Veterans Affairs Committee on June 13th, 2006

[Sean Bruyea]

The first I heard about it was about six weeks ago, or probably more accurately eight weeks ago, that Keith Hillier had been appointed to the position. I had a chance to have one consultation with him. He appears to be just a super guy and a super manager. But he's also a VAC employee, and I think, with no disrespect to Mr. Hillier, that there has to be impartiality in this process. If I can quote Perry, who gave me a very colourful quote concerning the bill of rights and the ombudsman being drawn up by a VAC ADM, it's not unlike having the Criminal Code written by the offenders of the Criminal Code, or having the inmates run the prison.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

Or the fox in charge of the henhouse.

[Sean Bruyea]

Exactly.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

I'll take you a little bit farther down the page. There you make quite a strong statement, and I'd like to quote it: “It is potentially scandalous and it is certainly neither accountable nor transparent.”

So we haven't started out on too good a footing. We have gotten the issue started, and in a number of months we have a deputy minister who may have all the abilities in the world, but the fact is, as you point out very clearly, this is an employee of the department who's going to set up the rules for this.

Did you want to comment on how you arrived at that line, that “it is...neither accountable nor transparent”? I think I agree with you at this point.

[Sean Bruyea]

This also goes back to your question about when the ADM was appointed to this position.

Unfortunately, this culture of secrecy not only exists in the pension adjudication and the Veterans Review and Appeal Board; it exists through the entire consultation process, for whatever it may be—the new veterans charter, the bill of rights, or changes to programs and policies. The stakeholders, the veterans receiving those services, are rarely if ever informed until after the fact. There's far too much attention being given to representatives from six organizations. It's wonderful work that these organizations do, but even if their entire membership were consulted, they represent less than 17% of the entire veteran population, and they've admitted on many occasions that they don't have time to consult their membership.

What we're talking about is a culture within the department that doesn't feel it needs to consult with its stakeholders, because they're too large in number. But the point is we're the customers. I think the department should start listening to the customers.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

Another point you make throughout your presentation concerns the powers of the minister. You feel, do you, that the minister has the ability to correct this very quickly, if he wanted to?

[Sean Bruyea]

Yes. The minister could write a letter right now. He could set up an interim ombudsman or an interim ombudsman committee to work in conjunction with the committee here. There could be timelines set for milestones for when they would like, let's say, the proposals, first of all. Then, once those proposals were decided on by the committee here and by the PMO or the PCO, the legislation could be drawn up for submission to Parliament. All of those steps and milestones could occur before Christmas, if it were set up properly by the minister.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

That brings me back to the last question I had for you.

In a perfect world, you spoke about 10 weeks for setting up a certain program with an individual private company. I forget the term you used. It's not a private company, but I can't remember how you phrased it.

You said this could happen, and you mentioned Christmas, which is six months away. Do you feel that it would take that long or do you feel it could be done more quickly through the power of the minister? You're here today because we asked for your opinion. We would like to know, in a perfect world, if you had the ability of the minister to do this right now, what timeline would you put on this?

[Sean Bruyea]

I would immediately appoint an individual. I would take two weeks to find an interim ombudsman or an interim committee to set it up. I would give no more than another 10 weeks for them to draw up their proposals, and then I would let the mechanisms of government go forward.

If it's going to be legislated, we obviously need time to write the legislation. I would have the legislation go forward. I'm not sure of the timeline for that, but if it's not to be legislated and reported directly to the minister initially, then I think it could occur immediately after the decision is made on the model. I think it could happen within three months.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Thank you.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

That wasn't ten minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

No, but it was more time than you were allotted, so you did well. You had five minutes and 31 seconds, to be exact.

Monsieur Gaudet, from the Bloc.

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Good afternoon, gentlemen. I'd like to clarify a minor point. In your speech, you mentioned the Woods Commission. Was that in 1967 or 1972? In your presentation, it says 1972. However, you said 1967.

[Sean Bruyea]

Unfortunately, I made a mistake. My initial mistake was in saying 1972, but it was 1967. I did some research late last night.

By the way, 1967 was the release of the report, and the commission sat between 1965 and 1968.

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Did you file your report with the Canadian Legion? Did you get any comments?

[Sean Bruyea]

No, not a word, nothing.

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Thank you. The new Veterans Charter provides for disability allowances and other aid programs for veterans and the Canadian Forces.

In your opinion, would an ombudsman really be able to help veterans who are dissatisfied with the rehabilitation and placement assistance programs?

[Sean Bruyea]

I think the new Veterans Charter in principle was written with the approach necessary to get some of the CF veterans to make that transition. During the Senate testimony that occurred before they passed it in the Senate, in May of last year, it was pointed out that the charter has a huge gap in not dealing with the veterans who most need help and who are the most disabled. That gap has still not been addressed.

There has been a commission of what's called a special needs advisory group. To date there is no mention of that group on the website and there is no mention in the Salute! newspaper that goes out to veterans. There is no way to contact them if someone wants to make a representation, the minutes are kept confidential, and they are sworn to confidentiality. We have no idea what's being discussed in terms of monitoring those special needs.

In terms of rehabilitation, I think the big question about the Veterans Charter has to be, at what point does bureaucratic efficiency in making sure that money is not being wasted cross the line and force veterans into compromising positions?

I don't think veterans should have to be forced into the workplace in order to receive benefits. I don't think we should have that kind of mistrust of veterans. I think we should trust that they will be ready to work when they're ready. All the veterans I know who are disabled are very upset if they are unable to work, and they do everything possible. I don't think there's a question of them trying to defraud the government. I think putting that conditional workfare on veterans to receive benefits is unconscionable.

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

When would the ombudsman be ready to take up the position? Do you want him to start? As soon as possible? When would you like him to be appointed and take up the position? If he's already been appointed for 35 years...

[Sean Bruyea]

It's true, Monsieur. One of the important things is that we could get the ombudsman off and started, but he or she has to actually start setting up the office, and the practicalities of staff training and hiring would be involved. But the sooner we could take the initial step, which is the model, getting the mandate and legislation into place, the sooner that training can occur.

Of course, there'll be a steep learning curve. By working closely with stakeholders and with the DND ombudsman, I think they could probably come up with a working model in less than a year from the time the go-ahead is given.

[Tom Hoppe, As an Individual]

It's all going to depend on the training of the staff. The current ombudsman's intake calls for the year were around 2,000, and he had four intake-call personnel to accept those.

If you're going to look at a community of 400,000 or 700,000 veterans, even if you have 30,000 intake calls, you're going to have quite a large staff that needs to be trained to understand how to deal with those intake calls and to understand which ones are actual complaints, which ones are not, and which ones may go back to the DND ombudsman.

I think your delay is going to be in the training time to get that staff up and running, and to find the staff to fill those positions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Now we're over to the Conservative Party. Mrs. Hinton looks very keen here.

Oh, Mr. Shipley.

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

I'm going to split with Mr. Shipley.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Okay.

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

I have a couple of things to say now that the time taskmaster here has let me speak again.

There are openings on the veterans appeal board. You have to apply, go through the right method on the computer. You can do it; it's easy to find out. We can give you details after, if people are interested in applying.

I happen to agree with you. I think it would be very beneficial to have someone who has served in the military be part of the VRAB.

In regard to one of the other comments that was made, Mr. Valley asked how fast this would happen in a perfect world. Well, we're in a very imperfect world, so what we've tried to do as a government is include all parties, so that we can get feedback from all the different parties in the House of Commons. We want to be able to hear as many different witnesses as we can, so that we can pick the correct model the first time and make this work for veterans.

Unfortunately, summer is coming—there goes two months out of the time period you're referring to. So it may not be as quick as you want, but it's going to be quick. We want to consult thoroughly on the bill of rights and the ombudsman with all those who are going to be affected.

Mr. Gray also mentioned that he wants to see things happen more immediately. I can certainly understand that point of view, but I would point out to him that we have a backlog of 7,500 veterans waiting for resolution. We have Agent Orange and Agent Purple, which are well under way and which we hope to have solutions for in the very near future. We're doing the ombudsman and the bill of rights right now. I suppose if I were going to try to say something positive, I would tell you that we're very good at multi-tasking. But sometimes you can only take on so many things at one time.

We are trying. Veterans are very important, not only to the government but to every member of this committee. We will get it right, and we will get it right as quickly as we can.

Mr. Shipley.