Veterans Affairs Committee on March 12th, 2015

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

All right, could you talk to us more about the experience you had being put in the bottom category when you knew intuitively you should have been in a higher category?

[Capt(N) Perry Gray]

One of the basic problems that everyone faces when they're assessed by VAC is that the person doing the assessment has no medical training and is relying strictly on the Merck Manual, which defines exactly what the doctors and nurses understand as your condition or illness. They basically are trying to translate it into terms that they understand.

That assessor has no contact with the client. At no time can I go to Charlottetown and ask, “How did you make that decision? Please explain it to me.” Instead, other people are left to interpret what that person has done, and that is the biggest problem that we face.

Now, I explained how the career review board works in the Canadian Forces, and there, that kind of interaction exists: the person who is being reviewed has recourse to the board. All I'm asking is that VAC create a similar parallel.

[The Chair, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

Thanks very much, Mr. Gray.

Mr. Lizon.

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, all of you, for coming here this morning.

Before I ask the question, I have two comments or pieces of information.

Concerning the Honour House he mentioned, in the last travel this committee undertook, almost two years ago, to Washington, D.C..... There are 64 or 66 of what are called call Fisher Houses in the U.S., which are built next to military hospitals across the country and serve the same role. We visited one in Washington, D.C. It's a beautiful place. The way they are financed is that Fisher House became Fisher House Foundation, and that's how they finance this network of houses.

To speak to Mr. Valeriote's comment about why these organizations have to fill the gaps and the idea that everything should be done by government, we also travelled to operational stress injury clinics, places that house homeless veterans. They have a very important and valuable role to play. Some of their veterans don't feel comfortable speaking to bureaucrats, speaking to people in Veterans Affairs; they would rather speak to their peers. That's why it's so valuable and important that we support those groups, which do such wonderful work for our veterans.

But going back to our topic, just for clarification, you are with Monster.ca; is that correct?

[Scott Byrne]

That's correct.

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

That is part of Monster Worldwide, is it, of Monster.com?

[Adm Greg Smith]

That is correct.

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Do you somehow focus on the group of veterans or are you just part of the Monster employment portal?

[Adm Greg Smith]

I'm the president of Military.com. We are owned by Monster Worldwide. We were founded in the late nineties in the San Francisco area and were bought 15 years ago by Monster. So Monster has invested in the veteran space, and because of the employment connection, we grew out that space. That part of our portal dedicated to employment was enhanced because we're part of the Monster family.

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

In other words, then, if someone logs on to Monster.ca, that portal would bring them to the military section of the portal, would it, or how does that work?

[Adm Greg Smith]

No, today there is no portal that is dedicated to Canadian Forces, so there is not a Canadian-like Military.com out there. This is a U.S. Military.com. We have created the translator, which we think the Canadian government can invest in and make its own by having that tool on some other portal within the Canadian government, whether it's Veterans Affairs or the forces.

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Then, that would cost $1.7 million. Is that what you refer to—building that part of the portal?

[Adm Greg Smith]

That's right.

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Now, it's very important that these skills be translated to the ones that employers are looking for. But in the whole process, what is missing is that there are some valuable things that former military members can bring to the employer, and I don't think you can put them in and translate them in the translator, such as discipline, loyalty, punctuality. These are sometimes more important than hard skills.

How do you propose to translate those so that an employer looking for someone to employ would say “I have to spend some money on training those people, but I want those people because I would be able to depend on them”? Is there something you are working on or collaborating with someone on? That is a very important part of the whole process.

[Adm Greg Smith]

I completely agree.

This tool will allow you to get some of the answer. Part of the real solution is working on the other side, with the employer. The employer has to be educated, and there are groups out there that are spending their resources to help human resource departments be trained to understand those inherent skills that a military person brings and also to understand what their needs are, so that when they bring them into the company they can assimilate them in a way that fits the way a military person thinks about organizational dynamics and can retain that military person.

We've found that when companies do that, they actually have higher retention rates than the rest of the population, by focusing on how to make that connection work for the military. It's very powerful, but it does require a training for the human resources departments as well.

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Do you have a pool of employers across the country whom you're working with, or is this something that is left on its own while you rely on the people who log on and look for someone to—?

[Adm Greg Smith]

No, we're fortunate that we have a number of employers who have specifically said they want to hire veterans and need our help to hire them, who like our tool and will use our tool on their own site and will train their people to be sensitive to this transition. It has become much more of a role played by industry to self-educate, and we have given them the resources and the tools to make those linkages with the military skills translator.

[The Chair, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

Thank you very much.

The next questioners are going to have five minutes.

First, it is over to Mr. Chicoine.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have a few questions, and if I have any time left afterwards, I would like to share it with Mr. Rafferty.

Mr. Gray, I have a few questions about your presentation. You told us a bit about your situation, saying that Veterans Affairs Canada didn't recognize your injuries. The department challenged the medical decisions made by Department of National Defence, or DND, doctors.

Could you explain to us how the process works in a case like that? I've heard about too many cases like yours, where Veterans Affairs Canada had challenged the medical decisions of DND doctors.

In your case, did Veterans Affairs Canada have access to your medical records? Did you request to have the information transferred to Veterans Affairs Canada?

[Capt(N) Perry Gray]

Yes, medical information was made available to Veterans Affairs from DND, but as the gentlemen from Monster have explained, there is difficulty translating military information into the equivalent civilian terminology, and the problem is that Veterans Affairs, with so few former military people on staff, doesn't always appreciate the extent of these things.

As I said, there's a difference between this subjective assessment and the objective assessment. More has to be done to determine exactly the extent and nature of each condition.

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

Thank you.

You also mentioned that your medical records were shared with other people, in breach of confidentiality rules.

I missed the part of your presentation when you were talking about that. Would you mind explaining it to me?

[Capt(N) Perry Gray]

Yes. You're probably familiar with the case of Sean Bruyea, who sued the department and members of it. There have been a number of people—I don't know exactly how many, because most of the information is confidential—who have had their information shared. My own personal file was shared by more than 700 different employees.

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

That's quite disturbing.

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, I'd like to give the rest of my time to Mr. Rafferty.

[John Rafferty, NDP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chicoine.

This is for Mr. Smith and Mr. Byrne. I guess perhaps I don't understand the technology you're talking about and would just be comparing it on the basis of cost. It seemed like an awful lot of money—not necessarily the startup to get everything in place, but your $400,000 number annually to run and update the program and so on. Is that figure based on the anticipated volume of use, or is it just a simple sort of flat fee that you're suggesting?

[Adm Greg Smith]

There were a couple of issues.

One, you have to maintain an engineering staff to constantly update and make certain that when working with industry.... In particular here, if the design is such that it's going to be employed across government and the private sector, the unique nature of all of those relationships has to be worked on a customer basis, so there's quite a bit of back and forth on that.

We've had this tool for more than a decade, and I can tell you that the cost of running the program I run is much, much higher than that. I think the number that's represented here is a reasonable number to put into play to ensure that the program remains viable over the life of the program. Contractually this is intended to be a three-year to five-year program, so you want to make certain that there are the tools available to make those updates as quickly as possible to reflect the reality of the marketplace.