Veterans Affairs Committee on June 15th, 2006

[Ken Miller]

It has provided Canadian Forces veterans with many more programs that were never there before, giving us an incredibly expanded ability to respond to their needs, simply by putting tools in the tool box, if you will. We never had those before.

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

Okay, but does it draw in more capacity for pensionability?

[Ken Miller]

Not in terms of pensionability itself, no.

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

But ancillary services?

[Ken Miller]

Ancillary services, absolutely.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

All right.

Now we'll be heading over to the Liberal side, and I don't know if it's Mr. Cuzner or—

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

Just say “Roger”, and one of us will answer.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Well, one of our “Roger” friends.

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

I'm okay here.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Mr. Valley.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

Thank you.

I just have a couple of quick points. On the overseas service veterans at-home pilot project, you say in your first bullet point that, “Implemented in 2003 [it] offered certain overseas service veterans”.... Can you explain why it's “certain overseas veterans” and not all of them?

[Brian Ferguson]

It's for those people who were entitled to a long-term care facility bed and were on a wait list and couldn't get in. So “certain” was meant to cover them.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

It says that, but it confused me a little bit.

[Brian Ferguson]

It was probably an overuse of the word “certain”.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

Yes, I thought it had to be in a certain country or something.

From the stats there, when we can see how hard these people fight to stay in their homes, we understand why they served their country.

I just wanted to comment on this. Anything that can be done, anything at all in that area in your review...that's the key to this whole program, to keep them in their homes. The stats in your survey on those wanting to stay in their own homes are incredible; I mean they're not even close to being “good”, but are great.

[Brian Ferguson]

I might add that they are entitled to the long-term care bed, but not the VIP program, which would actually keep them at home. So that's definitely an area we'll want to look at as part of the review.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

That's what the survey points out, that the VIP service allowed them to avoid that long-term bed time much longer

[Brian Ferguson]

That's right.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

Again, that goes back to some of the savings you have to document.

[Brian Ferguson]

Absolutely.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

I just have one last question, again from this parliamentary research service document, which talks about the maximum cost for VIP services. The question is, are they adjusted annually? I suspect the answer is yes, but my question is not so much that, but about the differing costs of providing services in different regions and the tremendous drain on our health care services. Home care providers fall into an area that is in demand. We can guess that in certain areas where there are extreme shortages of workers right now, such as the west, costs are going to be much higher to service somebody in their own home.

So how do you deal with that? Is it done on a regional basis? Is it a blanket for Canada? How do you arrive at that?

[Brian Ferguson]

Our service delivery goal is to provide uniform service, so we would not be saying that because you're in the west, you're cut off from those services.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

It's not a dollar value then; it's a uniform service.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

It's a needs-based, uniform service.