Veterans Affairs Committee on March 13th, 2012

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

I'm going to call the committee together.

You all understand that we're dealing with the delivery of front-line health and well-being services for Canadian veterans.

I welcome our witnesses and I apologize for the delay. This being Parliament, of course, anything can and does tend to happen. So I appreciate that.

We're going to start by dealing with a motion. Then we'll go to the witnesses. Whatever time we have left will be for questions.

In appreciation of witnesses, if we can't cover everything we want to today and there are questions passed, we'll send them along, if you don't mind, and then perhaps get a written answer.

Mr. Casey, would you move your motion, please.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Mr. Chairman, the motion is before the committee. Do you require me to read it?

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

Yes.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Okay. It reads:

That, in light of ongoing breaches of privacy, the Standing Committee on Veteran Affairs conduct extensive open and public hearings in order to better understand what safeguards currently exist to protect the privacy of veterans; That the Committee provide recommendations to the government to better protect the privacy of our veterans and ensure access to personal or medical records is properly restricted to prevent their use for political purposes or accessed by political officials to intimidate veterans; That the Committee be tasked with finding what “best practices” exists in other jurisdictions to protect the privacy of veterans and that the Committee report its findings back to the House within two sitting weeks after completion of its study.

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

Thank you, Mr. Casey.

I'm prepared to rule this motion out of order.

In my opinion, the motion proposed today does not contain sufficient variance to constitute a new question. The committee has already dealt with the original motion.

I'd like to refer the member to page 582 of the House of Commons Procedure and Practice, which states that, “A decision once made cannot be questioned again but must stand as the judgement of the House.”

That's the ruling.

Are you going to challenge the decision?

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

No. I'm wondering—

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

You can challenge the decision, if you like.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

I guess I'm looking for some clarification. Can the chair point me to some minutes, some publication that indicates the question has been dealt with? Does it appear in the minutes somewhere?

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

We'll find the appropriate wording for you.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

The concern that I have is that there may be a breach of what happened in privacy, just on the basis of your ruling, sir.

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

No. But as I say, if you want to challenge the ruling, that's your prerogative.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

You've made a ruling where there's been no debate. I understand your ruling, but you've ruled on it without anyone having an opportunity to discuss it. Is it normal that nobody gets a chance to even debate the motion?

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

Yes. As I say, you can challenge the ruling, but there's no debate once I've made the decision, no.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

I challenge the ruling and I'd ask for a recorded division.

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

Okay.

Shall the ruling of the chair be sustained?

(Ruling of the chair sustained: yeas 6; nays 5)

Thank you very much.

As I said to our witnesses earlier, we'll be constructive. We'll try to keep the committee in charge.

I'll introduce the witnesses as we get to them, if you don't mind.

From the Public Service Commission of Canada, we have Anne-Marie Robinson, president; and Hélène Laurendeau, senior vice-president, policy branch.

Please begin. Thank you.

[Anne-Marie Robinson, President, Public Service Commission of Canada]

Thank you Mr. Chair and members of the committee.

I am pleased to be here today as part of this panel to talk about the initiatives of the Public Service Commission of Canada in enhancing opportunities in the federal public service for current and former members of the Canadian Forces.

I am accompanied by Hélène Laurendeau, Senior Vice-President of the Policy Branch at the Public Service Commission.

The commission is an independent agency reporting to Parliament. It is mandated to safeguard the integrity of the public service staffing system and non-partisanship of the public service. For over 100 years, the commission has upheld its mandate to ensure a merit-based, non-partisan federal public service.

The commission has also made an important contribution to the reintegration of Canada's veterans into civilian society by helping them find jobs in the public service.

Under the Public Service Employment Act and the Public Service Employment Regulations, the PSC is responsible for creating and administering priority entitlements.

These entitlements provide persons with the right to be appointed ahead of all others to any position in the public service for which they meet the essential qualifications. Priority entitlements help persons who have been affected by career transitions. The priority entitlement system also serves the important objective of helping the public service to retain skilled and competent people who the Government of Canada has trained and developed.

Since 1997, there has been a priority entitlement for Canadian Forces members who were released as a result of injury in a special duty area. In 2005, as part of the New Veterans Charter, that priority entitlement was expanded to include former members of the Canadian Forces and the RCMP who were released from service for medical reasons. Once medically released, these former members have five years to activate their priority entitlement, which then lasts for two years.

A more recent amendment came into effect in May 2010 extending priority entitlement to surviving spouses or common-law partners of public service employees and members of the Canadian Forces or the RCMP who lost their lives in the line of duty. Qualified surviving spouses are granted a priority entitlement, for up to two years, for appointments to externally advertised positions in the public service. This priority applies retroactively to October 7, 2001, when Canada began its military actions in Afghanistan.

While my remarks will focus largely on those priority entitlements, I would also like to mention the initiative taken in 2005 to amend the Public Service Employment Act and allow Canadian Forces members access to internal public service jobs.

Prior to this amendment, Canadian Forces members were not eligible to participate in advertised internal appointment processes. The amendment provides the option to departments and agencies governed by the Public Service Employment Act to identify Canadian Forces members as eligible on internal job notices. Also, Bill C-40, which came into force in 2008, protects the jobs of public service employees who serve in the reserve force and take a leave of absence for military service in Canada and abroad.

We have worked and will continue to work with people who manage programs that support veterans at the Department of National Defence and the Department of Veterans Affairs, to ensure that all those affected by these amendments are aware of their entitlements.

Our annual report to Parliament provides information on priority entitlements and appointments. As the two-year priority entitlement for medically released Canadian Forces and RCMP members can be extended over a number of fiscal years, and to give you a better example of how the program works, it's probably more useful to look at the placement results over a longer period of time.

We have looked at three cohorts, or groups, of medically released members. We took a look at appointments for those who registered for the entitlement in 2007-08, as well as the two subsequent years, up to 2009-10, when the two-year entitlements had all expired.

For the first cohort, there were 177 appointments of medically released members, followed by 196 appointments for the second, and 201 for the third. For all three cohorts we saw an appointment rate that was, on average, 72%. This is the highest rate of appointments by category in the priority administration system. For those who were appointed, we found that more than 60% were appointed within six months from the start of their priority entitlement, rising to 80% or more within 12 months, and more than 92% within 18 months.

We also found that more than 95% of these former Canadian Forces members obtained their jobs in the region of their residence.

The departments most likely to have positions available as part of their regional operations include the Department of National Defence, Correctional Service Canada, and Human Resources and Skills Development, including Service Canada.

Of those who were not appointed, for instance, among the first cohort of 2007-2008, nearly half accepted other job offers in other sectors.

While I am pleased with the results, I think there are areas for improvement. We took a closer look at the priority administration program, and our evaluation identified areas where we could be proactive and strengthen the program for the long-term benefits of former medically released members.

We found that we need to improve coordination and share information about the public service at the earliest possible time, because medically released members are sometimes not familiar with the public service staffing system.

We believe a case management approach can be more effective in working directly with former Canadian Forces members to advise them of their entitlements, helping them better understand the language of staffing, and assisting them more when they apply for jobs.

We're in the process of consulting with our partners about these ideas, and I certainly welcome your views.

In addition, I will be carefully watching the impacts of the changes to the priority system as a result of the government's deficit reduction action plan. Based on this analysis, we will be exploring whether some administrative measures could be tailored to allow medically released members to maximize the value of their entitlements.

Mr. Chairman and honourable members, let me assure you and your committee of our strong commitment at the Public Service Commission to continually strive to enhance the work we do to support medically released Canadian Forces and RCMP members. While their military and policing careers have been cut short, we will continue to do all we can to help bring their valuable experience and competencies to the federal public service.

Thank you for inviting me to speak with you today. I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

Thank you very much, Ms. Robinson.

We'll now go to Mr. Blakely, here on behalf of the Building and Construction Trades Department.

Welcome, and please proceed.

[Robert Blakely, Director, Canadian Affairs, Building and Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO, Canadian Office]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My name is Bob Blakely, and I am here on behalf of Building and Construction Trades Department.

Mercifully, I will continue in English.

Helmets to Hardhats is a program we have launched as a public-private partnership. Last January 6, in the boilermakers' union hall in Edmonton, the Prime Minister of Canada brought together a group of people who were going to launch an initiative to find ways to give transitioning Canadian Forces veterans, serving reservists, and disabled veterans careers in Canada's construction industry.

At 14% of GDP and 8% of all direct employment, construction is one of the high-paying, high-challenge, high-skill occupations in this country, and there are positions that are in demand.

The lead of the Government of Canada was followed up with a cash donation, so did the Government of Alberta step to the plate with money, and TransCanada Pipelines stepped up with $1 million over five years. That money is being matched and sweat equity is being put in by the Building and Construction Trades Department, and by a number of our employer partners and their absolute alphabet soup of various kinds of trade associations across the country. The objective is to get people good jobs in an industry that matters for this country.

We've launched the initiative. We've incorporated a not-for-profit corporation. We've established a board of directors. We've gone out with a request for proposals to create a website—a significant portion of the initial intake for people into Helmets to Hardhats will be through a web portal and through a website. We're looking to get initial staffing with an executive director and an administrative assistant.

In the interim, we've had some limited but significant successes actually placing people with companies that are looking for apprentices, or looking for people who need or want to access a job in construction.

At CFB Edmonton we've had a number of people go into the boilermakers. At CFB Esquimalt through the Vancouver Island building trades, we've had people who have gone to work in the shipyards, because it takes the same skills to build a ship as it takes to build a house—with a lot less wood nowadays, but that's neither here nor there. And the base in Toronto, a number of people have gone into the pipe trades.

These have basically been through local arrangements that we've made through the TAP program—the transition assistance program—as veterans have left, with assistance from Veterans Affairs Canada and with assistance from the various apprenticeship boards across the country, and we're finding ways to match people with apprenticeships.

In some cases, people leave the Canadian Forces with a full skill toolkit. The 500 series trades, all of the construction trades, the hull mechanics from the navy, some of the engineering trades, and the people who keep tanks running are the same people who keep heavy equipment running, so some of those are pretty easy transitions.

We're trying to find a way to build a good skills translator, which takes the skills someone learned in the Canadian Forces and puts them into a placement that would fit a) their interests and b) some of the skills they have.

We were a while in convincing government that this was something that was worth doing, but we certainly realized, together with our employer partners, a long time ago that there is an enormous resource in people who have served in the Canadian Forces. They are generally fit, they are drug free, they have self-discipline, and they understand to show up at 7 o'clock in the morning with their personal protective equipment on, their boots laced up, and ready to go to work. We want to maximize that in our industry.

Generally speaking, we've been successful in everything we've touched so far. We have a model in the United States, which is also called “Helmets to Hardhats”, and is also done through the building trades there, and a number of other programs we're looking at that are going to give us some direction. There is, for example, through the plumbers union, something called the VIP program, Veterans in Piping, where people who are going to leave the American forces go to Camp Pendleton, the marine base in the U.S., and for the last four weeks of their enlistment, someone shows them how to thread pipe, how to weld, and some basic use of hand tools in the plumbing trade. So when they go home, they have a start on an apprenticeship.

So we're looking for some of those things to do. We have a concept. We have a number of partnerships, and we're looking forward to being able to put veterans of the Canadian Forces to work in one of Canada's best industries.

I'll respond to your questions in due course.

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

Thank you very much, Mr. Blakely. It's a great initiative.

Now I want to turn to our friends, the commissionaires. We have Mr. Bill Sutherland, chair of the national board of governors; Paul—and I'm always going to mispronounce it—Guindon?

[Captain, N) (Retired) Paul Guindon (Chief Executive Officer, Commissionaires Ottawa, Chairman, National Business Management Committee, Commissionaires]

Guindon. No problem.

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

See? I'll get there. Give me another few years. Thank you, and of course, Douglas Briscoe.

Welcome, gentlemen, and we'll hear your presentation, so please proceed.

[Colonel, Retired) Bill Sutherland (Chair, National Board of Governors, Commissionaires]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you very much for the opportunity for us to appear before you today. We're here as probably one of the best-kept secrets, and probably one of the organizations that provides the best value for money in support of veterans that the country has.

We're one of the organizations—if not the only organization, apart from government—that has been providing transition services to veterans. We've been doing this longer than anybody else, since we were initially formed in 1925.

Rather than repeating what is in our written submission, let me just talk to you a little bit about who we are as Commissionaires. We are a not-for-profit organization. We're the largest employer of veterans in the country, and we are a volunteer-led organization of veterans for veterans. I am a veteran, as are my two colleagues. We understand what's important for veterans, and we try to adapt to their needs. We provide a spectrum of support—transitional support and employment support—to veterans, from Second World War veterans through to the veterans who are coming out of the Afghan experience, and everyone in between, whether they be peacekeeping veterans or war veterans.

We focus primarily on the security business in the country, because we have found over time that the security field is something that is directly relatable to many of the skill sets and the expectations that veterans have when they're leaving the forces. It provides a very good stepping stone, a very good transitional point for veterans as they leave the forces to transition into something else in the civilian world.

We are driven by a social mandate. As a not-for-profit organization, our primary purpose is our social mandate, and our social mandate has been and remains providing meaningful employment to veterans. That is what we're about. We get no donations. We get no subsidies from anybody. We provide the employment that we provide as the largest employer of veterans in the country through being successful businesses and competing in the security field, head to head with private sector security firms. That means that we have to be smart at what we do. That means we have to be good at what we do, and that means that we have to be sensitive to the needs of veterans, and try to balance the needs and the competition that we experience in the competitive environment of the security industry in the country, with all of those things that are driven by our social mandate.

Ninety-five percent of our proceeds, of what we make by being successful businesses, is turned back into salaries and benefits for commissionaires, for veterans, and that's a pretty significant return, if you think about it. We concentrate on keeping our overhead as low as possible, so that we can return as much as possible in terms of salaries and benefits to veterans and to commissionaires across the country.

We are represented in 1,200 communities across the country from coast to coast to coast. We are organized in 17 divisions. Every province and every territory is a part of one of the divisions, and we have 50 offices across the country. We have a fairly significant reach.

We also have an 87-year proven track record of understanding and supporting veterans, and providing employment for veterans. We believe very strongly that the best way to look after the transitional needs and the health and wellness of veterans is to provide them with meaningful employment, so that they have the self-esteem, they have the time, and they have the firm footing in an organization such as ours that provides the understanding and the camaraderie that they have left behind in the military, so that they have those things at their beck and call, to their benefit. This allows them to have a better prospect of integrating well into the civilian environment.

We have about 1,000 to 1,200 veterans leaving the forces in any given year who come through us as commissionaires. They don't stay for a career, a second career. We don't expect them to stay for a second career. But what we do expect is that we can provide them with that safe haven, and that sort of assistance, that understanding assistance, in their transition so they can become meaningfully reintegrated into Canadian life.

We also find that we get veterans who return to the Commissionaires later in their life, so almost as a third career when they're sort of winding down and they want the same sort of camaraderie again. So veterans are coming back to us later in their lives. As an organization, we have to be flexible, we have to continually adapt ourselves to the changing needs of veterans. We have to be there for the older veterans, the Second World War and the Korean War veterans, as well as for that increasingly large number of younger veterans we're seeing who have come out of the Balkans, Afghanistan, and various peacekeeping operations.

We're a pretty well-kept secret because not a lot of people know about us. The veterans know about us. We also provide excellent value for money because we don't cost you any money, yet we are the largest employer of veterans in the country.

With that, I will leave it there and I'd be happy to answer any questions, and the difficult questions, because I am a volunteer, I will pass over to my colleagues.

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

Thank you very much, Mr. Sutherland.

Given the tightness of time, does the committee agree to four minutes for questions for the first round, to make sure we get everybody in?

Okay. Thank you for that.

We'll begin with Ms. Mathyssen for four minutes, please.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

My first question is to Mr. Sutherland, and I'll try to make it not terribly difficult. I understand that in November 2010, the Commissionaires signed a return-to-work memorandum, a memorandum of understanding with the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces, whereby you agreed to provide CF members, injured in the line of duty, with employment opportunities that met their needs.

I just wonder if you could explain how the MOU works and what it implies for commissionaires. Can you also provide examples of the employment opportunities tailored for these physically or psychologically injured CF members?

[Col Bill Sutherland]

Sure, I'd be happy to just answer that very briefly, and then I'm going to hand it over to Doug Briscoe, who is our point person on the MOU.

Because we have a social mandate that drives us—the meaningful employment of veterans—part of the social mandate is that, to the extent we are able, we will try to employ anybody who is a veteran who comes through our door. And we will try to adapt employment to their needs.

The MOU that you're referring to, I would describe it as being an innovative approach to working more closely with DND to help veterans transition earlier than would have normally been the case if we just waited for them to leave DND and come to us.

I'll hand it over to Doug to explain some of the details.