Veterans Affairs Committee on Nov. 24th, 2009

[Dr. Claudia von Zweck, Executive Director, Canadian Association of Occupational Therapists]

I think one of the reasons for that is the approach that's taken. Occupational therapists are often brought in as service providers to look at specific issues, but they're not looking at the overall issues. There may be a greater contribution that could be made either at an earlier stage or in a more comprehensive fashion. Because occupational therapists are not involved in that case management role, it's very fragmented. They may provide a service for part of what is required.

[Guy André, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Right. We need a more holistic approach.

Mr. McCartney, Mr. Griffis, I would like to go back to my question about the problem of suicide. Earlier, I mentioned the recording of suicides in the Canadian Forces. For example, if a veteran retired from the army two or three years after a mission and then takes his own life, are you able to determine if the suicide is linked to the mission? Can you determine the suicide rate? Is there any follow-up?

[Lorne McCartney]

Yes. I'd like to speak on that topic.

One of the problems—and it's a veterans affairs thing—is that, quite frankly, many of the new veterans do not join organizations such as ours, which creates a problem. We have a lot of World War II vets and a lot of Korean vets, but most of them, especially the young people, shy away from veterans clubs and that sort of thing. So our information is only second-hand or third-hand.

We get a lot of information from the Department of Veterans Affairs. One of their problems, looking at the family unit as an example, is finding it. Frequently, the spouse is not aware of the many services that are provided, and there's a real challenge there to let the family know when there are problems. Whenever somebody goes to a person's house, everyone is on his or her best behaviour. The family, however, can see these things happening with the spouse and can therefore take action. The important thing is for them to know what action to take, who to call. I believe these services are very good and they're available.

As far as tracking is concerned, I would think that once something like this has been reported, they would continue monitoring it. However, I really can't speak for the Department of Veterans Affairs on that.

[The Vice-Chair (Mr. Robert Oliphant), Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

I hate to cut you off, but we're going to have to go to Mr. Stoffer now, for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all very much for coming. I have a few questions.

Mr. McCartney, we heard the other day from the group that presented the 16 recommendations that there is a benefit they receive on top of disability pay. It's taxable. I think it is an additional sum that they receive until they're 65.

Sir, do you believe that any pain and suffering benefits that individuals receive, either as a lump sum or in terms of a long-term disability payment, should be taxable? It's included as income and they have to claim it as a taxable item. I think the argument from the folks we saw the other week was that they require those additional funds to handle X-rays or medications or trips to the doctor, etc. Should those funds be taxable, in your view?

[Lorne McCartney]

First of all, you have to look at two things. One is the amount of what is being given.

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

Yes, sir.

[Lorne McCartney]

Quite frankly, while people are in the military and they continue to serve their country, they get 100% of their salary and it is taxable. I don't really want to stray too far from that. I think taxation has its place in this country. We need it. But I think you can't take something like 75% of a salary...because why should this person be shortchanged from the get-go? If he were still in, he would be making 100%.

I think the threshold we should be aiming for is 100%. The cost of war shouldn't be on the shoulders of those who fight the war. The wounds are, of course, but they shouldn't be paying for it out of their salary. I believe that. So you receive 100%, but you pay as if it's a tax.

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

Thank you.

Ladies, I'd like to ask you a question. I know that for folks who have PTSD you're going to book a half-hour or an hour session with them, but the reality is they need four or five hours to explain their situation. I'd like you to explain how you deal with that when someone is in the middle of explaining something and you have to go. How do you deal with that in your occupation?

Before you respond, I'd like to ask Mr. Griffis a question. Sir, I have a book here that was written by Sandra Baker. She did a thesis on the experience of female partners of Canadian military veterans who are diagnosed with PTSD, and she did the Halifax example. This is the thesis she's writing for becoming a professor. She said:

In the Halifax trauma treatments, in order for the women or the spouses of veterans to get treatment, they have to be referred by a veterans psychologist in order to get the treatment.

They have to be referred. Although there is access to peer groups, there is not that direct access. I wonder if you have run into this. She gives example after example of women she spoke to. Here's a situation. Her husband came back from the service. He got a new psychologist. He is diagnosed with PTSD. He comes home and says, “I don't love you any more and I'm gone”. She said that was it. There were no other support programs for her. She was left on her own. In fact she said she was unable to access support from any agency.

Did you run into that in the studies you have done? What should we recommend to government with respect to not just focusing on the military individual going through problems? It's immense. We've always argued—and both sides have argued this—that the family is an integral part of that individual. What would you recommend to ensure that she and others don't fall through the cracks? It doesn't mention that she has kids, but if she had kids, I assume they would fall into the cracks as well.

[The Vice-Chair (Mr. Robert Oliphant), Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Unfortunately, due to the length of the question you each have one minute to answer.

[Ronald Griffis]

The recommendations in the new report are absolutely excellent with respect to family. They are part and parcel of the solution. And, I'm sorry to say, they are part and parcel of the problem.

We recommend that all of the recommendations with respect to family be implemented. One of the members of our committee was a young lady who lost her husband and she provided excellent information about her contact with Veterans Affairs Canada. That was troubling to us. I won't mention her name. You know her.

If all of those recommendations regarding family are implemented, it will certainly be a plus in that direction.

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

Thank you.

Dr. von Zweck.

[Dr. Claudia von Zweck]

In terms of being able to address the specific issues, I think we end up having to limit the types of services we provide to the most compelling issues. We're not able to take as holistic an approach as we would like to. Occupational therapists look at someone in a very holistic way and how an illness can impact their ability to carry out what they need to do in life.

Again, it ends up creating fragmentation in terms of the types of services we're able to provide. We're very limited in terms of the amount of time we can take. We address the most vital and important issue, but we cannot give the comprehensive service that the individual deserves.

[Dr. Elizabeth Taylor]

The veteran is not getting some of the things, such as the stress management techniques and the return-to-work programs, so that they're reintegrated into the units or into new jobs. Those are the kinds of things we're suggesting need to be added to the services they can already have.

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

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair (Mr. Robert Oliphant), Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

I go to Mr. Kerr for seven minutes.

[Greg Kerr, Conservative, West Nova, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome. I really appreciate your appearing this morning. I have had a chance to talk to some of the committee members, and I know the good work you have done as part of the review and how important it is.

Ron, if we have time, I'm going to get to the fact I pushed before about the 16 priorities and how you're going to help us make sure that we get them done. I didn't get a lot of help the other day, and I don't expect to again, because they want them all done, and so on.

What I want to start with, though, is that I had a great experience during Veterans' Week at Windsor Park at the family centre. It was part of an ongoing vignette presentation. One of the things that really struck me, which ties in with exactly what you're talking about, is how very difficult and frustrating it is. The longer I'm with this, the longer I find out how frustrating many of the issues are. I think we're all trying to get to the same result. Maybe we're not 100% in agreement, but we're all trying to get there.

One of the things that struck me in going on the tour and talking to a number of people who are part of that family centre at Windsor Park in Halifax is that they really are in many ways the first-line people. These family centres across the country are the families of the military people. They're the ones who hear the daily stories from the families, from the wives, and from the kids as they come through there. They often say much of what you're saying: It's very difficult to get the military people to open up. They don't want us intruding in their lives. That's basically what they say. They are very proud. They're very much part of the family themselves. And getting through there, we have to support what they want to do. But we cannot say “This is the answer,” and put it on top of them. They made that abundantly clear over and over again.

Last week, when that young lady was killed in Halifax—she was a military wife, and ironically, she was killed in a head-on collision with a military bus--the first thing I thought of was that there would be that military family at these centres who would be dealing with those issues before the department, before the government, got involved.

Whatever we're doing, I think we have to really connect with them, those people who are the family members, because they will talk about the very thing. They know that there are services. I've heard the comment that they may or may not find out about them, but that's probably as good a place as any to find them, particularly for the younger military and younger veterans, who aren't traditionally connected.

I just want to make the point that the further we all get into this, the more we realize how difficult the job is to get there. So we have to work harder. I think we all want to get to the same place. I'm not sure we'll get there on all 16 recommendations at the same time, but that's our problem, not yours.

A comment I have, though, and it's sort of a general comment, is that as we move into the next stage, as we finish our work, hopefully it will support the work you're doing and will go back to departments. I start from the premise that I believe the department, particularly professional people, are trying the very best they can to provide the services they can. We're not talking in a critical way about them. But often they find it very difficult to get to the level we're talking about. In other words, there are those people we miss, whether they're homeless or have mental challenges and so on.

I think everybody is looking for direction. Everybody would like some direction as to how we make those next steps, whether it's suicide prevention or intervention or whatever it may be. How do we help get there without simply saying that we have the answer? Because we don't. We know we don't.

Without getting into the 16 recommendations, what do you think the very next step would be? This is an open question. What's the very next step for all of us to take that you think is appropriate? We don't say that this is the answer and this is the end of it. This is a moving and living charter. We know that. What is the next step you think we should take? It's an open question.

[Ronald Griffis]

If I may, sir, I feel that communication is lacking. We need to communicate more with the persons responsible. Another aspect is that we need to identify the gaps that are going to be identified as we continue. In that vein, the charter should continue. The New Veterans Charter Advisory Group should continue on and identify these gaps. We're going to be able to correct them as we go, but by the same token, as we correct them, it's only reasonable that new gaps are going to surface. I think communication is extremely important.

[Greg Kerr, Conservative, West Nova, NS]

Could you expand on that, Ron? When you say “communication”, what are you really getting at?

[Ronald Griffis]

When I deal with veterans, most of them are senior veterans. They're not aware of what is available for them. They're not aware that hearing aids are available. They're not aware that other things are available. For instance, the active military member has the military family resource centres to deal with, but once you leave the Canadian Forces, that is no longer a party the veteran can go to. There's a dividing line for the military family resource centres.

So once again, we need to communicate. I know the Department of Veterans Affairs has a newspaper called Salute!, and its distribution is 250,000 across Canada, but at the same time, that's not enough. We need to do more person-to-person communication.

[Greg Kerr, Conservative, West Nova, NS]

Okay.

[Dr. Elizabeth Taylor]

From the perspective of where I work in the community, I think you have to get the information out there that it's okay to seek help, and I think there's a disconnect happening because of the image that many of these young folks who I meet on the street have about what their role should have been or what their role is as part of the military culture. I think right from the beginning there has to be a recognition that these OSI injuries occur and that it's okay to seek help and that you will be supported as you move either into the Department of Veterans Affairs or back into your role in the military. It's okay to ask for help. That's not the message they're getting at this point. They're getting the message that they will be moved out from the military into Veterans Affairs without the opportunity to go back in. That's the dialogue I'm hearing.

So the communication has to come much earlier and it has to be consistent across the board.

[Greg Kerr, Conservative, West Nova, NS]

Does anybody want to add to that? I can come back with more questions, but I'm going to run out of time, so if anybody wants to comment....

[Lorne McCartney]

I just want to agree with you that there are many things that have to be done. One of the problems is that although the Department of Veterans Affairs is working on a lot of individual items, we don't hear about it enough. We know, for example, that we're looking at SISIP and trying to replace SISIP so that what we believe the veterans should be receiving can happen, but we don't know how far they are along in that. It's things like this. That's one of the problems that's hurting us in trying to achieve what we believe veterans should receive.

So that's one of the problems, communications from the Department of Veterans Affairs to the veterans organizations, and everyone for that matter. Then, of course, with these guys we're saying that we have to let the people who are out there, the spouses, the family, everybody, know what they can do.

We've discussed this recently, whether they should put envelopes out to everybody who was released from the Canadian Forces, explaining things, how often should it be done, that sort of thing. So Veterans Affairs is looking at it. It's just taking a while to see the fruits of that labour.

[The Vice-Chair (Mr. Robert Oliphant), Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you.

Now we move to Mr. Andrews, from the Liberal Party.