Veterans Affairs Committee on June 10th, 2013

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

Thank you, very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much for agreeing to share this time with us. I'm cognizant that this is probably a very early hour for you, and we're most grateful that you've made yourselves available.

I have a few questions. First, when military personnel retire, do they automatically receive a veterans' card? Do they automatically become registered, or is it up to the veteran to pursue that registration?

[Shane Carmody]

It's up to the veterans to determine whether or not they wish to make contact with the department.

We do have arrangements in place to assist veterans or servicemen—veteran servicemen and women and veterans transitioning from the defence force—on every Australian Defence Force base or on many of them so that we are visible and open to them. For those who have medical issues, of course, we're trying to ensure that we manage a continuity of care arrangement from their current care arrangements to their new care arrangements.

But to get to the core of your question, those who leave the defence force do not automatically become our clients.

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

One of the things that we encounter here is that CF personnel leave and may not have a visible injury or there may be something that wasn't apparent, and then 15 or 20 years down the road, suddenly they're in a situation where they really need support from Veterans Affairs, and very often we can't find them.

Do you encounter that at all? Is that a concern that you have?

[Shane Carmody]

We do encounter a bit of that. There is an extensive ex-service community network in Australia, so veterans quite often get in touch with the ex-service community, which leads them back to us. But we are cognizant of the fact that some people do just leave the Australian Defence Force, and defence forces in general, and wish to have no further contact and then do have issues.

We need to make ourselves as available as we can for them when they come back in, because we're not in a position to mandate that. Therefore, we need to provide every possible channel for them to find their way back to us or to be made aware of the services that might be available across the board, be they medical services, counselling, treatment, or pensions.

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

I was struck by the figures you provided when you began. You have about the same number of veterans as we have in Canada, but your budget to take care of them is about three times what our budget is here. I have to say that I'm a little bit envious.

I wanted to come back to the issue of the injured or incapacitated veteran and pensions. It's my understanding that if veterans are younger than the general age of retirement, they receive an income-tested pension. Beyond that, when they do reach the age of retirement of the general population, do they automatically move into that pension system? Is there a clawback of the pension if they're seen to be receiving more than the average Australian?

[Neil Bayles]

There's no clawback of the benefits provided. You might be referring to the capacity payments, which I talked about earlier. Those payments do stop at age 65, and then a veteran would be able to move on to an income-tested pension if they had limited means. The income support pensions are payable subject to an income and assets test. They would be able to receive their pension either from us or DVA, if they have what we call qualifying service—in other words they've done war-like type service. If not, they would then get their benefit income-tested pension from our social security department.

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

Thank you very much.

We now go to Mr. Lobb, for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you again for joining us here.

My first question has to do with the size of the budget. Maybe you mentioned it in the presentation and I happened to miss it, but of the $12 billion, what percentage would be paid directly in the form of pensions and other forms of income to veterans?

[Shane Carmody]

It's around $6 billion.

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

Okay, thank you.

In the area of case management, what kind of ratio of case managers to veterans do you try to target?

[Neil Bayles]

I can answer that.

Case management is something that we do use, but not for every veteran. A veteran has to make a claim for benefits from the department, and we then process that claim by working out the eligibility and payment of benefits.

I presume your question is around intensive case management. Is that your question?

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

That's correct. I'm talking about the people who would work on the front lines, who would work directly with veterans who are in the care of Veterans' Affairs.

[Neil Bayles]

We have front-line staff who are basically our information services in various locations around the country. They tend to provide information and direct veterans into our system, help them make claims by giving them the appropriate forms and information. But in our back-office part of the department we have claims assessors who would manage and determine a claim for compensation. We've had different types of claims assessors, depending on the nature of the benefits that are being claimed.

So we divide our workforce according to the types of programs we run, and staff become experts in particular types of benefits. Those staff will be responsible for the claim from the time it's received to the point of making a decision. They do the investigation and the decision-making, and they talk to the veteran around what information is required.

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

For our older veterans—

Oh, sorry.

[Shane Carmody]

The point I wanted to make, if I may, is that we don't case-manage everyone. As Mr. Bayles said, a lot of claims will just get managed and resolved. But we do have some case-management arrangements for particular groups. We intensely case manage new war widows; we intensely case manage in the mental-health space; and we intensely case manage what I call “difficult clients”, or clients who have a range of issues we need to closely manage.

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

I probably have time for one more question.

With our older veterans we have a program called the veterans independence program. It's a program that would help a veteran and perhaps his or her spouse stay in their home a little longer. It would cover costs such as outside maintenance, whether it's snow in the winter or grass-cutting in the summer, and perhaps some housekeeping.

I was just wondering if you have a similar program for your older veterans.

[Judith Daniel]

Thank you for the question.

We do have a number of programs that provide services of that type. Probably our main one is what we call our veterans' home care program, which provides domestic cleaning, low-level personal care, and some very limited maintenance and respite. We do provide other forms of aid and appliances for home maintenance, but the vast majority of in-home support and age-care support in Australia, the very intensive home-care packages, is not administered by this agency. Veterans access that alongside general citizens.

But we do quite a lot. We find our clients tend to enter residential care later than the general population, so we know we are doing good things in terms of keeping them in their homes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

Thank you very much.

We'll go to Mr. Zimmer, for five minutes, please.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for appearing at committee today. We're appreciating your comments.

The questions I have deal with that veteran-to-government interface, and we want to know a little bit about how that occurs. You've talked about it already. You've talked about an app and you've talked about some other ways a veteran is to approach Veterans' Affairs initially. But I wanted to know what that initial contact looks like. You say it's a veteran-initiated contact, but how does that look? If I'm a veteran and I'm just getting out of the service, how does that interaction play out? How do you know what they're going to get for benefits, and how do you let them know what they're due?

[Shane Carmody]

Thank you for your question.

We engage directly with the Australian Defence Force in what I call the transition space, when people are leaving the defence force, when they are managing transition seminars and a range of processes that are arranged around the servicemen and women when they're leaving the defence force. We make presentations at those.

We have our On Base Advisory Service, which I mentioned before, at 35 bases around the country, where we have Veterans' Affairs staff on bases, so actively engaging.

In a bit more than the last 12 months, we have launched our MyAccount program, which is our online access to the Department of Veterans' Affairs. We've been going for about 12 months. We have about 14,000 clients online now, and we're aiming for about 30,000 by the end of the year. We're trying to do as much as we can in the online space to make sure that our website and facilities are available so that people can see what we offer.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Can you just explain that by providing a little bit more information? You talked about going online as the way you're going, and we, as Veterans Affairs, have moved into that realm as well.

Can you just explain a little bit more what the other mode of contact is? Are there personal phone calls? Is there a follow-up mechanism just to make sure that the veterans understand. Or for the older veterans who aren't as proficient at using computers and those sorts of things, what do you have to service that expanse of veterans?

[Shane Carmody]

We have our band network, our VAN network, our Veterans' Access Network, which are our offices around the country.

We use a range of methods to contact veterans. We work very diligently through the veterans' organizations, but we make phone contact with our clients on a regular basis.

Of course, we don't cold-call our people who leave the defence force. It's up to them to determine whether they wish either to make contact or to lodge a claim, but we try our best to make sure that we're available to them.

As for the others, we have phone and e-mail contact. Surprisingly, the online users vary across ages, too, and we've had a lot of success with the more senior groups with online contact.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Thank you for that.

I have one last question. We're going through the process of looking at our veterans' system and how we compare internationally, as you know, which is why you're here.

But how often do you review your system of benefits and programs in Australia? Do you do it once every decade? Give us an example of how you introspectively look at your role.

[Neil Bayles]

That is a good question, and thank you.

We've recently done a major review of our latest act, the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Act. The government promised a review of that act, which commenced in 2009, and it took almost two years to do. Finally, the government agreed to a large number of recommendations in that report, through a budget decision of 2012. We now have legislation in the Parliament to give effect to some of that.

It was a major review, and it does take several years to do because we do it in a way that involves a lot of consultation with the veteran community.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Thank you very much for appearing at committee.

I don't know what time it is there, but we sure appreciate your words of advice to us.