Veterans Affairs Committee on Nov. 22nd, 2007

[Victor Marchand]

I cannot hear you, but I can hear the interpreter speaking the language of Shakespeare.

[Gilles-A. Perron, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

You know my views with respect to the VRAB. I would like to put a question to you that I have never asked before. How is the Chair of the Board selected?

[Victor Marchand]

The chair, as a rule, to my knowledge,

has always been chosen from among Board members. By definition, I imagine that

the chairman has experience and knowledge of the organization and the field of work that he will be directing for the years to come. I personally was asked whether I was interested in my name being put on a list—before anything was decided, I assume—and eventually I was told that I would be invited to be appointed as chair of the board. To my knowledge, that is what happened in my case.

[Gilles-A. Perron, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

This is my last question, but I would have appreciated receiving the answer in French.

[Victor Marchand]

If I answer you in French, I hear the interpreter speaking English, which makes things somewhat more complicated. I will answer you anyway, and just try to ignore the interpretation.

In my case, as was the case for my predecessors, the Chair of the Board is selected from among the members. I see this as a wise decision, because the Chair is familiar with the work of the Board and the organization he will be required to lead. In my case, I received a phone call and was asked if my name could be placed on a list of potential candidates. Subsequently, I learned that my name had been selected. That is how it worked in my case.

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

My question is a simple one. How is it that there are so many appeals? Does that mean that the first time veterans meet with departmental representatives regarding their pension entitlement… Is it because some people are not doing their job, or because it is complex?

[Victor Marchand]

Well, I really don't share your view of this.

For example, as of April 1, 2006, I believe the Department had received some 30,000 claims. However, when you look at the situation as a whole, it is clear that only a small percentage of those cases are appealed. Considering the number of applications we process, I can easily say that of those 30,000 claims, for example, not more than 20% were appealed to the VRAB. In fact, it often happens that these appeals are connected to the same cases—which reduces the numbers even more.

Every case comprises several claims. The percentage of cases that are reviewed or appealed to the VRAB rarely exceeds 10 or 15%, depending on the number of pending claims. No, there are not a lot of appeals to the VRAB. However, there is a large volume of claims filed with the Department of Veterans Affairs.

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

I was not giving you an opinion; I was stating a fact. This week, a physician told us that the satisfaction rates were 90% and 96%. If I establish the rate at 80% in the general population, it seems to me that is low. If 5,000 or 6,000 out of 30,000 claims came to you, I wonder whether some people are not doing their job or whether there is a personnel shortage.

[Victor Marchand]

I can tell you that within the Department, as a general rule, the favourability rate varies from 60% to 70%, at the first level. For example, in relation to a nominal figure of 30,000 claims filed with the Department at any given time, 60% or 70% are resolved. That leaves between 10,000 and 12,000 cases, and they are brought to the attention of the Bureau of Pension Advocates. The BPA declines to review some of those, which means that, at the present time, between 6,000 and 7,000 cases end up at the VRAB.

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

I agree with you, but what we see here, in a table for 2005-2006, is that 4,870 cases were reviewed and 1,532 were appealed. That means that 1,532 out of 4,870 cases were once again appealed. Is that correct? Some 222 cases were reconsidered. Would you not say that it is a lot of bureaucracy? Is there not something in all of this that isn't quite right?

[Victor Marchand]

No. What you have to do is prepare a table comparing all the current systems for compensating individuals for bodily injuries, including Lloyds, in England, or the various workmen's compensation boards in Canada, which fall within provincial jurisdiction. That will allow you to assess the performance of all these systems. If, ultimately, the system rejects between 10% and 15% of all the applications that are made, that means that it is within the appropriate parameters and that it has done the job it was asked to do. The number of reconsiderations is 222 out of a total of 30,000 claims submitted originally to the Department. Think about it: that is a minuscule amount.

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

I will have other questions later.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Thank you very much, Monsieur Gaudet. You've run out of time, so now we're over to the Conservative Party, with Mrs. Hinton for seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Welcome to Mr. Sharkey and Mr. Marchand. It is lovely to see you again. I, for one, appreciate the fact that you've been here three times. You've kept us very well updated, and I think your news today is excellent news.

I recall the last time we spoke you had an 8,000-case backlog, so kudos to you. That's wonderful, and it's great news for veterans. We'll start off on that note.

The second thing I'd like to mention is that this is an unusual circumstance today, because generally speaking, we have the written presentation of what the presenters are going to say. I know I'm not alone at these tables with the very speedy writing here. We were trying to get down all the information because we had nothing to go back to. That's just an aside.

You've had some very serious changes and some great progress. I personally appreciate the hard work that your committee is doing.

Perhaps I could follow up on a question that was asked by Mr. Perron--I believe it was Mr. Perron. You said you were originally appointed as the chair. I understand the circumstances under which that happened, but could you tell me how long you've actually been the chair?

[Victor Marchand]

I was appointed in October 2003 and my term is up in December 2008. I was a board member first for three years and then was promoted to deputy chair. I was then acting chair and was appointed full-time chair in October 2003 until December 2008.

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

Well, thank you. That clarifies that for me.

Now, I'd actually like to ask you a couple of questions about some of the processes that are ongoing with the board. Could you answer this for me? What is the percentage of veterans who take advantage of the free legal aid provided by VRAB, and what is the success rate of the cases that make use of that service?

[Victor Marchand]

The veterans rely on the legal services of BPA almost exclusively. The number of self-represented cases is minimal. We have between 15 to 25 self-represented cases a year. I'd be surprised if we get more than that.

All the success rates quoted are in fact in all cases, if not exclusively, where BPA acted as the representative.

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

Okay. I'm sure I don't have to remind you that I have been one of the more serious critics on the issue of the membership, on who was appointed to the board in the past.

I know you can't talk about anyone specifically, but I wonder if you could maybe give us an overview of the diverse experience and the background on some of these new appointees and what the qualifications are, because in the past my concerns have been that many of the people who served on this board had never actually served in the military.

There were, in my opinion, too few with medical backgrounds. So I'm wondering if you could just touch on the overall experience of the new members who have come forward and just enlighten us a bit as to the qualifications.

[Victor Marchand]

Okay.

It has always been an operational requirement of the board to maintain the best balanced complement of board members. By that, we mean a variety of backgrounds, gender, language, as being the most important, and then finally geographical distribution. It is our experience that if you ensure a variety of backgrounds, you ensure an open and complete view or culture installing itself at the board. In other words, yes, you do want lawyers, but you also want military. You also want people who have medical backgrounds, nursing, psychology, and to that I would even add educational as being part of the social sciences sector, if you wish. I think it is also important to have people who have backgrounds in life in general, who have had a long and hardy life experience in any given sector, to be part of the board. So I think it's important to have people from all walks of life in Canadian society, and that includes, of course, the military.

One area where we've had difficulty in finding candidates to join the board is from the field of policing, because as you know, we do the RCMP.

That's what I think is the important thing, having some military, some legal, some health field people, and from the general population.

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

Well, I certainly wouldn't disagree with you that the university of life is probably the greatest teacher there is, and I think it needs to be considered when getting board members into these kinds of positions. But I specifically asked you, has there been an improvement in the medical side of it? Are there more people with medical backgrounds? Are there more people with military backgrounds who've now been appointed?

I wrote your numbers down here. You said you had 659 applications, so there's obviously a keen interest, and that you had 239 who had written exams and passed through all of the criteria. So are there more medical people now than there were before, and are there more military people than there were before?

[Victor Marchand]

Well, there are more people from the legal background presently. We need to concentrate, over the next year, on more military and more from the health field.

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

Now I'll ask you a really blunt question, and I apologize for the bluntness.

After all of these people have applied, have gone through the exam, have been accepted, how are they actually chosen? I mean, does someone decide you have so many lawyers, you don't need any more; you have so many medical people, you don't need any more? How does that process work?

[Victor Marchand]

The first priority is making sure our operational requirements are met, and that is x many members in a given region, x many members being able to function in either official language, and then you have a preoccupation and priority with gender, and if you can meet simultaneously what I consider to be good proportions of health field, legal, and military, so much the better.

What I'm saying now is that we could do a bit better in the military and health fields, because we lost one military member this fall. We had four. We try to stick to about 10% in each area. So we could concentrate there and try to make an effort to draw in the military and health fields.

How these choices are made is at the entire discretion of the minister. At the board, we're in the business of providing the minister with qualified candidates. We can identify the background of these individuals. We will identify where we need people, and from that point on it is at the discretion of the minister.

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

Thank you.

He cut me off, so that's it for me.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Thank you very much, Mrs. Hinton. It's just one of those things we arrange sometimes ahead of time, and that's the way it works.

Now we're back to the Liberal Party, with Mr. St. Denis for five minutes.