Evidence of meeting #12 for Veterans Affairs in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was cnib.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Bloc
Roger Gaudet Bloc Montcalm, QC
My name is Roger Gaudet, and I am the member for Montcalm and the deputy critic for Veterans Affairs.
One of the three principles you referred to would have the effect of rationalizing the process. Could you explain what you mean by that?
National Director, Consumer and Government Relations, Canadian National Institute for the Blind
What I mean is that at this point there is a review, which obviously you've all been involved in, that has been going on for the last three years. The difficulty is that within Veterans Affairs at this point, to my knowledge, there is not a mechanism for an ongoing consultation with the community organizations that are also directly tied to veterans.
For example, what would happen is that we would determine a gap in service. A good example—which has been resolved, and I want to be clear that this has been resolved—is that at one point there was a regulation that there would be one magnifier per lifetime. Someone would enter the Veterans Affairs vision health services with a certain level of vision and would be prescribed by an optometrist this type of magnifier. Two years later, they would have much more severe vision loss because of the deterioration. One magnifier per lifetime—too bad.
It took nearly a year to have that changed. It was changed, but there was no mechanism to expedite what was really a very simple change or addition to a benefit grid.
That is my example. There isn't a mechanism of ongoing consultation.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rob Anders
Absolutely.
Now we're moving over to the New Democratic Party and Mr. Stoffer, for five minutes.
NDP
Peter Stoffer NDP Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I am Peter Stoffer. Thank you, madam, for the work you do on behalf of all kinds of people throughout the country. My own father, before he passed away, was losing his sight fairly quickly because of the combination of diabetes and other things. He was more worried about that than anything else.
You mentioned war veterans who have not necessarily become blind during their active service but later on in life may be entitled to some benefits, and that's correct. But what about veterans who served in peacetime operations, say from the sixties and seventies, and are now in their late sixties or early seventies and are becoming visually impaired and can't make a connection to any injury during their service, because this happened long after their service?
Are you aware of any benefits that Veterans Affairs has for them?
National Director, Consumer and Government Relations, Canadian National Institute for the Blind
No, I'm not aware of that.
NDP
Peter Stoffer NDP Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS
Also, a lot of the spouses of Second World War and Korean veterans are visually impaired. Besides your work with them, does DVA also do any work with the spouses, that you're aware of?
National Director, Consumer and Government Relations, Canadian National Institute for the Blind
It's my understanding that there remain spousal benefits, but again, not across the board and not consistently.
NDP
National Director, Consumer and Government Relations, Canadian National Institute for the Blind
Yes, that they be across the board and that they be consistent. I would roll your two questions together. I would recommend that if it's armed service, whether it was in peacetime or wartime, the person be considered a veteran, and that their spouses continue with their benefits should they have health issues that require those benefits.
NDP
Peter Stoffer NDP Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS
You're probably aware that some benefits for veterans are dependent on their income. Some veterans or some service personnel may do quite well in their private lives, and when they call up looking for assistance, if their income is a little higher, they may not be eligible for some of those benefits.
Are you aware of any of those when it comes to vision impairment?
National Director, Consumer and Government Relations, Canadian National Institute for the Blind
I'm not so much aware of that as I am aware of a tug of war that sometimes delays the delivery of service, between a provincial jurisdiction or a Veterans Affairs jurisdiction. It's more in those cases. I'm not aware of income affecting vision loss services.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rob Anders
Thank you, Mr. Stoffer.
Now we're over to the Conservative Party of Canada and Mrs. Hinton, for seven minutes.
Conservative
Betty Hinton Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
Thank you.
Welcome, Catherine. I've been listening to what you've had to say, and you've educated a number of us, I'm pretty sure. So I'd like to start off by saying, thank goodness for Colonel Edwin Baker. I don't know what a lot of visually impaired people or blind people would have done without that kind of man taking on this kind of cause, so those are positive things.
I became aware of how many visually impaired people were within my riding shortly after becoming a member of Parliament. It's actually very surprising. It's something that, when you're not visually impaired, you don't often think about, but you become very aware of it when you are a member of Parliament. The young man who made me aware of that is a young piper from the Kamloops Pipe Band, a very talented young man, and I gave him a business card because he had an issue, and of course he couldn't read it. So today when I gave you a business card, those business cards are in Braille and have been for the last eight years, and that's as a result of this young piper. So I think you do more to educate people than you may realize, and I just wanted to acknowledge that here today.
I don't think there's anybody in the room who hates red tape more than I do, so you've got an ally in me. I think that red tape should be eliminated. I agree with you wholeheartedly that streamlining a benefit grid would be a wonderful way to do it. But you also said that you didn't see a mechanism in place yet, so I'll try to help you by making you aware of the new ombudsman position that was put in place just recently. I think you'll find an ally in that new ombudsman, so you may want to refer some of your clients to him if they're having serious difficulties.
You were talking about having 1,800 veterans as your clients, but only 30 of them were blinded in combat. I was very pleased to hear that as a government we don't differentiate between the two and we just support people, and that you're doing exactly the same thing.
Specifically, is there something you might be able to make this committee aware of in terms of what we could do under the VIP program, which is what we're studying now, to make life easier for visually impaired or blind veterans?
National Director, Consumer and Government Relations, Canadian National Institute for the Blind
I guess you're giving me an opportunity to repeat myself. A case management system would make their lives easier because it would give people a voice. I don't want to sound agist and talk about the poor frail things in the corner, because I think that's very disrespectful. But the fact is that when you're 80 years old and you're looking at some hearing loss, and you're looking at vision loss, and you're looking at some mobility loss and you don't have your licence, etc., there's a big thing that this human being is already coping with every day. To have to go to bat for services for themselves from Veterans Affairs is sometimes more than you can expect from someone.
So a case management system where there would be...and it's an ombudsman's role in a way. I don't believe there's anybody within Veterans Affairs, or even necessarily within Blue Cross, who wants to withhold a service from a veteran who's entitled to it. It's the not knowing or the misunderstanding or the miscommunication, and that case management system could take the onus off the individual to have to somehow manoeuvre the system themselves.
February 5th, 2008 / 4:15 p.m.
Conservative
Betty Hinton Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
You're right, I did give you an opportunity to repeat what you've said. But I've learned through this committee, and as a member of Parliament, that sometimes you have to keep repeating the same message over and over until it gets heard. So if there's any other message that you would like to deliver to this committee and to the public at large, please feel free to do that now.
National Director, Consumer and Government Relations, Canadian National Institute for the Blind
I would like to make a plea to the committee, in any way that you're able to do it, to free up some of the bureaucrats, particularly at the front line. I realize that crossing political-public service lines is difficult, but I would urge you to free up the people from the front lines who know what should be happening to enable them to make those kinds of decisions, and move forward. That would, again, lift an enormous weight off some of them.
Conservative
Betty Hinton Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
You've mentioned something earlier, and we've had other witnesses on other aspects of this VIP program make comments on this as well.
We have an epidemic in this country that has just happened in the last decade or two, and a lot of it is because of overeating, but there are other causes, obviously, for diabetes. How many in your caseload do you believe, of those 1,800 people, are the result of diabetes? Can you put any number on that?
National Director, Consumer and Government Relations, Canadian National Institute for the Blind
The good news and the bad news is, not many of our current caseload of veterans, but that's what will quadruple that number. Type 2 diabetes is hitting people in their fifties now, and a quarter of those people have some type of retinopathy already. Of that group, a quarter will develop vision loss as a result of diabetes. Those are the statistics. That's it.
So unmanaged type 2 diabetes, which many people don't take as seriously as they could because it's often the misguided belief that it's not as bad as having to take insulin, is what's coming to that group, but it's not here yet. Prevention tactics could be put in place to mitigate those effects.
Conservative
Betty Hinton Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
Wonderful. That's not good news, but it's always better to be prepared than to face a dilemma and not have any background on it and not know what's coming.
As a country, I'm not sure we realize the devastation that will come from diseases such as diabetes, which are in most cases preventable, or at least you could start early to try to prevent that kind of damage. But what would be the leading cause? I know you told us that in the future you believe it's going to be diabetes, but what's the leading cause now? Is it accidents?
National Director, Consumer and Government Relations, Canadian National Institute for the Blind
No, the leading cause is age-related macular degeneration. The macula is the centre of the eye, a very rich area in terms of blood vessels and oxygen flow. That's the area of your eye that allows you to do fine work: read, sew, write, that sort of thing. Your risk for AMD, as we call it for short, age-related macular degeneration, can be reduced by following the same health regime we advise people to follow to reduce the risk of diabetes, etc., because it is another vascular illness, essentially.
You can't prevent it. Family history and genetics are risk factors. Fair skin is a risk factor. Blue eyes are a risk factor, etc. But unhealthy eating, smoking, all of those things, will increase your chances. Smoking in particular will increase your chances of getting age-related macular degeneration by 30%. So at this point we're into public health for prevention.
