Veterans Affairs Committee on June 15th, 2006

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

I'm wondering about the services. We all know that those of us who choose to live out on the far-flung edges of the province or the country generally don't have access. How successful is the VIP out in the far-flung regions, the small rural areas, or even the remote areas?

[Brian Ferguson]

It's successful there.

We're pretty flexible in terms of the arrangements that can be made. We have a contract with a service provider who has put together a list of individuals who are available to assist right across the country. That list is growing, and it's continually managed and updated. Even though we do have people in rural areas, I'm not aware of a huge challenge there, because people can use whatever local services they need in order to get the support.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

So it's not just a certain service provider you have--they can use the services in the communities?

[Brian Ferguson]

As much as possible we're encouraging people in this area to use service providers on a list maintained by our contractor, who does the invoice processing for this service. In areas where those don't exist, we also have the flexibility to use whatever services are available in the community.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

Is that common in the smaller areas? I'm speaking of small communities with 300 or 400 people.

[Brian Ferguson]

Yes, that would be common in the small areas. Just to make certain that I'm not misstating the case, I will double-check on that and get back to you.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

Lastly, I'm wondering about the first nations communities. I have 38 reserves in my area.

When the Second World War ended, we know there were challenges on people applying for some of the pensions and services they needed. Are we successful also on reserves, where we wouldn't have some of these organizations you mentioned?

[Brian Ferguson]

I'll have to look into that, sir, and get back to you to determine what the success rate is on the reserves. I will get back. We'll do an analysis and get back to you. In the department we've basically been attempting to have better outreach to those communities. We've established an outreach coordinator for each of those communities. I don't have that sort of evaluation at my fingertips, but I will get back to you.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

When you reach out to mine, you'll be reaching a long way, but please share the information with all the committee, as with Mr. Sweet's information. We like to share it all.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

We'll go back to our friends with the Bloc. Madame DeBellefeuille.

[Claude DeBellefeuille, Bloc, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Thank you for your presentation. Since I'm replacing a colleague, I took the time to read all the documentation before coming here.

Before being elected member, I was a social worker with seniors, in particular at a public home for seniors in Quebec. So I definitely feel concerned by Ms. Hinton's question and by the study you're going to do.

I think it's important to emphasize that the choice of living environment, whether you're a veteran or a senior who did not go to war, is a personal choice that should not be determined by a question of cost.

In Quebec, we've adopted a home care support policy that encourages seniors to stay at home because that's often people's first choice, but also because it was determined that that was the least costly option for our government.

I worked at a reception centre where there were veterans. There's one in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue. It's not a very natural living environment, it's more an institutional living environment.

Quebec has evaluation grids — I'm going to use a little social worker jargon — that determine that, when someone requires more than four hours of care a day, it is hard to keep that person at home. So they have to consider a different living environment.

In Quebec, we've developed an alternative to public housing that's called intermediate resources. The government awards a contract to a non-profit organization, a worker's cooperative or a private business, to house people who require more or less one to four or four and a half hours of care a day.

Following your study, I encourage you to explore this avenue because you might encourage the introduction of what we in Quebec call intermediate alternative resources. That might enable veterans who leave their home to gain access to a less formal resource than those provided in the institutions. In Quebec, these people enjoy all the services of the CLSCs, the Centres locaux de services communautaires. They're found everywhere in Quebec, in 17 administrative regions.

I find that avenue interesting, and I hope your department won't just think about housing costs, but also about veterans' wish to choose their living environment.

Now I have a question to ask you. Do you systematically evaluate veterans' satisfaction with the services provided under your program? Do you consult them? Do you have a kind of communication that enables you, when you conduct your studies or reorient your services, to identify what really meets the needs of veterans?

[Brian Ferguson]

First of all, thank you very much for those comments and your thoughts on intermediate care and other arrangements. We definitely will ensure that we assess those opportunities as part of the health care review. Those are wonderful programs that need to be looked at in this light.

With respect to the services we provide, we have a program for assessing those services. We use something called the common measurement tool. It is a government tool that was designed by the Government of Canada for central agencies to use. We've adopted that tool. It's conducted by an independent outside firm. We do it about every year and a half to two years. The most recent one is I think about a year old now. I think it was done in the spring.

I think our client satisfaction rate was somewhere about 84%. It's an independent study. We treat it quite seriously; we really don't take that study and say how nice it was that we got 84%. We look for areas of weakness and conduct reviews with all our management teams to see how we can make improvements in those areas, because no organization is perfect. I wouldn't want to go on in greater detail, but certainly we do have that type of program and we use it quite regularly.

[Claude DeBellefeuille, Bloc, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Thank you.

Is my time up?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Yes.

Now we're over to the Conservative side of the table, with Mrs. Hinton.

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

We're going to split our time.

This has been bothering me for years. I'm sure you've heard me say this to you before, but I'm going to put a scenario in front of you and ask you if things have changed now.

One of the things that most upsets me relates to couples in which the husband was the veteran. As you well know, veterans are strongly individualistic people who don't rely on anybody to help them. They're very independent--a wonderful word--so they did not apply for the program, although they qualify. He's outside shovelling one day, has a heart attack, and dies. Because he was not a part of that program, his widow is now excluded from that program. Are we still in that situation, or have we made some changes?

[Brian Ferguson]

No, we're still in that situation, because of the way the regulations are formulated. But I would like to harken back to the comments I made earlier. We have been asked to look at what the art of the possible is in a comprehensive way, and certainly those issues of eligibility will be factored into the review. I'm not in a position to say what the outcome will be, but you're quite correct to ask that question, and it's an area about which everybody is extremely sympathetic. It's at the front of our minds.

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

It's a common-sense change.

I'm going to split my time with Mr. Sweet.

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

This is probably one of those things that makes sense when you're actually involved in the everyday mechanics of it, but could you just let me know?

This says, “Who is eligible?”, and then, “Totally disabled non-pensioned Prisoners of War”. How could somebody be a totally disabled prisoner of war but not qualify for a pension?

[Brian Ferguson]

Admittedly, the wording is not all that....

Ken, do you want to respond?

[Ken Miller]

If somebody was a prisoner of war and didn't sustain any disability or injury during that time--many would, of course--the fact that they were a prisoner of war and now they....

Basically, we're talking about somebody who's frail at this point. That need and having been a prisoner of war create an eligibility gateway.

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

I'm glad you mentioned frailty, because that was the next thing I was going to mention. You were mentioning that frailty was a gateway into the program. What kind of measurement are you using for capacity to find out who's frail enough to qualify for the program?

[Ken Miller]

We use fairly comprehensive evaluation criteria, but to put it in a nutshell, we basically determine whether the individual is at risk of institutionalization, at risk of falling and of serious injury, or at risk in other significant ways of that nature. Our medical colleagues carry out an evaluation, and if that's the case, it gives them an access point. Basically what this means is that somebody whose pension condition is not the cause or the need for their VIP--something else is--can still have access to the program and get the benefits they need.

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

Last question. Could you define what a pensionable disability is?

[Ken Miller]

Sure. In the context of the Pension Act, it simply means that somebody has received entitlement for a condition—it could be an injury, it could be a disability—that has some relationship to service. In the context of the new Veterans Charter, it means that somebody has an entitlement for what we call a disability award, meaning again that they have a condition or injury related to service for which they received an award.

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

And the charter has substantially broadened the previous act?