Thank you very much for the opportunity, Mr. Chairman.
Honourable members of the committee, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to express my sincerest appreciation for the opportunity to be here before you and to offer some thoughts on expected rehabilitation outcomes and services for disabled veterans.
Having lived with a serious spinal cord injury as a result of an industrial accident for the past 35 years, I will try to shape your review in a slightly different direction. Doing this in 10 minutes will be a challenge, but I will try my best.
My comments today are structured into four basic elements: personal experience, consideration of the disability context, what we want to achieve as the optimum outcome for disabled veterans, and the potential opportunities I think you may wish to consider.
My experience with a permanent disabling injury dates back to June 1977, when, as a 20-year-old graduate from a polytechnic institute, I joined the workforce of MacMillan Bloedel, which was then Canada's largest forest products company and British Columbia's largest employer. I was given a power saw, a pamphlet showing how to fell trees, and was told, “Good luck.” The fifth day on the job, a 50-foot alder tree barber-chaired and came down on me. It broke my back and left me with a significant spinal cord injury.
Whether such injuries are a result of military service or some other industrial accident, or not related to an occupation, the impact on the individual and the individual's family and the required rehabilitation measures are identical. This brings me to the overriding outcome we are trying to achieve for the individual, namely, maximizing participation of the disabled individual in all aspects of our society: economically, socially, and recreationally. I was most fortunate to have been given that opportunity, and I am privileged to be here with you today.
Through the National Institute of Disability Management and Research, established 18 years ago as a joint business-labour-government partnership, and supported through an endowment, we've created educational and professional certification and program standards designed to facilitate more effective return-to-work outcomes for individuals who have acquired a disabling condition and are at risk of losing their employment.
Structurally, the standards are administered similarly to what you find in the ISO model. So far, they have been adopted in 16 countries, and through an agreement we signed last fall with the International Social Security Association, a UN-based agency in Geneva bringing together 333 national social security carriers in 153 countries, NIDMAR's standards will be a core element for the global return-to-work best practice guidelines planned for rollout by the United Nations later this fall.
By way of improving outcomes for disabled veterans—and an effective service delivery model is part of that—I will draw on my experience as chair of the Premier's Council for Persons with Disabilities in British Columbia. I also spent over six years on the panel of administrators responsible for the B.C. Workers' Compensation Act, which is not dissimilar to Veterans Affairs, as the occupational injury carrier for disabled veterans. In addition, I spent a number of years on the Veteran Affairs advisory committee.
Key to my rehabilitation was my almost immediate ability to continue productive participation in the workforce, a result of the company accepting full responsibility for the accident and collaborating with the union to develop a creative opportunity for my ongoing employment, even though I was in a wheelchair and there was no precedent for doing this in a logging camp of 450 workers on the west coast of Vancouver Island.
Having strategies aimed at maintaining the economic and social productive capacity of the disabled individual is critical for both the employer—in this case, we believe, the Government of Canada—and the disabled veteran. There is an overabundance of national and international evidence to support the strategy, especially if the conundrum of successfully maintaining an employment relationship is to be solved. Many of the associated psychosocial issues, whether they be long-term mental health concerns, dependencies, or other social challenges, will be largely mitigated through this employment relationship. Hence, there needs to be a clear understanding that the Government of Canada is the employer of disabled veterans and that it has an unequivocal responsibility for their continued employment.
In our opinion, there is absolutely no valid reason, given the scope and scale of government operations, for not accommodating the overwhelming majority of disabled veterans within the diverse range of government departments.
We all identify with our role in society, and a key part of that role is gainful employment. It gives us economic and social status; it gives us the flexibility to make our own decisions; and it clearly reduces our dependence on others, such as VAC and everything associated with it. I haven't had to deal with the WCB as much because I have an employer that also covers those benefits.
That being said, here is a quick context. We can only influence the employment outcome for an individual with a disability in one of two ways: by maintaining attachment to the pre-disability employer and avoid entering the social security system, or by optimizing return-to-work outcomes once workforce attachment is lost.
I understand that you have heard from vocational rehabilitation providers, but here are some considerations for you. In British Columbia we have approximately 80,000 disabled individuals on social assistance. The annual outflow rate from the system is 0.75%. They leave through either death or retirement. A similar number applies to the approximately 330,000 individuals on Canada Pension Plan disability. This percentage is consistent with the experiences of social security agencies around the world.
If someone has been out of the workforce for six months or longer on account of a disabling condition, the odds of ever going back to work are greatly reduced, if non-existent.
Additionally, the U.K. Department for Work and Pensions estimates that the suicide rate for unemployed individuals with disabilities is approximately 40 times that of the average population.
On specific issues to address, I would urge the committee to immediately address the question of the DND/VAC interface, since it is always a drawn-out process. It can sometimes take up to three years or longer before an intervention commences, hence radically stacking the odds against the veteran. A triage process, such as the ones used by many successful WCBs around the world, could be most helpful in this.
Experience from across Canada and around the world suggests that vocational rehabilitation providers should be compensated through a staggered process based on concrete employment outcomes for disabled veterans, not merely employability measures, such as improving their resumé writing skills, and so on.
You may wish to benchmark VAC's current compensation and service delivery model against some of our workers' compensation boards for comparison. You may also wish to consider adopting the government employees compensation model. It is a federal-provincial partnership and would likely give you much greater system efficiencies. I can certainly explain a lot of these things in greater detail.
Effective return-to-work and disability management interventions for disabled veterans require strict adherence to substantive adoption of three core principles: creativity, because no two situations are ever quite alike; collaboration, because successful reintegration of disabled veterans requires absolute participation by all stakeholders; and commitment, which is leadership at all levels, and full acceptance of responsibility is the key. Without this being spelled out quite clearly, nothing will happen.
Honourable members, I suggest that the above core principles—and for that matter, all of the presentations you receive—be measured against the overriding objective: how do current policies, procedures, and actions contribute toward maximizing the human and productive capacity of disabled veterans? How do they optimize their continued successful participation in all aspects of our society? And what evidence is being presented to you to support achievements toward this objective?
Failure to support and ultimately achieve these objectives forces many disabled veterans, not unlike disabled individuals in general, to the margins of society economically and socially, with all the inherent tragedies, which are well documented around the world.
Incidentally, these issues are not limited to disabled veterans but apply broadly to people with disabilities, in Canada and around the world, which is why I am personally very pleased that Canada ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
In conclusion, a couple of elements are key if we are to produce long-term positive economic and social outcomes for disabled veterans: recognition by the Government of Canada of its employer responsibilities for disabled veterans, no different from large leading-edge private sector organizations; commitment towards implementation of best practice return-to-work and disability management programs, using internationally recognized and adopted optimum practice standards.
Consider a new model for service delivery through partnerships with provincial workers' compensation boards, specifically using their rehabilitation departments whose staff have intimate jurisdictional knowledge of all relevant issues relating to optimizing successful rehabilitation potential for disabled workers.
In summary, honourable members, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to speak. I encourage you to take all necessary steps in ensuring that, for those individuals who have suffered a disabling condition while serving our country, this unfortunate stroke of fate does not relegate them to the margins of our society in perpetuity.
Thank you very much.