Veterans Affairs Committee on June 15th, 2006

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Yes, I know, but I owed you 40 from last week.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Fair enough. All right. Well done.

Monsieur Perron, with the Bloc, is next.

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

Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman.

I'd like to introduce my colleague Claude DeBellefeuille, who is joining us today. Even though she has a male given name, she's a woman.

Brian, thanks for being here.

Brian, you're going to have to explain one thing to me once and for all so that I can understand.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police receives payments from veterans. Will these people one day be entitled to the Veterans Charter? Are they entitled to the VIP? If not, we're going to start feeling pressure from the RCMP people. If so, that will result in considerable expense.

I'd like to hear your comments on the subject.

[Brian Ferguson]

Thank you for that question.

It's quite timely, in fact, because we are currently working with the RCMP. They're conducting a needs assessment on behalf of their members in these areas, and any change in these areas will require an amendment to their legislation because of the way they're set up under the law.

I can tell you that they are certainly looking at it. They're quite interested in these programs; they are reviewing and looking at their needs. We will take our direction in Veterans Affairs Canada from the decisions they make within the RCMP.

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

As you no doubt know, in Quebec, perhaps because we are progressive — pardon me, but I have to compliment myself — we have systems similar to those for veterans that apply directly to seniors. The CLSCs, the Centres locaux de services communautaires, offer long-term home care. There is even a program designed to fund multigenerational homes. In other words, you build a home, we provide grants, and the son or daughter houses their father or mother in part of their home and provides them with care.

Has the Department of Veterans Affairs had these kinds of ideas? If not, have you previously contacted the Quebec Ministry of Health and Social Services to see whether it's possible to join forces with them, not only to provide care to veterans, but also to provide care to our parents, who are as useful to society as veterans. My father couldn't take advantage of that, since he's dead.

[Brian Ferguson]

Yes. The way I'd like to approach that is there have been many great innovations in the province of Quebec. We probably don't know as much about all of the elements of those as we should. But within the context of this health care review, we will be looking at ideas such as those to see where they could fit.

As I mentioned earlier, because the minister is interested in getting the best value for the money in improving service, by definition we will have to look at these ideas. We'll definitely take note of your suggestion here today.

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

There's one principle that all of us at this table have to consider: the population is aging. Soon there will be more veterans and elderly parents; at my age, I'm already one of them.

Will society have enough money to meet all the needs and provide all the services that we'll want to provide? We're talking about an investment of approximately $500 million, if we want to open the VIP. I don't agree on this issue, but where should we draw the line? Will we decide not to take care of an electrician, but to take care instead of someone else who went to war? I believe both have a certain responsibility, a similar usefulness in building the best possible country.

[Brian Ferguson]

I might add, Monsieur Perron, that in the study under way in Ontario, there's a specific emphasis on assisted living arrangements. Admittedly the data collected will be relevant to the Ontario experience, but I think it will be very useful in terms of a dialogue on the kinds of changes possible under the health care review.

Also, we would definitely follow up on your suggestion to find out more about what's going on in Quebec.

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

The CLSCs have been in existence in Quebec for 25 years. They have a lot of experience and they work well. They don't just provide treatment for seniors; they also offer care for people coming out of the hospital. They try to minimize the time that patients must spend in hospitals, by offering them, when they get out, the services of nurses who visit them every day to change their dressings or help them with rehabilitation in their home, in their environment. This also works for seniors. The program works very, very well.

It might be interesting for you to go take a look and get some information. That would be good for everyone.

[Brian Ferguson]

We certainly will do that, sir. I don't want to leave you with the impression that we don't have any interaction at all with the CLSC. We certainly do in the province of Quebec. Our area counsellors and district staff work quite closely with them when we're dealing with veterans.

But at the same time, I'd like to express my appreciation for making those suggestions. We definitely will follow up on them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Mr. Stoffer is next.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I thank you, gentlemen, for your presentation.

Mr. Cuzner knows the lady I'm about to talk about, Joyce Carter. I'm sure most of us have received mail from her on an almost monthly basis. She's been struggling for quite some time to try to extend VIP to people such as herself, pre-1981.

You talk about 237,000 survivors of veterans who never had VIP services. That seems like a fairly large number.

First, I'd like to know how you arrived at that number. Second, only certain veterans under certain conditions receive VIP, so does this 237,000 include every widowed person of a veteran, whether they were eligible for VIP or not? It seems you're serving 97,000 now, yet 237,000 were not--I'm wondering how you arrived at that figure.

[Brian Ferguson]

Ken, did you want to take a crack at that? I could answer generally, but if you wouldn't mind...?

[Ken Miller, Director, Program Policy Directorate, Department of Veterans Affairs]

Absolutely.

Those are survivors of war service veterans, those being folks who served during World War I or World War II.

I can't answer your question about how the number was calculated.

I'm aware of the background you're talking about and the suggestion that's been made by a number of sources to expand VIP eligibility into the area of survivors beyond where we are now.

I should point out something quite important to you. It is that the authority we have today to provide VIP to primary caregivers--and mostly it is the survivor of the veteran--is actually in the regulation, and it's in the regulation as a continuation of the benefits that are in place.

With the changes that Mr. Ferguson referred to over the last number of years, we have now provided VIP housekeeping and grounds maintenance to all survivors of veterans who were in receipt of VIP benefits at the time they died or at the time they went into a long-term care institution.

The pressure point now is to go beyond that. That means providing the same VIP benefits that are available to our primary clients, the veterans, to survivors as primary clients in and of their own right. That's the significance of this; it's not a continuation of benefits to go further down the road. That's the number--237,000. It's an estimate number. The cost of providing the housekeeping and the groundskeeping to those individuals is about $330 million.

[Brian Ferguson]

We don't have the precise details, but we will definitely get that information and get it back to you.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

What I'm wondering is how many of the 237,000 would have qualified for VIP if it was pre-1981. I can't figure out that 237,000 veterans would have all been eligible for VIP.

[Brian Ferguson]

No, it's clearly not.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

I'm surmising that this figure is of all survivors--right?--and not all of them would have qualified for VIP. It would be interesting to note how many of these veterans, if they were alive today, would have been eligible to qualify for VIP. I think the number would be much smaller; if it is, then maybe it's possible to rethink that, so that people like Joyce Carter could have the coverage.

On the other point--and I thank the researcher for this question--the Royal Canadian Legion indicated to the committee a while back that the VIP program is too complex. Are you trying to find ways to make it easier for veterans to gain access to the VIP?

[Brian Ferguson]

That is one of the things we will look at in the health care review. The question of complex eligibility is writ large within our various health care programs, so we definitely will be looking at that aspect of it.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

You also talked about the fact that a lot of this is based on a pensionable disability, but in many cases...would aging be considered? As you know, a lot of veterans are very proud individuals and don't like to admit any kind of infirmity or affliction, but when they become older, in their eighties, the aging process definitely slows them down. Would their age, or the aging process, be considered eligible under VIP?

[Brian Ferguson]

We did introduce an eligibility around frailty recently. Actually you made quite an interesting observation--that as individuals age, not every one of them needs care--

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Right.

[Brian Ferguson]

--and some people age differently from others. There may be an area that we....

We have been examining the impact of the frailty issue; all I can say at this point is we're not far enough down that examination yet to include it in any kind of assessment, but we are factoring it into the review itself.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Thank you.

I want to compliment Mr. Perron about the RCMP going for the VIP. That's a good thing to do, by the way.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Now we'll go over to the Conservative side of the table for seven minutes. First is Mrs. Hinton.