Veterans Affairs Committee on May 8th, 2012

[Charlotte Stewart]

I can address that question. The department is now in a process whereby we are making sure that our resources are where we need them the most. As is the case with all federal departments, we are making decisions and tough choices around making sure resources are in the right place at the right time.

There are areas of the country where the demand is increasing. I've spoken about those, and we expect that will continue. At the same time, there are areas of the country where we currently have district offices and the demand is declining.

We forecast this demand and we work very hard to understand what it means. What that means in some of these districts is that over time—not this year and not next year, necessarily, but past that point—we're going to see such a significant decline that we'll have to rebuild our service delivery model. That doesn't mean we're going to take services away from our veterans, and it doesn't mean that Veterans Affairs Canada will not be providing face-to-face service for veterans in those areas.

I'll use an example. If we have an area where currently we have an office and where perhaps the space is too large or whatever, then we're going to rightsize things. We have to do that. Frankly, it's in our accountability as professional managers in the public service to do that.

What it means, though, is that our case managers will still be there. They'll be able to provide face-to-face service. They'll be available to provide home visits. That is what's key. Case managers are the front-line staff who provide the service to our most complex cases, and that will not change.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Which district offices in Atlantic Canada are going to close?

[Charlotte Stewart]

The district offices in Atlantic Canada are Corner Brook, Sydney, and Charlottetown.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Those are the ones that are going to close...?

[Charlotte Stewart]

Those are forecast to close. That's correct. There will be no closures within the next two years, and what that shows is that we have a commitment to proper planning and getting things right. We have two years to set things up properly. As we look forward and project over those two years, we're going to find a better way to deliver services to people in those areas.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

So where are the district offices in Atlantic Canada that will survive?

[Charlotte Stewart]

We have offices in St. John's, Saint John, Fredericton, and Halifax, and we also have integrated personnel support centres. We have an integrated personnel support centre in Charlottetown, which is a satellite of the one in Moncton, and that will remain in place.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Thank you.

If I go to the very back of the report, it tells us who had a run at this. Who is the acting ADM of CS? I presume that's corporate services.

[Charlotte Stewart]

Yes, that's correct.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Who's that?

[David Robinson]

Our ADM of HR and corporate services is Heather Parry.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Okay. What is the ASDM?

[David Robinson]

That's the associate deputy minister.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Is that Madam Chaput?

[David Robinson]

That's correct.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

At page 8, you talk about “stakeholder engagement”. Now, I am aware that you have a stakeholder group that meets from time to time with the minister and the deputy. I remember hearing the stat that this stakeholder group has provided 500 recommendations, of which three have been followed. Is your plan for actively strengthening your approach for stakeholder engagement to disband that stakeholder group?

[Bernard Butler]

Perhaps, Mr. Chair, I will respond to the question.

Stakeholder engagement is an area of great interest to the department, to try to ensure we are working with a broad range of stakeholders. There may be some confusion on this, but previously we had a number of advisory committees that were set up over time, such as the Gerontological Advisory Council, the New Veterans Charter Advisory Group, and so on.

These various committees generated a number of reports over the years, going back some time now. Within those reports, roughly 250 recommendations were made. Of those 250 recommendations, the Department of Veterans Affairs has basically actioned about 160—fully or partially. Of the remaining, some of them were simply not feasible to implement. Some of them we've put on the side table. We're not dismissing them by any means, but they will come back to us at a future time as we look at various initiatives around transformation and around modernization of our health care programs.

But those were advisory councils. In the last few years, Veterans Affairs has had a very strong relationship with core veterans groups, with the traditional veterans groups such as the Royal Canadian Legion, ANAVETS, War Amps, and so on. We do realize and understand, however, that engagement needs to be broadened, so in the last year or two we have made a considerable effort to try to extend that outreach to a much broader range of veterans organizations. Some of them are fairly new. Some of them are largely founded in social media, for instance; however, all of them have outreach and an important role to play.

Over the last year we've had three meetings at a national level with a larger group of veterans stakeholders, and that is a committee we've been working with to try to share common issues, hear concerns of veterans organizations, and help us prioritize future directions. That's one aspect of a stakeholder strategy. There are certainly many others that we're working on to broaden our reach and engagement.

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

Thank you, Mr. Butler.

We've gone over the time quite a bit, but I know that question is important to everybody, so I didn't want to cut it off.

Mr. Lobb is next, for five minutes.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My first question is for Mr. Robinson.

Obviously, as the director general of transformation, you've had a lot of time to think about what has taken place in the past and where you'd like to see things go in the future. If you could boil it down, when you took this position, what were three glaring issues you saw where transformation was required so badly, and why?

[David Robinson]

Thank you very much for the question, Mr. Chair.

I'm new in the role of director general of transformation at Veterans Affairs. I joined the department and moved to Charlottetown only last November.

As for my previous experience, I came from another department completely. I came from the Department of Canadian Heritage, where I was in charge of all the planning and preparation for hosting the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in Vancouver in 2010. It was 10 years of work preparing for the bid and then preparing for the actual hosting of the games.

That was a large-scale project with a lot of moving parts and many partners. A big part of the work I did at Canadian Heritage was with many federal family members—some 42 departments and agencies. It was a very complex process to deliver something on time—

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Sorry, but I have to cut you off because we only have five minutes.

What would you say the specific three were?

[David Robinson]

I was very pleased on arrival to find that the transformation and changes the department was proposing were already well in place throughout the department. They didn't live in any one particular office. They were led right from the top by the deputy minister and associate deputy minister, and they lived throughout the organization.

What is most remarkable about the work that has already been done is some of the deliberate and careful planning that has gone into making sure that we continue to focus on delivering services to our vets and families and that we put systems in place that are going to enhance that experience.

Most specifically, quite a lot of work is being done on automation and making sure our networks are up to the task of handling quite a lot of data. We've talked about moving from paper records, and all the people who would be involved in handling paper records and all the storage required for paper records...to moving them to electronic records. It takes some time to make sure you have the rails to run all your freight down and to make sure you have the bandwidth required. We have been working to put all of that in place to allow that to happen.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Okay. So let's say that at the end of the five-year transformation period things are implemented, and you are satisfied with where it is, where it has gone, and where it is going to go. How are this committee, veterans, and veterans organizations going to be able to assess how well the transformation has been done?

I come from a background in industry, where we had a shared set of metrics. You could look at every day, week, or month, and you could see that you had 80% or whatever the number or target was. Is this something that the department is looking at implementing so that this committee, the Legion, and the veterans will know that you said you were going to do something, that you're doing it, and how well you're doing what you said you were going to do?

[Charlotte Stewart]

Perhaps I could address that question.

Yes, that's exactly what we are doing. We do have service standards already in place, but we've also set targets for where we want to reduce even further.

For instance, for our first applications for disability, we've set a target to go from 24 to 16 weeks, and that has already been achieved. That's a 30% reduction and we're hearing about that from our veterans.

We set a target for reducing from four weeks to two the time it takes to get your decision on eligibility for a rehabilitation program. That was achieved.

So we've set some goals, we're measuring them, and we're reporting on them.

Overall, the department has service standards. They are reported quarterly. They are available on our website.

Client satisfaction is key. We've always had fairly high satisfaction levels from our traditional war veterans—not so high from our Canadian Forces veterans. And that's our target. We want to excel in that area. So we're setting targets, we're measuring them, and we're reporting on them.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

So do you work with new veterans to agree on actually what they feel is value for what you are going to measure...? Because obviously.... I'm not saying you would, but you could cherry-pick what you thought was good service, and a new veteran would say, “I disagree”. So how do you have that meeting in the middle, that meeting of the minds where both sides agree?

Because obviously the department comes to our committee meetings and they say, “We're doing great and everything is going good”. Then sometimes we get other witnesses who come in and say the exact opposite.

So as a committee, these targets or metrics are very important. Because if everybody agrees to them, they have to agree with what the results are.