Yes, Harold has thrown me to the dogs first. Thank you, Harold.
Thank you most sincerely, everyone here, for the invitation to speak today. It's a privilege.
Nine years ago Parliament passed the legislation we now know as the new Veterans Charter, or NVC. The elected members of the House of Commons never debated any of its clauses. They have yet to give serious independent and binding consideration to the dramatic changes that the NVC made to the relationship between Canada and those who were and are prepared to lay down their lives in her service.
In good faith, and I really emphasize in good faith, far too many people accepted the shoddy construction of the NVC because government promised to keep the renovations going. Near stagnant incrementalism, a dirty word in the first 50 years of veterans benefits in Canada, has become the sad new social contract between Canada and our veterans and their families. As the unaddressed recommendations accumulate, will the NVC become increasingly unfit to provide adequate shelter for our veterans and their families in the coming years? Veterans Affairs made pretenses to the glory of post-World War II veterans benefits. The originally aptly named Veterans Charter provided a host of programs for all veterans, whether they were injured or not.
In 2005 and in 2011, I testified to numerous parliamentary committees, providing evidence that the new Veterans Charter was not a charter at all, but a cynical repackaging of already existing programs with but a few limited additions. As for consultation, Treasury Board is unequivocal that consultation must be “clear, open, and transparent”. As well as incorporating input from the stakeholders, consultation must also clearly justify in detail why input is rejected in any final drafts. Such two-way exchanges have never occurred in anything called consultation carried out by Veterans Affairs Canada. Perhaps it is no surprise then that VAC in its latest senior management brief considers project code PC-20, titled “Expand Outreach, Consultation, and Engagement of NVC Programs” closed.
I was first to publicly raise concerns regarding the NVC along with Louise Richard, shortly followed by Harold Leduc. The bureaucracy's outrageous attempts to discredit me are on the public record, thanks in large part to media attention and legal proceedings. What is not on the public record is the bureaucracy's motivation. They were hoping to silence me and intimidate my colleagues. A genuine debate on the merits of the new Veterans Charter is not in the interests of Veterans Affairs Canada.
Canadians go to war. They fight, die, lose limbs, minds, and families at your orders for our values, for our nation. They sacrifice to care for all of us. We do not do all this for bureaucrats, even though they may think differently. Then why is it that Parliament either through inaction or inability has failed to stand up to the bureaucracy? Senator Dallaire has put on the record that the minister in 2005 promised biennial reviews in committee. However, it took four years before the committee wrote its first report with 18 recommendations. Four years later, we are at it yet again with witnesses fighting to have implemented many of the same recommendations you included in your 2010 report.
Bureaucrats claim to have fully implemented and addressed 10 of your recommendations. However, I am unaware of any announcements of appropriate compensation for family members who take care of severely disabled veterans. Similarly, I am waiting for proof that VAC implemented “...as soon as possible the 16 framework recommendations made by the New Veterans Charter Advisory Group...including those entailing legislative and regulatory amendments”. One component of those recommendations: 100% earnings loss tracking career progression and typical career earnings.
But this is just a small sampling of the 160 recommendations that the deputy minister and her office claim they implemented. The DM certainly has the resources to creatively devise such claims as her staff has increased 500% in the past few years while veterans witness the closure of district offices and the removal of trusted front-line worker positions at those that remain. While veterans lose their trusted VAC workers, suicides continue, families fall apart through VAC inaction, veterans languish waiting for or being denied programs, Deputy Minister Mary Chaput has received her performance pay every year since her arrival at VAC three years ago. Is it any wonder veterans are angry? Why are Parliament and the Prime Minister allowing bureaucrats to receive their performance pay while these senior bureaucrats fail to implement Parliament's recommendations? You're the bosses.
There are greater problems with the NVC than just the empty and specious rhetoric coming from Charlottetown. I have tabled 30 recommendations to consider for this comprehensive review in my report titled, “Severely Injured Veterans and their Families: Improving Accessibility to Veterans Affairs Programs for a Better Transition.”
As both sides of the committee table have clearly observed, a VAC availability of programs does not equate to accessibility. Why, for instance, should widows or spouses of incapacitated veterans be time limited on any programs? In the Pension Act, all programs are payable effectively on the date of application. Why, then, is the earnings loss benefit payable when “the Minister determines that a rehabilitation plan or a vocational assistance plan should be developed”? Why are deductions for ELB increased annually when SISIP long-term disability, the public service disability plans, and many workers compensation plans freeze these deductions on the date the income replacement begins? Such pettiness is endemic in the new Veterans Charter.
Government is quick to march out the hypothetical, 24-year-old corporal from the Veterans Ombudsman's report who is projected to receive from VAC $2 million over his lifetime, ignoring that $350,000 of that must be repaid in taxes when none of the Pension Act benefits are taxable. The sad reality is that this corporal does not represent the norm.
As of September 2013, of the 76,000 Canadian Forces veterans who were clients of VAC, just 941 received the permanent impairment allowance. One can only receive this allowance if one is declared totally and permanently incapacitated, or TPI, the most seriously disabled veterans. Of this TPI population, only 38% have a disability assessment as high as this hypothetical corporal. Of those, only 22% are under the age of 45. This corporal represents fewer than 77 individuals or 0.1% of new Veterans Charter clients.
The ombudsman noted that of all the recipients of the permanent incapacity allowance, only one receives the highest grade of $1,724.65 monthly. As for the highly controversial lump sum, which now stands at $301,275.26, only 148 or 4.35%, of all lump sum recipients have been awarded this amount in eight years.
It's interesting to note that these actuarial comparisons assume that VAC adjudicates similar injuries under the NVC at the same level as the Pension Act. However, nothing could be further from the truth. The average award given out by VAC prior to 1995 for World War II veterans was 40%. After adjudication guidelines changed in 1995, the average award for all veterans sank to 25%. Since the introduction of the new Veterans Charter in the middle of the harshest and most violent combat to which we've exposed our military service since Korea, the average award is sitting at now just over 15%. Not only is a disability award inadequate, but access to this benefit is heartlessly stingy.
Yes, there are other programs, certainly. Currently only 14% of lump sum recipients are receiving additional benefits, and only 2% have any long-term economic assistance. Of all those totally and permanently incapacitated, none are allowed to access career transition or vocational services.
We already dehumanize those who most suffer from their service to Canada, the TPI veterans, by freezing their economic potential at a fraction of often artificially low military salaries at release. By preventing access to education and job assistance as a nation, we are in effect saying to them that we believe that our most disabled veterans do not deserve to benefit from lifelong learning and vocational experiences, all proven to lower health care usage and increase well-being incomes on all levels.
Contrary to the claim that the NVC offers opportunity with security, the reality shows something completely different. Canada Pension Plan disability, once accused of being insensitive and lacking compassion, now allows disabled recipients to receive $5,100 annually without reporting it to CPP if they're employed. Even if a TPI veteran were to have CPP overlook these earnings, the VAC income loss program would deduct every single penny. Contrary to claims by VAC officials, veterans are not focused on disability, nor were they under the Pension Act. Even with these onerous deductions, 35% of TPI veterans have a salary over $5,000, indicating to us that they would rather work and have their hard work mean little or nothing at all economically than not work at all.
Section 35 of the Pension Act states: “No deduction shall be made from the pension of any member of the forces because the member undertook work or perfected themself in some form of industry.”
The Pension Act offered much security for the veteran to explore as many opportunities as they wished. Sadly, the NVC incarcerates our most suffering veterans in a psychological and financial prison of frozen human potential for the rest of their lives.
As for families, the legislated mandate of the department defines both veteran and family as equals. However, families while the veteran is still alive cannot access programs independently, and the NVC only pays for family treatment insofar as it supports the veteran in his or her rehabilitation program.
We say we care about the career and health sacrifices of veterans' spouses who do much to care for our seriously disabled veterans. In spite of repeated calls we do not provide these spouses with any attendant allowance whatsoever.
In 2005 the bureaucracy promised case management and psychosocial rehabilitation as part of a slick sales job to sell the NVC to an unsuspecting Parliament and population. However, psychosocial rehabilitation does not exist in Canada in any measurable, consistent, and accessible format as we speak today. VAC did not have a viable definition until 2009, the same year the department was searching for a definition of “case management” in one of its own research reports.
Arguably Canada had the world's best rehabilitation programs for veterans returning from World War II. We can achieve great things once more. One path to repeat this excellence is to sincerely pursue psychosocial rehabilitation for both physical and psychological disabilities, but it will take investment and more than a senior bureaucrat's loathing of taking risks. Incidentally, this is the wrong personality type to be developing any new approach to an old social contract. They're acceptable administrators, but very poor innovators.
If we do nothing about the many NVC programs that are a disincentive to work, that focus on disability rather than ability, if we continue preventing opportunities for seriously ill veterans in our communities while we threaten their security, we know that this will increase health care costs. It will increase treatment and pharmacological drug use. Such short-sightedness will negatively impact the health outcome of their families while lowering the life expectancy of our most seriously injured.
Would it not be better to provide access to life-enriching education and opportunities to seek employment without penalty while these veterans in turn begin to pay more taxes, hence offsetting some of the disability costs? Does that not make better economic sense?
All veterans and their families, especially the most seriously ill, fulfilled their obligation at government's orders without delay, without complaint, and without excuse. All they rightly expected was that government would honour their end of the social contract immediately, expeditiously, and for as long as those veterans and families live.
For our most seriously injured and their families, miserly constructed and administered programs have soundly violated this quid pro quo. Government is clearly not holding up its end of the bargain.
Prime Minister Harper during the launch of the new Veterans Charter in 2006 promised:
In future, when our servicemen and women leave our military, they can rest assured the Government will help them and their families transition to civilian life. Our troops' commitment and service to Canada entitles them to the very best treatment possible.
This charter is but a first step to according Canadian veterans the respect and support they deserve. This was a promise from the current Prime Minister, not one from a century ago.
The dire situation where even the most loyal and timid of veterans organizations is speaking out has become a very loud alarm clock for our elected officials to stand up to the bureaucracy, and finally stand up for our veterans.
We must applaud this government's commitment to victims of crime. However, if this government is willing to come to the aid of those innocent persons who are victims of mindless violence, it should do no less for those men and women that the government has mindfully ordered into harm's way.
Thank you.