified as having high needs, currently, it's 14% of Canadian Forces veterans. That's probably a good figure, 14% to 15%, because they have higher stress on their body. We should look at those figures and say, okay, let's take some interim measures right now, because those people--as I said, I won't apologize for it--are dying. They're 85 years old; they're coming to the end of life.

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

You've mentioned that. I've got a couple more questions, but I need to dig on this one. You're saying from the Second World War, but was it also the Korean War, that no accurate records were kept of released soldiers and then married up with, sad to say, death certificates as we go? There's no accurate information?

[Pierre Allard]

I would suggest there's no accurate information today for both World War II and Korea of who remains, which is why we need to be a little bit more scientific in our approach. It was only, I would say, about five or ten years ago that the Canadian Forces started to compile more scientific data on people who served and where they've gone. The difficulty is in tracking them, because people move and databases are not easily adjusted to reflect moves across the country, especially for reservists.