Veterans Affairs Committee on Feb. 5th, 2008

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

You've not only helped this committee today with the VIP, and what we can do to improve things for veterans; I think you've done a pretty good job of educating all of us, as well as the public.

Thank you very much for coming today.

[Catherine Moore]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Thank you very much.

Now we're over to the Liberal Party of Canada, Mr. Valley, for five minutes.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

Thank you, Ms. Moore, for coming in today and for bringing your three recommendations. Having sat through quite a number of meetings, sometimes I wonder exactly what we've been asked, but you've been quite clear on that, so thank you for that.

You've touched on the big difficulty: a lot of people don't realize the services that are available. That's one of the problems we have as MPs. You mentioned we can provide service for these individuals.

We do not know where the veterans are. There are ways we try to find out—members of the Legion, attending events, trying to build our own files--but we have no way of knowing exactly who the veterans are. It's through word of mouth and other veterans and other organizations that work with them and are willing to share with us.

I assume because of the privacy laws in Canada, we're not allowed to have a list of the people living in our ridings. I'm not even sure that the military, when they leave active military service, provide them with.... I'm sure they provide them with a list of services that are still available to them, but they probably don't go as far as to say their member of Parliament can help them in a lot of ways. It's a constant sticking point for us.

It's a problem in my riding—over 30% of the province of Ontario and only a very few people live there, a lot of separate, isolated communities—trying to reach out and trying to find out who's a veteran and who needs service and who's going to come in. You mentioned that a lot of people lead independent lives. They don't necessarily want to come and ask for help. They're living with a condition or a vision problem that something could be done about.

What would you say to that? As MPs, we know a lot of stuff that the general public doesn't know right now, yet we cannot find out who's a veteran in our riding. Does that not seem a bit strange? It seems a bit strange to me.

[Catherine Moore]

It does and it doesn't. So what could you do about that? From our point of view, I think in your householder, in the material you are sending out, try to ensure the print is a bit larger than you might be used to. You may be doing this already, but you are distributing information as an MP in those ways. Mention Veterans Affairs. Advertise your services, so to speak, that it is possible. Do you think you are eligible? Are you a veteran? Try to use good clear and legible print with no background. We can send any or all of you information on just how to make your householder in particular a bit more accessible, not the content but the format. That's one way.

And the other way is your website, if you have one. Now, that might sound a bit counterintuitive, because we're talking about older people, but the caregivers for some of the elderly veterans are their children, and those children are going to websites and that sort of thing.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

Maybe I didn't explain it.

Probably most of the 308 parliamentarians are using a lot of those tools. We use websites, we use the larger print in our material. It's still not going to help us to get a list of people.

The government knows--I shouldn't say the government--the military knows where their people are. They would have an address for them. We have to be able to reach these individuals to provide service to them, and it's difficult and frustrating. We build our files as quickly as we can, but as you've pointed out, 1,800 vision-impaired veterans are a clear indication that we're not reaching these people, considering the number in the general population with vision problems.

So we struggle with how to figure out how to get to them. People who have large military bases in their community may have more of a network, but in a far-flung riding like mine, it's very, very hard to build these files. And everything you've said is exactly true in my riding. These people don't know what's available, so we struggle to figure out how we're going to do that.

I think you mentioned we have 30 veterans who were blinded in combat. Is that recent combat or is that combat from the other crises?

[Catherine Moore]

They're World War II veterans, World War II and one person from the Korean War.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

So we don't have any stats for any casualities like that from this current conflict?

[Catherine Moore]

We could be wrong, but I think we would know if someone has returned from Afghanistan with vision loss. So to date that has not happened, or it has not happened in a way that either the military or we know.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

Thank you for all your hard work. If there's any way you can make a recommendation, MPs should know who their veterans are and who served their country in their riding, because we have a tough time reaching them, and it's a challenge. We've asked this question of many groups, and it's a privacy law, but these people are not living the life they could if they had the services available to them that we could help them get.

Thank you very much.

[Catherine Moore]

I think Service Canada might be able to answer that as Service Canada expands its mandate. They have a very good communications program right now, but we're not there yet.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Thank you.

I just want to make a quick point. Not everybody who appears before the committee knows the intricacies of householders and all these types of things. You have some knowledge, which is quite impressive. Most people appearing wouldn't know what that term was or the common usage around here.

Now over to the Bloc Québécois and Mr. Gaudet, for five minutes.

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have learned a lot this afternoon. I probably won't die today. In fact, it turns out that you live longer when you learn something new every day.

Over the last fiscal year, you had $64 million in revenue. Of this amount, 47% came from the private sector, and 28% from government. From what level of government did this 28% come from?

[Catherine Moore]

Twenty-eight percent of our revenue comes from government; 8% of that is federal, and that's generally money in our research projects; 20% of it is provincial. So the majority of our income comes from private charitable donations.

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

What was the Department of Veterans Affairs contribution to the CNIB for services rendered to the 1,800 blind veterans?

[Catherine Moore]

We are fortunate that in Veterans Affairs we are allowed to bill on a fee-for-service for a certain amount of hours and service delivery. We have just negotiated a new contract with Veterans Affairs, which brings us, I think, into line with what we're doing. In a sense, we are fortunate to be reimbursed to work with veterans.

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Could you now talk about doing away with the various administrative layers? Could you explain that to me again? I didn't grasp everything you said. What did you mean when you said "do away with the system's administrative layers"?

[Catherine Moore]

There are levels of eligibility for a veteran, depending on their service in the military. Some veterans are eligible for a more comprehensive menu of services than other veterans, depending on whether they served during World War II, whether they served in combat versus in peacetime.

A person could be a veteran, for example, of peacekeeping and not be eligible for health care services as a veteran, even though they are a veteran the same as someone who served in the Korean War, for example, who has lost their vision later in life, not as a result of the Korean War. Simply they are a veteran of the war, so therefore they're eligible for services, but another person who did peacekeeping is not.

It's the levels of eligibility that are at issue.

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Thank you very much. If you ever need our help, we'll always be here to listen. Thank you for coming here today.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Thank you.

Now we're on to the Conservative Party of Canada.

Mr. Shipley, for five minutes.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Thank you for coming, Mrs. Moore. I think you've been an inspiration to all of us as we've listened to your frank discussion, quite honestly. I think you will find that's what we appreciate very much, and not only that, but the knowledge you've given us in terms of the working relationship you've built through CNIB and VAC. Those things don't just happen. So through history, obviously, that has been fostered and has grown. So I commend both organizations for making that happen.

As we're trying to work through this VIP so we can get the job done, one of the things we have found in all the discussion is that there's always the issue around independence.

Having macular degeneration in our family, I have experienced some of the actual physical attributes that come with that. There always seems to be that issue of the independence, not wanting to acknowledge--I don't need the services, I don't need the equipment.

Whether it's through the blindness or in discussion with the veterans on post-traumatic stress disorder, we have an acknowledgement that they don't want to acknowledge that they have certain diseases. It's how we can communicate. That is the issue. That is one of the large issues. If somebody had the magic bullet to make the communication gap go away, we would be much more successful in all of our organizations.

So anything you have to help us--in general terms, not just for you--in terms of how we're going to communicate with veterans, up to the modern-day ones, we would very much appreciate that.

One of the things you talked about is the case management. Then you emphasized the fact that with the gap between when they come in at an early age and then later, there is not any tracking of individuals who come in with some sort of medical concern, even though it is small. So if they go back 20 years there are no records. Is that what you're saying?

[Catherine Moore]

It's a shorter time period. Well, macular degeneration, as you know, is a deteriorating eye condition. So what happens is that the person may see us initially with some mild vision loss—maybe mild from our point of view, but not from theirs—and then, a couple of years later, there may have been quite a bit of deterioration, to the point where they're perhaps not seeing much at all.

It's that failure, sometimes, of the benefit grid to acknowledge that the same person at one point might have this and at the next point might have something different. So we'll get questions like, why do they need this now when they just got such and such?

Again, these are innocent...not innocent; they're not deliberately disrespectful questions, but they're auditing-type questions. Why does this person now need this? They just had such and such two years ago. Well, because it's different now. Again, that's where the case management system would fit in.

But in reply to your original question—and again, we don't have time to wax philosophical here—the issue that veterans themselves are struggling with, and the military struggles with, is that you have two separate ethos going on at the same time. As a military person, you're expected to be strong and tough and suck it up and get out there and do the job. Do it as part of a team, etc. It's very counterintuitive for someone to require assistance.

So to overcome that—and the dilemma is very clear in the issues of post-traumatic stress, but it falls into blindness also—is to remove the stigma of needing help. That's the communications approach that needs to be, I think, engineered. Veterans Affairs perhaps would be able, through its communications department, to deliver that kind of message: it's all right to need help. It doesn't make you less tough, strong, etc.; it simply makes you strong enough to admit you can't do it all by yourself.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

I would suggest maybe, from what we are hearing from witnesses coming forward in other venues, that there may be more recognition of that from the new vets than from the traditional ones. Because it was always, just suck it up, get over it, that's the way life will be, whereas I think now a societal issue is that I can do that as long as I know that if some issue comes along and I need some help, help is there.

I think you will hear from all of us that if the opportunity comes, we would support the needs-based in terms of any type of care over what's there now, basically, of a status.

I'll just leave it at that. Thank you, again, very much for coming out.

[Catherine Moore]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Thank you.

Now over to the Liberal Party of Canada, Mr. Russell, for five minutes.