Evidence of meeting #21 for Veterans Affairs in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was charter.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
Did either of you have any difficulty—you come from different generations—accessing your medical files, getting your medical files, or getting access to the information?
Member, 31 CBG Veterans Well Being Network
For me personally, I had a.... Our unit doctor actually gave me a copy of my medical file. He warned me back when I left that it would be a good idea if I had my own copy. That was the reason why I had it, and I wouldn't have thought of it myself.
Conservative
Member, 31 CBG Veterans Well Being Network
No, he was doing it because he knew my history. He said it would be a good idea that I had this if I ever needed it. I can't comment for the average.
As an Individual
In my experience, as I mentioned, my files were lost. They reappeared after a certain period of time, thank heavens. But it would be great to have access to those especially when and if I formally leave the military. It would be great to have access to those so that my family doctor could even access that stuff. Right now there's a massive disconnect when I talk about back pain, and it's hard to describe that to a normal doctor sometimes.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
I'll say listen up tomorrow. You don't know what that means, and that's okay.
We heard from Sergeant Bjarne Nielson. I don't know if either one of you know him. His is a great story of recovery from very serious injuries: loss of a leg, basically an elbow, and so on. He said something I thought maybe goes to the bottom-up idea. He said that, of the 100% that needs to be brought to bear to whatever situation, 49% comes from the government programs and benefits, whatever. But 51% is what he brings, the hard skills and soft skills attitude more than anything else. If you met this guy, you'd understand; you'd understand attitude.
Derryk, is that the kind of thing that's sort of writ large when we're talking about bottom up?
Member, 31 CBG Veterans Well Being Network
This brings in what I mentioned about mentorship and support. When I raise the point about stigma for the average person, if they're not informed, their image is either the movie Rambo or it's news media on CNN.
Yet we have what we call vet-togethers. I attended one last Saturday. There were probably about 14 or 15 of us. So of those 14 or 15, 12 of us have PTSD. We have spouses; we have children. The whole thing is, it's not an issue when you get it. When I say get it, I mean you understand it. We pick up on everything in the room. I read people's body language very well. If there's no sort of apprehension, there's no issue at all. Really one of the best ways for someone with PTSD to integrate is to have good manners.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
I want to talk about stigma a bit more, and you brought it up, Derryk. The stigma, external stigma, is what the attitude is out there. That gets obviously internalized by the individual and they feel the impact, the personal impact of that stigma.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
I'm going to ask you if we as a society and the media people have gone overboard with this. I've had a number of veterans come to me and say, “I'm having a hard time even getting an interview for a job”. They tell me that they think it's because—and I've seen this too—there's getting to be an attitude that, if you were a combat veteran, you must be damaged for some reason, because that's what we hear all the time.
It's not to say the stories aren't important to be told and so on, but it becomes so much the narrative that a lot of people are looking at anybody who was in uniform as somehow damaged.
How do we fix that?
Member, 31 CBG Veterans Well Being Network
Part of it is.... I think it's a multifaceted one. We need to celebrate the veteran transitions in the communities. If you're at a base like Petawawa, you can't help but see that this is a military town. But for a lot of people in my home community of St. Catherine's, the Lake Street Armoury was built in 1906. For most people, they just see it as the castle. They have no idea what goes on there, and yet in that unit, you have at least 40 members who are veterans. Their stories aren't told, or once in a while, maybe on Remembrance Day.
For the most part, that's what I mean by the disconnect. If we can reconnect, that will take care of 49% of the problem right there. The other part is in terms of sensitivity training. Stigma comes from the population at large.
I know myself, I attended camp practices with my wife, and I learned quite a bit. I really can see now.... My voice never gets louder than this, but at 6 '5” and 280 pounds, if I look the wrong way, I could probably frighten someone. I had to learn that. Because with self-observation, I would say I wasn't upset, but the person beside me might take it the wrong way.
We feel everything. That's the best way to describe it, that 90% of communication is body language. And in terms of language, there's cadence, tone, and volume. You manipulate one of the three, and it changes the message. For us, that hyper vigilance, we can set other people off, but they set us off.
So for a lot of it, when I mention about having a Veterans Affairs caseworker being able to advocate for you— whether it's in the workplace or whether it's with housing—we need someone at the local level who can help that transition and support when we're dealing with people who think they know, but really don't.
Conservative
Conservative
Wladyslaw Lizon Conservative Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. You're very generous.
Welcome to both of you here, and thank you for your service. Welcome to all the guests and the veterans here with us this afternoon.
I would like to go back to the communications issue that both of you mentioned. I was just wondering if you would have any suggestions as to how to address it and the best way to fix it. If any of us decided to build a house and decided to be his or her own general contractor, I think once we approached the land and started getting the required paperwork, it probably would take us three times as long, or longer, as the person who does this on a daily basis.
What is the problem, from your experience, David? Is it that the people who are providing services do not understand your needs or don't understand the way? Would it be possible to create some kind of personalized manual that you can follow? I am so-and-so, I did this, I have these problems, this is what I have to do, and it's clear in front of me in the proper order.
Is this something that is possible or even partially possible? It's not possible? Is it a problem with people at service centres? Is it something else? How would you suggest we fix it?
As an Individual
One thing that I would jump on is the concept of the battle buddy that I mentioned earlier. If you have someone who has done it before and can, to Derryk's point, be a mentor.... I'm talking about the initial transitions: stepping off the plane, the first six months or a year. I think it would help if there was a one-on-one touchpoint to help that individual navigate all of the overwhelming things that they're going to be dealing with. They have no idea that they will be dealing with it. That's even assuming that they're not bringing their own issues to the table.
The hill before you is that much steeper when you have other challenges confronting it. Having someone there to help so that you're not alone when you're calling up the mental health service line and trying to explain how you feel. Having someone there with you, not just on the other end of the line, can help the individual get through that journey and be more adequately supported. The other benefit there is that's ensuring more than adequate communication of the services and support that are available.
To the point about mentorship and your earlier point about communication, you just have to ensure that it's there. Right now, that's something that's generally lacking in my experience. I should caveat that with, I know what I went through in the ninth year of the war in 2010-2011 when I came back. It was probably far better than what it was in 2002 or 2003. I'm very grateful that there were incremental improvements, but that doesn't mean we should forget about what we've learned and not think about how we can improve moving forward.
Member, 31 CBG Veterans Well Being Network
It's important, when we look at the issue, to see if we can create a pamphlet or a template that will fix it.
PTSD comes in many flavours. I'll give you one example, The general consensus in the public is, well, they must have seen their friend get blown up. But anyone who's served in a battalion will know that, for example, the company clerk is the person who ends up having to collect and send their effects home. Or even a UAV operator who's looking at the thermal image screen or the night vision screen of when a UAV hits a target. There's a whole bunch of different ways that PTSD can be created, so really, one size doesn't fit all and you cannot take away the human aspect.
When I mention having a pamphlet, you're right, if it was someone who's completely untrained, absolutely. Having solid mentorship or a solid battle buddy, the role of that is to stabilize a veteran 24-7, so that they can reach out and they're not alone.
But it can't replace the actual human aspect of trained experts and we don't cross that line. For example, for us 31 CBG, we cost the government nothing. We cover an area that's roughly one-third of the province of Ontario, but has one-eighth of the country's population living within it, yet we don't provide medical services per se. We'll stabilize a veteran emotionally and then we will get them to the next level of critical care. Whether that's an OSISS group, whether that's to a hospital, whether that's to an actual psychologist, or whatever is needed, that's what happens.
Sometimes it's also quite simple. You have a veteran who is really withdrawn and they have no food in the fridge, like literally. It happens almost every week, you'll hear two to three times whether someone can drive someone because they have no one to look after them and they haven't had any food in their fridge for a day or two.
This is what I mean from the bottom up. We want to standardize everything because we tend to do that, but a lot of this is really local stuff. What will work in the Niagara region might not necessarily work in the Kitchener-Waterloo region. It might not work in the Kingston area. We have to tailor it. It's like building a house somewhat; it's custom or it's semi-custom.
What we really require from the government is that clarity and that synergy of thought to help the provincial government to see what they could do and what the municipal government could do. When everyone takes a vested interest in our veterans, that's one of the biggest things that we sort of feel we get left out of. We feel like we're forgotten other than the two minutes on Remembrance Day. Yet, for a lot of veterans who are amputees or have the silent scars, we live with this every day. So in some ways Remembrance Day is a little bittersweet because it doesn't translate into our everyday lives.
It doesn't have to be a massive budget expenditure. This is what I meant by the bottom up. If we look at all three levels of government, we look at the private sector, the public sector, and there's local leadership and where there isn't, you can mentor it from another region. We can basically coach all those main centres. We'll find where the veterans are, we'll make sure that their families are assisted. If you have a big infrastructure and you're paying for it 24-7, it's going to be utilized properly, but what it takes is organization and leadership.
NDP
John Rafferty NDP Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you both for being here today.
It's interesting that we started off this session talking about transitions, and continued to. It's interesting because almost every witness we've talked to has talked about the transition, particularly from regular forces to Veterans Affairs. It really seems to be a key part of improving the Veterans Charter, and almost everybody has talked, as you have, about family support and those sorts of issues. And I liked what you said, Mr. Fleming, about accessing the strengths and abilities of people, because I'm not sure that happens right now.
Some of the things people have talked about are things like caseworker continuity, for example. You leave the regular forces and suddenly you lose this caseworker you've had. You have somebody new; and you may have three or four, as people move and shift around. And that kind of thing is critical.
The other thing that was mentioned—and it seems to me to be a fairly easy thing to do—is ensuring that the day someone leaves, that he or she is automatically part of Veterans Affairs and given that number, because, as you know, many people.... For example, Mr. Fascinato, you may not really access Veterans Affairs for 20 to 30 more years, when you need something different that you don't need now, because you're a young man.
So the question is for both of you. How might that transition be improved? Second, there are some things I've talked about, but there are some things you might like to mention. The other part of that is, how do you think that should appear in the Veterans Charter to make sure that happens? Because that's just words. Someone still has to make that happen, but what would it look like in the Veterans Charter if we were to make sure that happened?
In Thunder Bay we have quite a large garrison, not regular. Some regular forces are there, but not many. The treatment of those two groups of soldiers is quite a bit different, whether you're reserve or whether you're regular. So I wonder if you could both make comments about those things.
Maybe Mr. Fleming, if you're ready?
Member, 31 CBG Veterans Well Being Network
The idea of having the soldier transition once he's transferred out of service and automatically having a VAC case file opened doesn't mean he's accessing services. But it could be as simple as sending them a questionnaire every six months or once a year. I'm going to give my supervisor at work credit. He's calls it “the steady drip”. If they need the services, it's better to have...prompt and proactively before it becomes a crisis. So, I think that idea is an excellent suggestion. Right off the bat, they have a caseworker. It doesn't mean they're costing lots of money.
There's a second thing I want to point out, because I haven't heard it in the discussion we had today. In Great Britain, they actually look at some of the issues with their reservists versus their regular force members. They actually peg it at 1.5 times more than the regular force. The reason for it is that on the regular force bases, they do have those big support centres there. But when you think of the soldiers who served in Afghanistan, one-fifth of all the combat personnel—and most of these people were the ones outside the wire—were actually reservists. But when they come back, only two or three of them in that unit go back to their hometowns, and they don't have those multi-million dollar services like they have in Petawawa, Valcartier, and Edmonton.
So there is a disconnect between the reservists, who took the same risks as the regular force personnel, versus the regular force personnel, and they are still back with most of their comrades who served, at least for a time before that transition happens.
When you think of the veterans who are the reservists, please don't overlook them in that new Veterans Charter. I honestly think they're some of the most at risk. I talk about the disconnect. They go back to these home communities and people don't necessarily recognize them. It's not like one VP just came back to Edmonton, or one RCR just came back to Petawawa, and the whole city knows or the whole town knows. But for Corporal Smith or Master Corporal Jones who just went back to Guelph, not everyone knows that. They can get lost in the system very easily.
So, somehow in the new Veterans Charter, please do not allow a discrepancy between the regular force members and the reserve force members, because they took the same risks.
Member, 31 CBG Veterans Well Being Network
A veteran is a veteran. One standard, yes, please.
As an Individual
Actually, I'm from Guelph, ironically enough. I'm not really sure how that happened. I didn't plan that.
Honestly, I'm going to sound like an echo here, but it is a convoluted process for reservists, speaking to my own experiences. There is an issue that you fall back into a sphere of anonymity after you have just came back from doing something pretty intensive, something that you have a tremendous amount of pride in, and then you're suddenly cut back into a society that is, generally speaking, ambivalent towards you and your accomplishments. Or you're just generally misunderstood because not only does no one really understand what you did, but the debate and discussion at all the various levels is radically different from what you experienced in your service overseas.
With regard to the new Veterans Charter ensuring that veterans from within the reserve do have a voice and their issues can be addressed.... For example, when I chatted about a friend who couldn't access mental health services, or even the fact that my medical charts were lost for almost eight months and it's because I was a reservist I was told, those sorts of things deserve more attention. The debate and discussion is rightly focused on members of the regular force, but when the focus is only on one aspect of serving members who went overseas.... Definitely there's a different set of challenges, and a unique set of challenges, for the reservists when they reintegrate into society. They're not going back to Petawawa with all their battle buddies. My battle buddies went back to London, Toronto, and elsewhere, while I went back to Ottawa. That's a challenge in and of itself. It's a reality that we had to face, and we got through it, of course, we're quite tenacious in our approach to ensure that we support each other, but it's not without challenge.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Greg Kerr
Thank you very much, Mr. Rafferty.
Mr. Galipeau, please, for six minutes.