Evidence of meeting #42 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 work.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
You could let the clerk of the committee know.
There was an organization that appeared before us a few weeks ago called Monster.com. You're probably familiar with their skills translation program. They presented it, and a number of us were quite impressed with the opportunity we could avail ourselves of to better coordinate, identify skills, and line them up.
Are you familiar with that?
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
Do you think it would be a good application of Monster.com to bring it into VAC and have VAC use that resource to better link veterans with jobs?
President, True Patriot Love Foundation
The work we did with the Veterans Transition Advisory Council looked at all the various opportunities out there, including Monster. There's also a program called Google VetNet, which runs in the U.S. too. It's the same sort of idea as the Monster program, but it's different in the sense that they offer webinars and you can sign up for training, which I don't think you can really do with Monster.
There are various programs like these out there. We ended up with the MET program run by Canada Company, which was already up and going in Canada. It's the program that has been endorsed by the Department of National Defence.
Liberal
President, True Patriot Love Foundation
It's just different. Monster can handle volume in a way that MET could not. It's very much “here are your skills”, or your job, what you are qualified to do.
President, True Patriot Love Foundation
It matches you up, then, with potential jobs in that area.
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
I'm sorry. I understand that you want to explain it all to me, but I only have a bit of time.
Do you think it's advisable for us to look beyond the MET program and perhaps consider the Google program or the Monster program?
President, True Patriot Love Foundation
I think there is probably still quite a bit of work that can be done with MET. Because there has already been a big investment in it by government and the corporate sector, I would recommend focusing on it and taking it to where it can be taken and then see whether it still makes sense to bring Monster in.
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
Okay.
You mentioned a program in Alberta offered by Prospect, I think you said.
It seems to me that government should be looking at best practices, and it appears from your statements that this is what they're doing. They're going to keep their eye on it. But I have the impression that there are programs scattered across the country, some really good ones and some that people in Ontario and Nova Scotia have never heard of and aren't aware of. There ought to be somebody coordinating and bringing all of these under one roof and applying them across the country and helping fund them.
I have two questions. One is, do you think there is a role for government to play to better coordinate all of this and keep their eye on it, assembling all the information they possibly can? They may be doing that through the Veterans Transition Advisory Council; I don't know.
The second question is this. You told me that you raised $20 million over the last, was it five or four years?
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
The government has had money to spend on veterans programs, and they have done so. They met their statutory obligations. But they had another billion dollars over the last 10 years available that they didn't have to spend because they met their statutory obligations.
I'm sitting here thinking how your organization could be better deployed if you had some support, or if the government itself engaged in doing the things that you're doing.
Do you think there would be value in the government's better supporting organizations like yours and others that are trying to do the work you are doing?
President, True Patriot Love Foundation
Going back to your first question, which was on whether it should all be unified, one of the recommendations we came up with in our Veterans Transition Advisory Council report was on the need to have essentially one website where veterans could go to see everything they could access, whether through a government program or otherwise. There's nothing like that existing right now.
Quite frankly, websites are expensive to build. They need to be maintained and updated. Somebody has to verify that all the information on it is accurate. You want to make sure you're not sending veterans to people who are going to take advantage of them. There's a lot that needs to happen there. Somebody needs to own that, and I don't know who that is. I don't know if it's government or another organization, but that does need to happen. There's no question about that.
The challenge is that you run into the kinds of issues we have with Prospect. This is a true story, and we all sort of laugh, but the government has a contract with CanVet and one of the reasons it can't contract with Prospect is that doing so may violate its contract with CanVet. The contract with CanVet is all about people who are unemployed and bringing them to a point where they can write their resumés, but CanVet will lose potential clients if Prospect gets them jobs, so that violates the contract, because it may mean fewer people can go to the CanVet program.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Royal Galipeau
Thank you very much, Mr. Valeriote. That was your last question.
Liberal
President, True Patriot Love Foundation
We work in cooperation with government. We find that's the best way to do it.
In terms of whether government should be doing more, I guess government can always be doing more, but I do think there's a role for the private sector in this, and there are some things the private sector can just do better.
Conservative
Wladyslaw Lizon Conservative Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON
Thank you for coming this morning and thank you for the great work you're doing for the people who serve our country.
Before I ask you a question, I think I should clarify something regarding Mr. Valeriote's comment about money being left over, $1 billion or whatever that wasn't used. In the budgetary process, the money has to be allocated for services. Those services that are demand-driven and statutory services have to be provided. Therefore, either you have money left over or you're short. In the case where you have money left over, it has to go back to the treasury. In the case where you're short, you have to ask for more money and you have to get more money because statutory services have to be provided. Therefore, there was no money that wasn't used because government decided to save it; it was just part of the budgetary process that exists. I think we should clarify this; otherwise, it will leave the wrong impression that we're cheating veterans.
The question I have is to follow up on Mr. Valeriote's question on Monster and the application process.
A lot of large corporations and companies use computer systems to scan resumés. Therefore, unless the resumé is written in a certain format, it will never get to a live person. This creates a situation where you almost have to learn a new language in order to be successful. You may have the required skills, but if they're not presented in a certain format, the resumé will go into the garbage after the first scan.
Are you working, maybe in collaboration with some other organizations or by yourself, to address the problem and to help veterans make sure their resumés are in the right format?
President, True Patriot Love Foundation
Yes, we don't deliver the programs ourselves, but we had a couple of recommendations related to that. One of them focuses on the education of HR departments on how to read resumés from military people, because they can't. They don't know how to translate. The other side of that is probably more work can be done with the veterans themselves, so they know how to present their skill sets in the corporate world. I think it's double-sided.
One of the pieces that we would really like to see happen—and again it's a question of who takes this on—is a mentorship program whereby veterans who have successfully made the transition to meaningful employment work with veterans who are in the process of making that transition to help them with the process. It's not always the words on the CV. It's just that corporate culture is different from military culture and that can be one of the things that you need to adjust to as well.
Conservative
Wladyslaw Lizon Conservative Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON
How do you think the veterans hiring act will help the transition process for veterans?