Veterans Affairs Committee on Feb. 26th, 2015

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Let's talk about locations, Mr. Doiron, and that's an important point.

I was in Brandon and I met with veterans. I met with service officers who said they're not qualified—and I know you mentioned the Legion's help. They feel they're not that qualified to help people on these appeals. They can render some assistance, but they're not all that qualified. Similarly, in Sydney, service officers have themselves declared that they are not all that qualified. I know you'd like to rely on them, but I'm concerned about that. I'm also concerned about the fact that Brandon veterans have to drive to Winnipeg, or people from Sydney have to drive to Halifax. You talk about location, and that's been one of the biggest complaints in the last year, has it not? How are you going to remedy that?

[Michel D. Doiron]

We are. The thing is that case-managed veterans do not have to drive. The case manager or the nurse will go to the veteran. A lot of people say they have to drive to Halifax—

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

How often?

[Michel D. Doiron]

As often as is needed.

In the case of Sydney, in the case of all those areas, I'm presently looking at the workload in those areas: how many people? At some offices—and it's a misconception—we've had zero traffic at the Service Canada office, where we have embedded employees, since the closures of the offices. We have to be careful. At some offices we've had traffic. We are looking at making sure there is an even better presence, let's say case manager presence, in some of these locations to ensure that there is no wait for that veteran in that location. I have to say no veteran who is case-managed, or needs nursing services from us, is having to travel to one of the other locations.

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Okay. When you say “no traffic” could that mean that they're not prepared to drive the three hours, say from Sydney to Halifax, to Service Canada to be serviced?

[Michel D. Doiron]

I didn't mention Sydney in my—

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

No, but I'm just giving an example. When you say “no traffic” could it mean that people are giving up and not bothering to come because they feel either the people at Service Canada are not qualified or it's too far away?

[Michel D. Doiron]

I doubt that, to be honest, because we also.... What's not on the map—somebody asked a question about the map earlier—is that we work with data, big data, to see where an office is, where an OSI clinic is, and how many veterans are in the catchment basin. In some of these offices we had very few case-managed veterans.

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

How many case workers are there again?

[Michel D. Doiron]

There are 226.

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

I don't want to know names or anything, but could you provide to the committee, in numbers only, the 226, and opposite that their workload, the cases they're managing? Not the names, just the numbers of their files.

[Michel D. Doiron]

We have that. I'm not sure effective what date because I have asked for that a couple of times, but I can provide the last one I have.

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Okay. We read recently you've cancelled the survey. I asked you about this yesterday, the one that was done in 2010, and there's a declining satisfaction with Veterans Canada. I know you're trying to change that. I'm not diminishing your efforts in any way, but in the absence of a survey I want to ask you this final question. Can you tell me your understanding of all of the complaints that veterans have been voicing—a lot of veterans, not all of them, but a lot of veterans. Goodness knows you've heard them and I've heard them. What is your response to those complaints?

[Michel D. Doiron]

I'm going to be over eight minutes answering that. Sorry.

[The Chair, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

You're already at nine.

[Michel D. Doiron]

Thank you, sir.

We hear the same complaints members of this committee would hear.

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Like....

[Michel D. Doiron]

Those would include delays in receiving certain services. Receiving “no” as an answer is a big complaint. I want to be clear, “no” is often the right answer. We have to remember that. If there's a committee that knows it well, it's this ACVA committee, after the review and everything you've done for Veterans Affairs. I do thank you for that, because it has helped me. It has to be linked to service. When Mélanie was talking about disability benefits and people not being happy with us, it's true. However, our act is linked to services. So when I get a lot of complaints of “You said no”, well, you know....

I get complaints about timeliness; we talked about that yesterday. The OAG highlighted it in their report that we can be more timely. We've agreed with that at the department. We're working to improve that.

The wait time to see a case manager is a problem in some locations of the country. I mentioned that yesterday also. The average across the country is 1 to 34. Some case managers are managing 50 to 55 veterans.

Now, let's understand that the complexity and the intensity of that work is different. For some veterans it's one phone call a month: “How are you doing on your vocational rehab? Is everything okay?” That's an easy call. However, for a veteran who is struggling with mental illness, or an addiction, or maybe homelessness, it's not quite the same effort. That is a high-intensity effort.

We do try to balance the workload. That said, 50 is too high. We're trying to work at that.

Then there's the one that I don't hear that much about but I'm sure you hear a lot, and that's the pension issue. I hear it because I read all the clippings and everything else, but they don't come to me about that. The ones I get, because I'm the service guy, is more that it takes too long to see a case manager or that I gave a “no” decision.

Those are the two major ones I would get, to be very honest.

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you, Chair, for your indulgence.

[The Chair, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

There you go—all 11 minutes of it.

Mr. Hawn.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to both of you for being here.

First of all, I have to say, on behalf of my infanteer friends down here, that the insinuation that infanteers have no skills—

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

It's these gunners; it's the gunners.

[An hon. member]

Politics was the only career left...

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

At any rate, I took my SCAN 21 years ago. It was a theatre full of people in Cold Lake for a couple of days. I can tell you that I don't remember all that much of it, because I didn't have any issues, per se. But this, what you're laying out here, is far more comprehensive and so on than my experience that long ago.

I want to go back a little bit to Mr. Valeriote's point. I have advocated for many, many years for a culture of “yes” versus a culture of “no”. You're right that sometimes “no” is the answer, but what happens a lot is that when somebody gets “no” for an answer, even if it's the right answer they immediately go public. Of course, everyone wants to sympathize with the veteran. That's right and proper. But then, as you said earlier, veterans listen to what happens here in this place. When somebody goes public, and everybody sides with the veteran, as is understandable, then politics enters into it—I'm not casting aspersions, because that's just politics and it's whichever side you're on—and it gets ramped up. Then everybody gets excited about this poor veteran, which is a normal human reaction and totally understandable.

You don't have to answer it, although I'm sure you feel a little bit of that frustration when you guys get pointed at and are told “You bad people, you said no”, and you can't stand up and say, “Well, yes, but no is the right answer”. I sense your frustration.

Really I'm speaking to all of us here in saying, look, sometimes they do give the right answer. Sometimes the right answer is “no”, and maybe we should be a little bit careful about rushing off with a lot of political rhetoric.

I want to ask a couple of specific questions. We talked about the training module for Service Canada folks. Especially in remote locations and so on it is difficult, and it appears to be less than ideal. Now, is VAC looking at ways to ramp up the training for those Service Canada folks in...anywhere, but particularly in the more remote locations?