Veterans Affairs Committee on June 15th, 2006

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

Okay, thank you.

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

Could I just take that up?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

You have two and a half minutes, sir, yes.

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

You also identify the toll-free numbers to contact. Are the officials measuring the success of the toll-free numbers? My sense in my dealings with the veterans is that they continue to go back to the Legion service officer, because they're not comfortable with getting on a rotary...or hearing a strange voice or a strange accent. What I get a fair amount of the time is that it used to be the case that most of the calls were handled locally, and they had a relationship with the person at the desk. So when I say “strange voice”, I mean they were used to doing business with somebody with whom they really built up a relationship.

How are we able to measure the success of the 1-800 numbers? I understand the rationale behind them, giving your front-line workers a little additional time, but—

[Brian Ferguson]

We measure them using that common measurement tool. They were included in the assessment we did through that. If you're interested, sir, we can give you the results of that component of the survey with the questions that were asked and how the survey results factored in.

The other thing I would mention is that we get about a million phone calls a year through the NCCN. We do not refuse to put people through to our district offices. We try to answer as many questions as we can through that system; about 70% of the questions are answered satisfactorily, and 30 of them are what we call “warm transferred” over to the district office, where they pick up the phone and carry on the discussion.

What people don't realize is before we introduced the system, they were waiting a long time for people in the district to call them back because people were so busy in the districts and they had to go out and meet their clients. If I might say, they were quite forgiving as long as they knew the person would call them back in a week or so. We feel they get much better service under the current--

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

Do you have a reference, a comparative study or a reference prior to going to the 1-800?

[Brian Ferguson]

I don't think we have a reference study to compare to, but we knew we were under significant difficulty at the time. We were taking away from our area counsellors in answering questions, and we now know 70% of the questions would be answered satisfactorily without the need for the valuable time of the area counsellor.

You're quite correct, sir, in pointing out that people get very comfortable dealing with the people they're familiar with, especially as they get older. We've tried to put the best balance we could into the system.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Thank you, Mr. Cuzner.

Now we move over to the Conservative side of the table.

[Colin Mayes, Conservative, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

My father was in the Canadian Scottish in World War II; he is on a VIP program, and he's in an apartment. I am at ease with the fact that he has been taken care of. It's a great program, and I really appreciate it.

I wanted to make that statement. I don't really have any other questions, just to say that it's working well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Mr. Stoffer, you're up early.

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

In relation to the urban-rural veterans, in the cities obviously there would be services and various companies like the VON can provide that, but in the rural areas and more outlying areas, can you give an example? Are there enough services out there to assist rural veterans? In the case where services are lacking, what do you do to assist them to have adequate services under the VIP?

[Ken Miller]

That's a good point, and thank you for the question.

Certainly there are differences in terms of the service providers who are available in the urban versus the rural environment. When we are dealing with a rural environment and a limitation of providers, we try to provide the service in the most reasonable and effective way we can.

As Mr. Ferguson indicated earlier, we have quite a wide network of service providers registered in our system. A lot of them are urban-based, of course. When you're dealing with a rural situation you may or may not have that service provider.

We make exceptions as we need to, to make sure the service is in place. Utmost in our mind in making those exceptions is the safety of the client. We screen our service providers to make sure they have the credentials one would want to make sure they have when dealing with veterans. With that caveat, we make exceptions as we need to, to get the provisions in place.

[Brian Ferguson]

I don't know that we're able to answer your question directly. In all probability, fewer services are available in the rural areas than in cities. We're not aware that that has been a barrier to us in providing the service, but I'll go back and look for further information and let you know.

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

Which company or organization is your biggest service provider in the country? Would it be the VON, or does it differ province to province?

[Brian Ferguson]

Most of these service providers for VIP services are very distributed. Those who do housekeeping and ground maintenance, etc., are registered in our new system. They're your average service provider who does that kind of work in any community. They're not part of big companies.

We have a contract in the Atlantic with Medavie Blue Cross Care, which does centralize processing of the invoices. They are the ones that maintain the list of registered service providers for groundskeeping and home care.

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

Say, for example, I was in Sheet Harbour, Nova Scotia, a small community of a couple of thousand people, and say we had 20 veterans or 20 spouses of veterans who were eligible for VIP. If I wanted to start up a company to provide service to them, what would I have to do in order to get a contract with DVA to do that? Or is that the proper way to go?

[Brian Ferguson]

You would seek to become registered on the service provider list that's maintained by this company I mentioned. And when you are on that list, then you would be able to market your services to those individuals.

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

So instead of going to DVA, you go to this particular company?

[Brian Ferguson]

To get registered on the list, yes.

The last figure I heard is that we had about 8,000 service providers registered, and it continues to grow. The advantage of the list, as Ken mentioned, is that there's a certain level of scrutiny of the types of individuals who get on that list.

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

Would it be possible to get the name and number of that organization, in case people call up?

[Brian Ferguson]

Indeed, we'll do that. Yes, absolutely.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Thank you, Mr. Stoffer.

Now we're over to Mrs. Hinton.

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

Canada service veterans who served in Canada during World War II or the Korean War are eligible for VIP benefits. You mentioned this a little bit earlier, and I'm going to give you an opportunity to elaborate a bit on it. What are the restrictions concerning income that determine whether or not such veterans have access to the VIP benefits? And do those same restrictions apply to their widows or their caregivers?

[Brian Ferguson]

I'll ask Ken to elaborate further if I miss anything on this one.

In terms of Canada's service veterans, they're eligible for the program if they have a disability caused by service for Canada and they require VIP to access the program. If they don't have that entry point into the program and have low income, they could get in through that means as well. And certainly if they're in and they die, under the current arrangement, any surviving caregiver is eligible to continue with the program themselves, and there's no means test or anything of that sort. In their case, it's whether the veteran was eligible and whether they were receiving the benefit.