Veterans Affairs Committee on June 7th, 2012

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Really?

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

Does it seem any longer than four? No...?

Ms. Mathyssen, for five minutes, please.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much for being here.

I have a number of questions, but I wanted to focus in on what Mr. Kokkonen and I think Mr. Eggenberger said in regard to concerns. I think you used the word “irritant”. Coming back to Mr. Stoffer's question, you talk about those who served under the understanding of “unlimited liability”, and you say that, in return, Canada “has a duty to provide [appropriate] care to its wounded, injured, sick, and aged veterans”.

This pertains to the fact that they are indeed closing long-term care beds for veterans. The World War II and Korean veterans are disappearing, and those beds are gone. We keep hearing over and over again that all is well, and that it's fine that this care is transferred down to the province. My question is, though, is this the obligation of the province or does the federal government have a real role that it should be playing instead of downloading to the provinces?

[Col John Eggenberger]

Who did you want to answer that?

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

Either one of you—or both, actually.

[Ray Kokkonen]

I think I can start here with the simple statement that the people of Canada have an obligation to the veterans of Canada. I don't need to go any deeper. Now, how the people of Canada decide to pay that obligation or to fulfill that obligation, that's what our government looks after.

We're an apolitical organization.

[Col John Eggenberger]

That suits me.

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

Okay.

So the people of Canada need to direct their government to fulfill those obligations as they see fit.

[Ray Kokkonen]

Well, not exactly. The obligation is on the people of Canada, and the thing that drives Canada is our government. It's the government's obligation, then, to fulfill that obligation of the Canadian people towards its veterans.

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

Okay.

You also expressed a concern in regard to the cuts to personnel at Veterans Affairs. What are those specific concerns? What do you see happening as a result of those cuts?

[BGen Joseph E.L. Gollner]

Madam, we know that in aggregate terms 800 people are going to disappear from Veterans Affairs—550 involved in the transformation and 250 subsequently—but behind it all is a Treasury Board study, the Coulter report, which was done in 2010. We have been trying desperately to find out what it contains. We don't know. It triggered the transformation process. We were told that it's cabinet secret.... We don't have any basis for what triggered this or where the focus of that study was, but the study was done by a federal ministry, and that started the process.

That was done in 2010. We have heard various comments by our minister, but we don't have any substance and really can't say that they're cutting 15 people here or 20 there. You heard the presentation on May 8 that talked about the various sleight-of-hand operations, but as for what's the overall plan, we don't know.

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

In terms of losing those personnel, there's no sense of how the ministry, the department, would conduct its business. Is that a concern or not?

[BGen Joseph E.L. Gollner]

It's certainly a concern, because wherever there's doubt, there's always concern. With the scale of the transformation and Veterans Affairs going from 4,000 to 3,200, that's a pretty dramatic change, and the veterans population is not going to change that radically in the next three years.

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

Thank you very much.

In fact one of the things we heard from the ombudsman was that there will be an increased demand. So many folks are coming back from Afghanistan, and of course, there are the peacekeepers who haven't even accessed the system yet. There's no sense of what needs they will place on Veterans Affairs and the services involved.

To either Ms. Murray or Ms. Park, you made mention of the fact that case managers would have 30 teams to deal with. Could you explain that? It sounds like a huge workload.

[Nancy Murray]

Overwhelming, yes; and that's why in complex cases, where clients are in great need and at high risk, they want to reduce the numbers.

My comment was that if one case manager manages 30 clients, in that sense, she still has to work with an individual team with each individual client. So one client might have a PT or OT nurse on it, another might have a social worker, or a speech pathologist. Each team would be different people with different areas. And because they are not in the same geographic area—it's a population-based approach—each case manager would have a team from a variety of professionals.

So that's what I mean. It is one case manager working with 30 clients, but each client is separately attended to in terms of the service plan and the interdisciplinary team that she works with.

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

So it could be a lot to deal with—

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

Thank you very much.

We're a minute and a half over your time. I try to be generous, as you know.

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

Thank you. I know you are indeed generous.

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

Mr. Lobb, please, for five.

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

Well, speaking as someone who sits besides him, his generosity is sometimes sporadic—nonetheless, it's generosity from time to time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

Is this “single out the chair” day?

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

Carry on, please.

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

The first question I have for our gentlemen today is with regard to page 2, paragraph 5.3, which talks about the Veterans Affairs committee report. I believe this is a report from last Parliament, which I believe was the review of the new Veterans Charter. “A Timely Tune-up”, I think it was called.

You indicate that there are 18 recommendations from the report that you'd like to see implemented. Do you have them prioritized, by chance? Are they in their top three or five?

[Ray Kokkonen]

The recommendations about which we are speaking here are the most recent ones that this committee made. The report came out in May of this year. Those are the ones I'm referring to.

We have not prioritized those in any way.