Veterans Affairs Committee on Oct. 3rd, 2012

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

Go ahead, Mr. Chicoine.

[Sylvain Chicoine, NDP, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to ask Mr. Moore a question.

In the section of your brief entitled “Reducing Complexity”, you say:Please remove the artificial barriers and complexity to ensure our war-time veterans and their spouses have access to the Veterans Independence Program.

Could you explain a little more what you mean by that statement?

[Andrea Siew, Director, Service Bureau, Royal Canadian Legion]

For the veterans independence program, one of the primary gateways for access is that you must have a disability entitlement. For a World War II veteran or their surviving spouse, there's a huge process to go through to get that access.

We typically try to get a hearing loss disability entitlement. You have to actually send in an application form or have the veteran come in. You must have an older World War II veteran come in and fill out the application form, and then you have to send it to Veterans Affairs, get the audiogram, and do all of that. It can be a very lengthy process, especially for some of our older veterans. Then we can apply for the veterans independence program to get the housekeeping, the grounds-keeping, and some meals on wheels programs in the home to keep them there independently.

For all our war veterans, the Legion's position is that the program should be made available to all our war veterans and their spouses without them having to go through those barriers and hoops for the eligibility. The program is about keeping them in their homes. It's about making a safer environment for them. The Gerontological Advisory Council, in their 2006 report, called it “Keeping the Promise”, and Veterans Affairs has not kept that promise for these older veterans.

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

Thank you very much.

We're actually over quite a bit on Ms. Turmel's time, and since I did allow it, I'm going to make each of the four-minute rounds into five-minute rounds, because we've gone over quite a bit. If that's okay...?

We'll go to Mr. Lizon, now for five minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

First of all, I would like to acknowledge and welcome our veterans present here. Thank you very much again for your great service to our great country.

Thank you very much to the witnesses for coming. Thank you for your work for veterans.

Before I ask a question, I'll make a general comment. We are living in a rapidly changing world, and I truly believe that whatever we do, we have to acknowledge the fact that the world is changing and the way people communicate is changing. We have to prepare people for new ways of communication; it's something we cannot avoid.

People used to communicate by phone. Most of us here will remember rotary phones. I remember the phone that was before that. It only had a crank, and you would get the operator on the other side, who would connect you. Some people probably don't remember that.

And not necessarily everybody had a phone at home. There was either a phone booth or the post office. Therefore, on the argument that not everybody has a computer now or access to the Internet, I would agree; maybe not at home. But there are places, and many of them, to which people can and do go to use a computer. The same argument could have been made then, that not everybody has a telephone and that therefore within walking distance there should be an office where you go to meet someone face to face.

I hear negative comments from...on the part of the Legion, and I know they do tremendous work with veterans. I work with and am always in touch with the Legion in Mississauga, in Cooksville. I rather hear positive comments on many initiatives that we do.

As my colleague said before, there is always room for improvement. If something doesn't work, I guess we are in a position to change it, to expand it, to go a different route. But I think we should be flexible and open-minded, if I may say so.

I would like to ask a question on the topic of proactive communication with veterans. Of course communication is a core, important function of Veterans Affairs Canada. We've spoken about plain language in the letters that are sent to veterans.

Can you outline how your office and department communicates proactively with veterans on the many aspects of changes that are taking place at Veterans Affairs Canada?

[David Robinson]

I'm afraid that probably neither I nor Maureen is expert on the external communications, but I think it would be fair to say that we can be doing a lot more to talk about how we're improving our service offerings for vets. I can't tell you more than that.

One of the things I can talk about is that when we're talking about the transformation agenda inside Veterans Affairs, one of the first groups of people we have to communicate with is our own employees. I think we need to do a much better job of telling them how the world of work is going to change for them.

But sir, I can't tell you any more about external communications.

[Maureen Sinnott]

I can add a small piece of information.

For the My VAC Account clients who have signed up for a My VAC Account and have given us a valid e-mail address and expressed a preference for being communicated with electronically and online, we would be sending messages saying “Please check your My VAC Account; we have sent a message to you recently, and you should check it there”, so that they get a secure message from the department.

If a person expresses a wish to communicate with us electronically, which is a new way for us, then we honour that request rather than send them paper mail at this point.

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

Do you have an idea what percentage communicate electronically with you at this point?

[Maureen Sinnott]

As of last week, we had 2,700 individuals who communicate with us online through the My VAC Account, and we receive around 300 questions or e-mails through the secure messaging.... E-mail is the wrong terminology, and I'm not a technical expert, but we receive somewhere around 300 messages from those veterans in the run of a week.

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

Thank you very much.

You used three of your five minutes to give us that eloquent introduction. I just wanted to make that point.

I'm not sure whether Mr. Chicoine or Ms. Morin will pick up...?

It will be Ms. Morin, then.

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I would like to go back to what Ms. Adams was saying earlier about receipts. Perhaps I did not fully understand. I am not a member of this committee; I am replacing another member.

Veterans used to need receipts before being reimbursed for their travel to see a doctor, a psychologist or a psychiatrist. As I understand it, they will no longer need those receipts. For example, if I move and live 300 km from my family doctor, but I still want that doctor's services, can I sign up for a ridesharing program to go to see him and claim the cost of a plane ticket?

[Maureen Sinnott]

As I understood that, you said that you've moved three to five kilometres away; are you saying it's 300 to 500 kilometres away, and asking whether you can claim a plane ticket?

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Yes.

[Maureen Sinnott]

We would likely suggest to you, as to any other member of the general public, that it would be more useful for you to obtain the services of a physician in your local community rather than purchase a plane ticket whenever you need to see a physician.

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

We know that there is a shortage of family doctors in Quebec and that not everyone has one. If a person wants to keep the same doctor, after moving 300 or 400 km away from that doctor, the person can travel by car. If I drive, it costs me $100 for gas. But could I claim the cost of a plane ticket, now that receipts for travel expenses will no longer be checked?

[David Robinson]

This sounds like a really extreme example, but I think the short answer is that we would have to take a look at each individual case. There could be cases, where people live in a remote area, in which they require service and there just is no medical professional in the area. That's reality. That happens here. So we would have to take a look at that.

But for generalities, it's hard to say.

[Maureen Sinnott]

We have paid to send people to specialists on a referral basis. We have paid for and reimbursed folks for plane tickets, hotel rooms, and an individual to travel with them, if they are unable to travel by themselves and so on.

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

I am sorry, but I do not have a lot of time. Let me put the question another way.

Can someone use their car, spending $100 in gas, but claim $1,000 as if he had bought a plane ticket? The claim will not be checked, correct? That is my question.

[Maureen Sinnott]

We are not asking individuals to provide receipts with their health-related travel claims. However, the program allows for the department to request, on a verification basis, that we receive the receipts in order to verify them. We would do that on an irregular basis, if receipts were....

There's nothing to stop someone from generating receipts for travel that they didn't have, and that would show up when one looks at the claims. It would show up similarly if you visited your doctor who is 10 miles away and you claimed 1,000 miles.

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Great.

I have another question about a matter Mr. Lizon raised.

I am very pleased that you can do things online. I was born with a computer in my hands. My generation was. This interests me, of course. As I was listening to you, I decided to look at the content of the website. When I got to the welcome page, I saw that there are 50 options to look at. I feel the same way as I do when I call Sears and they ask me to choose “one of the following 18 options”.

I put myself in the shoes of an 80-year-old veteran who goes online and has 50 options to choose from. I wonder how that reduces red tape and how choosing from those 50 options is easier for the veteran. Can you shed any light on that for me?

[David Robinson]

We are improving all of our service delivery options. Web service is scheduled to be one of the things we pay additional attention to.

You are using your cell phone. A lot of our new clients belong to Generation X and Generation Y. That's how they are going to get service. It's not the way I would do it, but they will be looking at using portable devices—tablets and telephone—to get service.

Part of where we're going over the next three and a half years is to simplifying our service offerings so that they're easy to read on a handheld device. We're not there today, but we're going there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

Thank you.

Mr. Harris.

[Dick Harris, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

I understand that this is a work in progress. I've seen companies in the private sector work on websites for a long time before they got it right. When you're dealing with veterans, simplifying it is the best thing you can do. I wish you luck on that.

I want to get back to travel expenses. I think it's one of the areas that have undergone significant changes in the length of time and processing. The first part would be the length of time it took to process a travel claim prior to the red tape transformation exercise. Where are we now with travel claims with respect to time?

[Maureen Sinnott]

Right now it takes approximately three to five days for an individual to have a health-related travel claim processed. If the individual is on direct deposit, which was an early initiative, then the cheque is not sent to him in the mail. The cheque is deposited in the bank account, so it's a fairly short time period.

[Dick Harris, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

What was it before we went through the streamlining process?