Veterans Affairs Committee on June 3rd, 2008

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

Do your military people go through any post preparation before they go on deployment? When they come back, if they become a vet and they've got symptoms of operational stress disorder, are the sessions all one on one, or is there some assessment in the preliminary stages so that you could actually meet with the professionals in a group?

[Adam Luckhurst]

Are you talking about when they come to the counselling service?

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

Yes.

[Adam Luckhurst]

As I understand it, they operate in a variety of different ways. They will certainly sit down with the individual to do an assessment of particular needs and circumstances. From there, it is about pulling together a package of care that is best able to meet those needs. That may include pulling together a broader team of people, it may be counselling sessions, or it may be that now that they've talked to someone and they understand the issues, they don't necessarily need a package of care at that time, but they're fully aware of what might be available to them should they need something in the future.

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

One of the things we've heard time and time again is that it always seems to come down to the complexity of filling out the forms and to the need to streamline the forms so that the individuals can actually fill them out. We've talked with other agencies, and we're still waiting for a good answer to see how we can resolve the problem.

I don't know if that's an issue with you. Have you got that resolved? Do you get complaints regarding the complexity and the frustration? I think it mainly depends on whether there's a mental illness and on age.

[Adam Luckhurst]

To some degree there are certain bits of information we need to know in order to assess a claim in line with the legislation. Partly because of that, there's a fair amount of complexity in it. We also fund a range of ex-service organizations to assist our people in filling out their forms. That particularly helps some of our older people with some of it, but it also helps our younger people as well. It does help in that situation. It doesn't mean our forms aren't complex or that there's not a lot of information that needs to be provided, but it helps the individual get through the process, and obviously people can ring up the department and get clarification on questions and information as well.

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

I have a final question. In terms of working relationships with other countries and sharing what we're doing today with veterans affairs departments of other countries, do you have a working relationship that is pretty positive with Canada? Do you have a comment on that?

[Adam Luckhurst]

I think our working relationship is probably closest with Canada. That's partly because of the exchange program that operates, but it's also because of the significant similarities between the Australian system and the Canadian system. We also have close links with New Zealand, the U.K., and the U.S., but I think probably the closest is with Canada.

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

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Thank you, Mr. Shipley.

We'll now go to the Liberal Party of Canada and Mr. Valley.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

Thank you.

High Commissioner, in your opening comments you mentioned similarities between Australia and Canada. You spoke of remote and isolated locations, and it was almost as though you were talking about my riding. I serve northern Ontario, and this group knows I won't let a meeting go by without mentioning something. I just had the opportunity to rub elbows with some Aussies over in Afghanistan, so....

This question should be able to answer itself, but I'll ask it anyway.

You talked about outreach to schools and communities and how you keep the message alive about the service and the sacrifices given by the people who serve. In my riding, and in many parts of Canada, it's done by the local legions; that's all we have left. We've devolved. There's not a lot of federal presence in the outlying areas. There's not a lot of federal structure out there. It's basically dealt with by the provinces. I'm sure Australia must have something like the legions.

[William Fisher]

Yes. The returned servicemen's associations are strong, although, of course, declining because the population components for returned servicemen are declining. Therefore, the government itself has taken over a lot of the responsibility for work with schools.

It's a very strong element in the Australian curriculum. All school children are taught as part of their regular curriculum under Australian history about the overseas service, about the Anzac Day commemoration, about what Anzac is, the spirit of Anzac Day. There are national competitions every year. It's a very large part of any primary school child's education to learn about this fact.

It's something that I think--although we didn't ever come up with it in a terribly clever way--has worked in a remarkable way, in that the commemoration of returned servicemen, which was falling off in the 1960s because the population was going and the Vietnam War at the time was unpopular.... The commemoration of returned servicemen was really dying. Through this public education program through the schools, a quite astonishing phenomenon occurred, and that was that the young people of Australia took over this idea themselves. Now you find that Anzac Day commemoration, for example, is, as I said earlier, the most important day in the year in Australia, and that's true.

This year I think we had 12,000 young Australians go to Gallipoli. It's a very difficult place to get to. You can't get a train or a plane to Gallipoli. You have to get to Istanbul and go over road. And there's no hotel; they were camping out on the beach.

It's a remarkable achievement, and this is through the effort of public education that we've undertaken over the year.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

I think that's something else we can learn from then.

One of the challenges was alluded to by Adam. It was a question to try to deal with the aboriginals and how do you know where they are. I've said many times, and people are getting bored with me saying it, that our problem as MPs is that we don't know where our vets are. When you take into consideration large, remote, isolated places with few or no government services and you stick the veterans there, how do we find them?

Is it similar in Australia, where your privacy laws restrict following where veterans go and finding them and reaching out to them? Many times, if we could reach out to them, we could deal with some of the issues, or at least start to recognize them. But we're not allowed that information. We try, and we're going to wriggle around and try to find ways to find these people, but if we had information on where they're located, it would be much easier for us.

As I said before, we're politicians, and we have lots of information that's not generally given to the public. Yet we can't have that information, so we can't go and thank them for serving. We can't ask them if everything is okay, or even have a coffee with them. We're not allowed that.

[Adam Luckhurst]

Certainly, I'm not aware of any specific requests for information on names and addresses. I'm not actually sure how we would stand from a privacy perspective in that regard. We certainly do produce reports by electorate, which give out the details of the numbers of veterans and a range of information, but we take care in providing that. If they're very low numbers, we don't specify those, because it may mean that someone might be identifiable from that information.

Certainly, members are involved in some of the commemorative activities that happen, so they're linked up in that way. But I'm not aware of any specific requests, so I'm not sure how our privacy laws would stand up if the question were asked.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Thank you.

Now over to the Conservative Party of Canada. I believe Mr. Cannan is up first.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll share my time with Mr. Sweet.

Thank you, gentlemen, for your time. As I am sure you've heard from this committee, nothing unites us more than our veterans, and of course the fine line that your country and our country produces as well.

I want to touch on the comment about the veterans home care program that you mentioned you have. We have the veterans independent program, known as the VIP. Could you please expand on the services under your program, and which are the most popular ones?

[Adam Luckhurst]

I'm not sure which are the most popular, but the four key types of services are: domestic assistance, which provides help with tasks such as household cleaning, dishwashing, clothes washing, ironing, shopping, and bill paying; personal care, which provides assistance with daily self-care tasks, such as eating, bathing, toileting, dressing, grooming, getting in and out of bed, and moving about the house; safety-related home and garden maintenance, which assists in keeping the home safe and habitable by minimizing environmental health and safety hazards; and respite care, which provides temporary relief to the eligible person's carer, or to the eligible person if he or she is the carer.

To give you a bit of a picture of how many people we've provided services to, in 2006-07 they undertook about 160,000 assessments for 78,000 veterans. In 2007-08 we provided services to about 80,000 veterans across the country.

People are also able to access other home care services through some other Commonwealth state programs, like the home and community care program and Meals on Wheels. Veterans are able to access these services through the Commonwealth state programs.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thanks for those utilization numbers.

One of the areas where we have a challenge is with seniors. We want to keep the veterans independent as long as possible and living in their own homes.

Some of our communities are developing stratified dwellings. You can have your own home, but you pay a common area fee. Or if you move into a condo, for example, you have to pay maybe $150 a month, and they look after the snow removal and the lawn care.

We haven't been able to provide any funding for veterans when they move into homes such as these. Do you have a mechanism for formulating an evaluation, to determine how much could be allocated to a veteran if he moved into an independent stratified unit?

[Adam Luckhurst]

No. I can run through the programs we do have in housing. But we don't run a program like that.

There are a few different things we do in housing. We administer the defence service home loans—loans of up to $25,000. It has a capped interest rate, which is below the average market rate. So we provide access to loans for eligible people through that scheme. We also have a home insurance scheme, which provides insurance to veterans. We also provide, through our income support programs, access to rent assistance programs. For a couple, this can be up to $101 per fortnight.

The other aspect of the services we provide is about looking into veterans home care and making the home safer. We have a HomeFront scheme, which is about providing assessments to make sure that houses are safe. There's a small amount of money available for modifications—handrails, those sorts of things—so that the house is a bit safer.

We also have a home maintenance line, which can provide advice about home maintenance issues and provide referrals to qualified tradespeople who might be able to assist in fixing any problems they might have.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Mr. Sweet.

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

I have to say that it's been a while since I heard “fortnight”--while studying Shakespeare. It's nice to hear it again.

At the beginning of your remarks you talked about hospitals, but then subsequently you said you had divested yourselves of all the hospitals. Are all of the veterans care facilities run by either the state or private enterprise? Do you get any kind of feedback from veterans about the lack of camaraderie that results from their being in a facility shared with civilians?

[Adam Luckhurst]

In our hospital program within Australia we have public hospitals operated by the state governments and private hospitals run by private organizations. We have contracts in place with the state health departments that provide the equivalent of private hospital care to veterans. It will be things like a room by themselves whenever possible, the choice of a specialist, and those sorts of things. We essentially pay the state health departments on a cost-recovery basis for the provision of those services to veterans.

In terms of the private hospital systems, we have a range of contracts with all major private hospitals in the country. People can access private health care through their practitioner and receive the services they need.

I think people are most concerned about getting the quality of care they need through the two hospitals I spoke of earlier, Hollywood and Greenslopes. People tend to go to them if they're veterans; they do so partly because that's where they've always gone, but those hospitals also probably bring some understanding of veterans issues that our veterans appreciate.

Overwhelmingly, the issue is about making sure they get quality care when they need it, and the hospital arrangements certainly make sure that happens.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Thank you.

Now we will go over to the New Democratic Party. Mr. Stoffer, you have five minutes.