Veterans Affairs Committee on May 9th, 2013

[Thomas Murphy]

I'll use my own personal family member as an example. There's a provider who comes in for four to six hours a day and does some basic cooking for him and provides basic medical treatment, and there is a nurse who comes in on a periodic basis. That falls right into the realm of Aid & Attendance, and it's targeted at allowing that veteran who needs a little bit of help at home in order to continue to live independently. That money will also be paid if the veteran needs to go into a full-care facility. Again, this is tied back to a needs basis. It has to do with a combination of what assets you have, your life expectancy, and any other income you have.

[Bryan Hayes, Conservative, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Does that program provide any yard maintenance services, snow removal and grass cutting, things like that?

[Thomas Murphy]

Not directly, no.

[Bryan Hayes, Conservative, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

In terms of funerals and burials for veterans, what does the United States provide for veterans with respect to the funeral and burial program, or is there one?

[Thomas Murphy]

There is a burial program. We're actually in the middle of rewriting several of those regulations. Depending on the status of the veteran—a veteran as opposed to a disabled veteran, as opposed to a severely disabled veteran—there are different levels of compensation. It could be as little as $300 or it could be as much as $2,000-plus, depending on the particular circumstances for that veteran. For example, if you die of a service-connected condition, there's a different level of compensation—that takes you up to the $2,000 level. For a disabled veteran who dies from something that is not service-connected, there's a different level of compensation.

I'll even tell you what it is we're looking at. The dollars here are not real big, and we're looking at whether there is a way we can streamline this program. We've put an inordinately large number of resources in to make determinations on very one-time expenditures of small dollars. We're looking at a way for that program to be streamlined and sped up, and to compress all the different options into some that are a little easier to manage for us.

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

Thank you very much.

Our next member will be speaking to you in French. You should be hearing the translation, though there might be a little time hesitation.

Mr. Chicoine, from the NDP, please, you have five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My thanks to our guests for participating in the study we are conducting.

Gentlemen, could we go back to one of the elements in your opening statement? I am referring to the VBMS and the move to automated applications.

Are veterans responding well to the change, or is there some resistance, say from older veterans who may have more difficulty adapting to it?

[Thomas Murphy]

That's an excellent question. We are getting a lot of questions about that.

I'll tell you what the fear is right up front. The fear is that we're going to automate the process, take people out, and allow computers to make rating decisions. That's the only concern we're getting from people. Across the board, it's a blanket...people say they love the idea; it's going to help us go faster. But also across the board, the comment is that we must ensure that a person is making the decision, doing that last check before it's allowed to go out the door, and making a rating decision on a veteran. That's exactly how we've designed this. We've built certain pieces of automation in, which I haven't clearly explained or laid out to you, that allow a claim to come in, without a lot of human interaction, and get to the point where a rater—the one who makes that determination—looks at it for the first time with the recommended rating decision in place. We put that step in on purpose so that a human intervenes at that point. The concept is that we want the rater to step in and make sure that, number one, it passes the common sense status, and number two, that the totality of the evidence in a file was considered before a decision is rendered.

With those safety measures in place, we're getting wide acceptance across the country on this.

[Robert Reynolds]

I would add just a couple of things. We know from the surveys we've done that over 73% of our veterans say they want to interact with us online. That's why we're trying to drive to this capability. The biggest concern we heard—and “concern” might not be the right word. As we moved this stuff online for our veterans to come in and do self-service, we were hearing from our veterans service organizations, who represent these veterans free of charge, helping with their claims, that we might be cutting them out of the system. So we created another system, called the Stakeholder Enterprise Portal, that allows them to work on behalf of the veteran they hold accreditation for, to do that claim online as well.

That's the big part we're working towards now, bringing them in, because many of our veterans service organizations are a little older-generation as well. But they are receptive to it. And that's only been out since February 17. That's in the very early stages right now, but they are using it and we're getting that feedback from them.

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

Thank you.

So an older veteran who may not wish to apply online is still able to do it in person, with someone else's help.

[Robert Reynolds]

Yes.

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

That's great, thank you.

Those are cases where offices are important. I imagine that people like that are directed to one of the 57 offices you have all over the country, are they not?

[Thomas Murphy]

Yes, or through our biggest channel of veterans coming in the door, which is our veterans service organizations. Over 70% of our veterans are represented by a power of attorney through our veterans service organizations. The channel is primarily through one of those organizations to us.

To the key point of your question, we will always maintain the ability for a veteran to come in and file in the paper world, because there are some veterans who just flat out do not want to operate in an electronic environment.

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

Thank you.

Could you also talk to us about your new web portal? It looks very interesting. It is very personal and interactive. Veterans can do things like make appointments and renew prescriptions. Could you tell us how the new portal is helping to improve the veterans' health and status?

[Robert Reynolds]

That will be part of my presentation, but if you like, I can go into it to answer the question.

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

Yes, of course.

[Robert Reynolds]

The eBenefits portal is a joint portal with the Department of Defense and VA. The two largest federal agencies have joined together to create this portal. We're the consumers; they're the suppliers of all our veterans.

DOD have made it mandatory that all service members must get an account upon entering. That gives us the ability to interact with them at the earliest possible point and throughout their careers.

E-benefits right now has 2.6 million registered users, with about 50 self-service features. It's like a big house. There are rooms off that house. A room might be our medical centre, so that's where I order my hearing aid batteries or my prescriptions. That's where I get my certificate of eligibility for my home loan. That's where I file my claim for disability compensation. That's where I would transfer my entitlement for my education benefit—chapter 33, the post-9/11 GI bill.

Again, it adds all these, and it keeps building with every release. We do a release every quarter. It's very agile. It moves very quickly.

Now we're starting to work with other federal agencies, such as the IRS and SSA, again empowering and providing the information to veterans that they might be entitled to.

Probably the nicest feature is that since we have all this data about you, we pre-populate all your forms. We make determinations automatically with a rules base. If you're a female veteran, when you log in, your view will be different from my view as a male veteran, because we know you're a female veteran. We call that persona base.

We have everyone from a World War II air veteran who has an account to somebody who walked in the door today.

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

Thank you very much. As you say, we'll hear the rest of your presentation in a few minutes, but we appreciate that very much.

Now we'll go to Mr. Lobb, from the government side, for five minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our guests here today. We really appreciate your taking the time to provide us your information.

One question I had was on the topic of financial management. I know in Canada many of the young veterans often struggle with managing their finances from time to time, whether or not they've received a lump-sum payout for their disabilities.

Are there any services that you provide to your young veterans to help them cope, not only with their disabilities or their health issues, but also with their finances and their family's finances?

[Robert Reynolds]

I'll get into that a little when I do my presentation.

One of the things we do for our home loan benefit, regardless of whether or not you hold a mortgage with VA, is we provide servicing with a letter to do everything possible to avoid foreclosure. Again, that's for our prevention of homelessness. So you can stay in that house without losing that loan; it's a huge benefit. Whether you have the mortgage with VA or not, we'll work on your behalf to readjust that payment or whatever for you.

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

How would you qualify for the mortgages you provide for a veteran? Is everybody eligible? How competitive are they with the market rates you'd get for a mortgage?

[Thomas Murphy]

We don't do the loan itself directly, so you still have to qualify under the lender's qualification criteria. What we do is provide the guarantee to the lender. If they take additional risks with that veteran, we'll guarantee that they're not going to lose money. This covers up to 25% of the value of the home. It allows a veteran to move into a home for no money out of pocket. It allows them to do that without having to come up with the 20%-plus normally required to get into a home in the first place.

This program has been hugely successful for us. About three or four months ago, we did our 20 millionth loan. Our foreclosure rate on those homes is best in class in the industry, bar none. This is because of our aggressiveness. Any time there's a mispayment or a late payment, we step in—we restructure loans and we do financial counselling for the veterans. We help them get back on track and stay in that house. It's a best-in-class performance at very low risk to the private sector.

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

It sounds like that model might have been helpful in the housing crisis you guys had.

[Thomas Murphy]

Yes.

[Robert Reynolds]

It's a very effective program.