Veterans Affairs Committee on June 6th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Monsieur Gaudet.

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Good afternoon, Ms. Burdett and Mr. Allard. I listened to your presentation and I was wondering what, in your view, would be the best statement veterans could make. For example, I would like to know what the mandate of the ombudsman should be in order to help out genuine veterans. Finally, what does a legion mean, with the exception of November 11, the armistice, the ceremony, the parade and the poppy pins? How many legions are there in each province, by the way?

[Mary Ann Burdett]

Your last question, sir, is the easy one. Perhaps not by individual provinces, but overall we have just over 1,500 branches across Canada. Ontario, of course, would have the greater number, being the larger geographical area. Prince Edward Island, being the smaller area, does not have so many.

Pierre, can I ask you to comment? I noted you were taking notes.

[Pierre Allard]

With respect to a statement of veterans' rights, Mary Ann Burdett just told you the important point in our view. The priority would probably be just and equitable treatment from the department and the appeal mechanisms.

As regards the ombudsman...

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

What do you mean by “equitable”? Members of the Bloc, the Liberals, the Conservatives and the New Democrats may be equitable, but the each have their own approach.

[Pierre Allard]

I would agree that the principle of equity is not easy to define. It may be somewhat clearer in our draft declaration of veterans' rights. The difficulty with these theoretical statements appears when it comes time to implement them. This is where the ombudsman could play a useful role. He or she would ensure that the statements made in declaration regarding services to veterans are in fact implemented.

You asked me what the Legion was. That is more or less the same question that Mr. Perron asked. We came here to talk about three priorities, not to talk about the Legion. If you like, we could come back to talk about that. We could describe our programs and send you our magazines together with all sorts of other information about the Legion.

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

You misunderstood my question. It was different from the one asked by Mr. Perron. From the statements, the persons from the Legion do not agree with everything that has been said.

[Pierre Allard]

I do not understand exactly what you mean.

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

In the presentation... Just a moment please, I don't have it right here at the moment.

[Pierre Allard]

While you are looking for it, I would like to answer one of Mr. Perron's questions. He spoke about his father. I am well aware that some civilians have suffered as well, and that they do not have access to a program like the VIP. That is why the Legion recently decided to argue for the creation of a similar program for all Canadian seniors. We think that one the things such a program could do would be to save money.

[Gilles-A. Perron, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

I agree with you , Pierre. But the government would not have any money left over to purchase C-17s.

[Pierre Allard]

The VIP makes it possible to save money at the moment by postponing the time when people have to move to long-term care or home care. We think the same could be true of a similar program for seniors.

[Gilles-A. Perron, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

But that is one of the basic responsibilities of the provinces.

[Pierre Allard]

That may be so.

[Gilles-A. Perron, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

The provinces are responsible for caring for their seniors and for sick people.

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Today we talked about the Canadian Legion in the context of a discussion about the new charter.

[Pierre Allard]

We prepared for our appearance before the committee based on the three priorities you determined. However, if you have specific questions to ask us, we would be pleased to answer them.

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

I will come back to this matter, in any case. I did not want to know what the Legion did. You began by discussing the Canadian Legion and you ended on the same topic. There is definitely some link.

I apologize, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

All right. That was an impressive Bloc tag team.

Next we have our keenest Conservative, Mr. Shipley.

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

Thank you.

I appreciate Ms. Burdett and Mr. Allard coming today and helping us through this.

I think we need to be really clear that we are here and we want to work to make it as good as we can and to understand what is best for our veterans. I think that is clearly the goal of everyone at this table.

When I talked to people, it was also mainly during the campaign when I had an opportunity to chat with a number of them. There were concerns that continually came up about the vehicle in which they can get to places, someone who would help them with a call to an ombudsman.

I read through the report that you used today, which is an excellent report, by the way. From the comments that you've made, I'm hearing that you aren't really necessarily opposed to it. You're really trying to understand it, you want the guidelines set out, and you want clarification on that. Is that basically it?

If there is a simple answer to that, I think we can move ahead. I have a further question, if that's where we're heading.

[Mary Ann Burdett]

The short answer is you are quite correct. We have never been totally adverse to an ombudsman. But we are not going to jump into something until we know what we're jumping into. The other thing is that we wish to be consulted in the mandate for the ombudsman, whatever it may be.

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

I think that was one of the things we discussed when we had the discussion last week, also with Mr. Hillier. We were talking about there being lots of options. I think my definition of what an ombudsman is and yours may be two different things. Yet I think the basic principle is that they're there to help. So what we need to do is to sit down in consultation with people who are involved and make sure that happens. If we can move ahead to actually make things better and easier for our vets, I think that's our objective. When I say “our”, I use it in a comprehesive sense.

I'll just wrap up mine so the next one can get a question in. If you were to see the elements at play with respect to the department and the veterans that it serves.... For example, if you could give the committee some advice on how the government should proceed with this initiative, what would that be? This would help us, so that we can take that next step. Because you talked about going back, I think in June. We've got this year going and we're talking and you're going to be talking. I'm just trying to put together that next step so we can put some cohesive plan in place, or schedule in place, so we can get some progress and results at the end of this.

[Mary Ann Burdett]

I'm going to just give a couple of suggestions. Then I'll turn it over to Mr. Allard.

First and foremost, I would suggest that it is entirely possible that an ombudsman could play a very significant role in seeing that the rights from the bill of rights are carried out, that this would be one of their responsibilities. Further to that, I can certainly see that in the system itself he or she would probably have some powers of suggestion and control in looking over how things had happened and how they were about to happen.

Now I'm going to turn it over to you, Pierre, while I sit back and think.

[Pierre Allard]

There is one area I think that should be looked at right now in terms of what an ombudsman could do. I think your committee was told last week that there is an ombudsman for long-term care in Ste. Anne's Hospital. That would be a good starting point, and we've been actually advocating for an ombudsman or an inspector general, or whatever you may want to call it, in the 17 large-contract facilities that have priority-access beds. So that would be probably one important role that an ombudsman could and should play.

In the context of devising a mandate for an ombudsman, I think we should build a certain flexibility into his mandate so that he or she is receiving recommendations and input from an advisory council. That advisory council should be inclusive of some of the major veterans organizations.

I think this is where we're going. I think it would be very imprudent on our part to go any further, because I think the ultimate authority of deciding which model we're comfortable with resides with our executive council, which will meet in June.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Everybody is engaged. This is good.

Mr. Valley, you're up for five minutes.