Veterans Affairs Committee on June 3rd, 2008

[William Fisher]

It's about 95¢.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

So it's roughly comparable.

Our budget this year, with 33 million people, is $3.5 billion Canadian. You have 12 million fewer people, and your budget is almost four times as high as ours.

How many clients are there for DVA in Australia?

[Adam Luckhurst]

There are around 420,000.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Our client base is 221,000, including our RCMP.

How many employees do you have for DVA?

[Adam Luckhurst]

It's around 2,300.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

We have over 3,500. Something is not right here. Somebody is a lot more efficient, with a lot more money, than we are. I just find it rather amazing. You have 12 million fewer people, four times the budget, 1,000 fewer people working, and more clients. We're going to have to look at this down the road. The comparisons are just unbelievable.

I noticed something on children here in your budget. We had a concern a while ago in Petawawa--you may have heard about it--with some children having great psychological difficulties because their fathers were killed in Afghanistan. You obviously have suffered the same thing.

Is it DVA or another department that looks after the specific needs of children of military personnel who are injured, either mentally or physically, or who have died?

[Adam Luckhurst]

I understand that Defence, through their Defence community organization, provides some level of assistance, particularly to those who have recently suffered a loss or an injury. I can't comment on the specifics of those because I'm not fully aware.

Within the veterans affairs system, we also provide services through our Veterans' and Veterans' Families Counselling Service so that children or other family members can access support through that mechanism. We also have a small number of other services. We have some educational programs that provide educational scholarships. For instance, for children of Vietnam veterans and the like, we have the Long Tan bursary system, which provides, as I understand it—it's not an area of expertise of mine—grants for education. Also, those whose father or mother may have died in service are also entitled to health care arrangements through our health care scheme as well.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Very good. Thank you.

For your veterans home care program, which is similar to our veterans independence program, what qualifications does a person have to have to be able to apply for that? In Canada, you need to either show a pension disability from your service or you have to be at a certain income level in order to access it. In Australia, if I were an elderly veteran and I wanted to apply for veterans home care, what qualifications, besides being a veteran, would I need in order to access it? Or are there any restrictions?

[Adam Luckhurst]

As I understand it, there aren't really restrictions. One of the reasons we have a large number of clients is that a decision was made a number of years ago to grant veterans who had qualifying service, had served in a theatre of war, who were aged over 70, a gold card. The gold card provides for treatment for all conditions, whether war-caused or not.

So as I understand it--not that there are limitations around the amount of service that people can get--we have a separate assessment agency that does the assessment to determine whether there's a need for a particular service, and if so, what services might be available.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

This is my last question before he cuts me off.

In 2000, we changed the definition of a veteran in Canada. If I were in Australia and I asked you for the definition of a veteran in Australia, what would it be?

[Adam Luckhurst]

We talk about the Department of Veterans' Affairs, but we administer different pieces of legislation, and for the people who are covered under those bits of legislation there are slightly different definitions under that act. So we talk broadly about the department and its responsibility to veterans. For instance, it will cover existing serving personnel through our Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Act, past personnel, widows, dependants, family members, so there's not a....

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Very quickly, if I signed up today to the Australian military, did boot camp training, and in my training became permanently disabled, would I be a veteran?

[Adam Luckhurst]

Well, you'd be able to access those Australia Department of Veterans'—

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

No. Would I be a veteran?

[Adam Luckhurst]

I guess it's....

[A voice]

I guess you could be.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Thank you. Thank you very much. I tried to sneak that in there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

I think you got what you were looking for, sir.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Thank you, sir.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

And I was impressed by the way he delved into the numbers as much as he did. That was intriguing. I'll leave it at that.

We go on to Mrs. Hinton, with the Conservative Party of Canada, for seven minutes.

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

Thank you, and thank you very much, High Commissioner, for what I consider to be a fascinating oral history of the ties between Canada and Australia at the beginning. It was wonderful to hear it repeated.

I also agree with you. We don't have to reinvent the wheel either, and we have absolutely no problem poaching good ideas from other countries, so you're welcome to take what you want from us as well.

I know this chair well, and he's going to cut me off when my time comes up, so I'm going to ask you four questions. Please just take note to see whether you can answer.

In Australia—this is asked out of ignorance—do you have situations such as we have in Canada of provincial governments whose jurisdiction covers health care, or is it all a federal responsibility? That's the first question.

Do you have a doctor or professional shortage in Australia such as we face here in Canada?

The next two questions are a little bit easier. You recently established your At Ease website, which is designed to improve mental health amongst veterans. What prompted the establishment of that initiative?

The last question is about the At Ease website. There is a phone number for a 24-hour hotline. Do you know how many people have called the hotline since the creation of the website?

[William Fisher]

On the state-federal division on health, in the Australian constitution, health was one of the issues given to states, but in the interim one hundred or so years, the federal government has become more and more active in health. In fact, now large quantities of the health portfolio are covered by the federal government.

Where the boundary is, is a moving feast, frankly; it goes in and out, but generally in the direction of more federal participation. In fact, last year there was a suggestion by one of the state health ministers that the whole health portfolio should go entirely federal, that the states should withdraw from it. This was, of course, because of the escalating cost of health and the thought that the federal government was best placed to address escalating health issues.

So health is now, you might say, a shared responsibility, but more and more it's a responsibility wherein policy is done at the federal level and administration of a lot of the hospitals—not all—is done at the state level.

But you have some DVA hospitals, have you not?

[Adam Luckhurst]

We used to have DVA-run hospitals. They have now been wound back. A couple of them were transferred to the state governments and some across to a couple of private sector organizations; that's Greenslopes in Queensland and Hollywood Hospital in Perth. They're still regarded as veterans hospitals, but they have a much broader clientele than veterans themselves.

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

He'll let you answer. He won't cut you off.

Your answer raises another question.

[William Fisher]

On the shortage of doctors, of course, there's always a shortage of doctors in the general sense, but it's more of a regional issue I think than an overall issue. It's very hard to get medical practitioners to rural and isolated areas. It's really easy to get doctors at Surfers Paradise and Sydney and Melbourne and the nice places like that. It's much harder to get them at Oodnadatta. The reason for that, of course, as we all know, is that the salaries and the conditions are vastly better within metropolitan areas and large communities, and doctors, like anybody else, like to live in nice places, so it's often hard to get specialists to stay.

The government has been looking at a number of initiatives to try to persuade medical staff to stay in rural areas for a while, but it's very difficult. The medical profession is like any other profession. They're free individuals, and they can't be directed to stay in one area or other.

Adam, I think you had a special arrangement with some DVA people, didn't you?