Evidence of meeting #45 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 ptsd.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Ted Opitz Conservative Etobicoke Centre, ON
I'm shifting to the Treble Victor guys. What do you think about working with Canada Company? I know you all do, and many are part of the same organizations as well. But on an organizational level, do we do enough among, say, Treble Victor, Canada Company—which, effectively, are captains of industry—TPL, and others, to aggregate the knowledge we have at this level?
Do you think we could do a better job on that?
President, Treble Victor Group
VTAC has done a very good job of laying a baseline of knowledge and understanding of both the issues and the information out there that can help understand the challenges for transition. I think there's a lot more work to be done in terms of working with corporations, both big and small, in trying to develop specific programs to address those issues. Canada Company and TPL are creating some great ideas and attention for change, but there's a lot more work to be done, for sure.
Conservative
Ted Opitz Conservative Etobicoke Centre, ON
David, on the reserve side—
Oh, sorry, I'm out of time. I have too many questions and not enough time.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Royal Galipeau
Thank you, Mr. Opitz.
I'd like to give this admonition to all members of the committee. When you feel you've spoken for five minutes, keep an eye on the chair so that I could politely wind it down, and not one minute after you're finished with your time.
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
Thank you, gentlemen, for appearing before us today.
You know, I'm a civilian. I have no military background whatsoever. I come from a community, Guelph, where for most of us the closest we get is watching the 11th Field Regiment leave the armoury and go out on exercises, and that was rare and very exciting for us.
I try to understand PTSD. I can't get close. I remember doing some international aid work, of which I do a lot. Back in 1999 I went into the jungles of Honduras for three weeks, worked with the poor, went looking for food, covered with flies, lived in very poor circumstances, came home, and I had trouble going back to work. That was just after three weeks that I had trouble going back to work. I couldn't even go into a grocery store, to Zehrs, and look around because I was overwhelmed with the choices we had. If that was my experience after three simple weeks, I cannot begin to imagine what it's like for people coming out of the forces, having faced far more perilous circumstances.
Having said that, I don't think we fully understand the impact of PTSD, and one or some of you have said that. Knowing that, I want to ask Mr. Ralph this question. You talked about providing support for families, and spouses particularly, in trying to help those families. You obviously know Jenny Migneault. I've talked to her on a number of occasions. She is a persistent person. She is passionate about trying to, I guess, make more robust our response to families in which someone suffers from PTSD.
She talked about having, for instance, weekends where they actually have retreats and can work with the spouses who can help those who are suffering with PTSD. You work with the spouses so that they know how to handle it, you take the pressure off the doctors, you take the pressure off VAC, and that kind of thing.
You guys seem to know what you're doing. With that in mind, can you tell us how the government could better help you? It's not fair, I think, to put it all on bureaucrats and on the government to understand all of this. Why not contract out services to people like yourselves and Jenny who want to work?
National Program Director, Wounded Warriors Canada
Obviously, you're right. That's the piece we've identified. When we talked about our spectrum of care, obviously you start at one end with VETS Canada and getting people off the street, the veterans transition program, which is geared towards individuals, and some of our other support programs. Then you get to our newer programs. We have Tribute to Your Service events, which are geared for couples. You can't come by yourself. You have to bring your spouse so they can get together and learn lessons. Our couples program, COPE, is based on the best practices of the veterans transition program, and applying that to couples.
The assistance about which we have talked to both ministers is in terms of those who are still serving, and encouraging commanding officers to grant leave so they can take these programs, perhaps providing transportation assistance to get to the programs. We funded it. It's built. I guess to quote the Field of Dreams movie, we built it, now we need them to come.
Of course, one of the challenges as an independent charity is that we fully fund the programs and everything we do at no cost to veterans. It takes a lot of effort. This year we'll spend $1.4 million in direct programming for veterans and their families. Unfortunately, some of that programming money goes into airline fuel, because it's a big country in which to get people from coast to coast. Therefore, assistance in getting people to programs would be the simplest place to start, I think, and a very practical place to start, and then move on from there.
I know we've had some discussions with the CMP on providing some transport to our COPE program. They're very interested in that, so we've had some very meaningful discussions with both departments on that issue. Yes, we can work together on these things.
Liberal
Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON
Working together I think is important, you and the ministry.
Mr. Ludlow talked about transitioning into the workforce. We've had Monster Canada before the committee. I know you're probably familiar with the program it has going on in the United States. It's skills translation, identifying the skills you spoke of that so many of our veterans have that are hidden, so to speak, and also, in an active sense, linking up with potential employers, not passively hoping that they'll come along and say they want to hire a veteran, but actually going out on a search. Are you familiar with the program at all? Would you encourage that kind of skills translation adaptation in our forces so that we could better identify those skills and link them up with employers?
President, Treble Victor Group
All right, then, quickly, I'm not overly familiar with the Monster program or how it might apply to folks in Canada, but for sure there could be a better opportunity to use technology to create job markets and forums virtually, given the dispersion of our veterans across Canada. Absolutely. Setting up mechanisms to get qualifications or equivalencies done for veterans is very important.
President, Treble Victor Group
I think there are a few community colleges and some universities that certainly grant equivalencies. I think it's a little bumpy and—
Liberal
President, Treble Victor Group
Not to the best of my knowledge, in a really formal sense. No.
Past-President, Treble Victor Group
I know there are some skills translation abilities on the Veterans Affairs website. I think it's important to note that a Canadian-made solution, which may not include translation but it does include job search, is being put together by Kijiji, which is Canadian. It's important to note that.
It's similar to Monster. They compete with each other. It would be nice to have a Canadian-made solution.
Conservative
Conservative
Wladyslaw Lizon Conservative Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Thank you all for coming here this morning.
The first question I have is for Mr. Ludlow.
In your presentation you mentioned three recommendations. The first one was that the transition should begin early. What does “early” mean exactly?
There are people who enter the Canadian Armed Forces who move from a career in the corporate world or private business and enter the armed forces and are very successful. Why is it so difficult to go the other way? Where exactly should that transition begin? Should it begin at the very early stage of training? The person who starts the training initially as a soldier should realize that at some point he or she will leave the forces, whether as a result of his or her own decision, medical leave, or for whatever the reason might be.
Where exactly should that “early” start? Where should it be? Should it be part of the entire process? Should it be part of the process starting at a certain point? Where?
President, Treble Victor Group
Absolutely. In an ideal world, anyone joining the armed forces would be thinking long term. At a certain point I'm going to retire. I either retire with a pension, stop working, and do volunteer work, or I do a second and possibly third career—the earlier, the better.
As we've said, our own experience is that it takes a couple of years to do a successful transition. For the people we have seen who've ended up in really fulfilling work that they enjoy and stay with, it takes a couple of years to do that. Why?
If you spend a lot of time in the military, you may not even be aware of the options you have when you leave. Do you want to work in a forestry company or financial services, or do you want to be an entrepreneur? It takes a while to figure out all the options out there and what is really attractive to you. Once you've started to do that, how do you set yourself up for success? You can't really do it the last day you hang up your uniform, saying, I'm going to start a company tomorrow. I suppose you could, but it's likely not going to be as successful as if you had put in better preparation, time, and effort, and maybe even education, skills upgrading, and training.
Our advice to people we encounter who are in uniform but are looking at getting out even in a couple of years is that this is not too soon to start thinking about that and setting yourself up for success. You'd say the same thing for someone in the civilian world. If somebody was in banking, or if someone was a lawyer and wanted to get into the business world, that's hard to do overnight. You need some time to actually transition from one industry, sector, or job to another. It's the same for vets.
Conservative
Wladyslaw Lizon Conservative Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON
My question is to both. You mentioned the people you encounter. How do you actually get your people? Do they come to you? How do you find them?
President, Treble Victor Group
Great question.
We're slowly opening up chapters across Canada. People usually approach us, but we certainly bump into people in our work and in our own network activities.
We're a pretty small group. We're only a couple of hundred people, but we try as best we can to mentor and coach them and help them along. We usually try to connect them with somebody. If we know they're interested in being a lawyer or in financial services, then we try to connect them with one of our members who's in that just to give them a bit of guidance and help along the way.
National Program Director, Wounded Warriors Canada
In our experience, Wounded Warriors Canada has become recognized throughout the country for the programs that exist. Veterans are able to find us pretty easily because we're very active in what we talked about, new technology. Facebook, social media, and our website, etc., have exploded in the last couple of years in getting the message out. That has been leveraged by some excellent corporate partners who have been doing some great national media awareness for us, most recently in a couple of campaigns by The Brick and some other things—online games like World of Tanks, and a whole bunch of other stuff that's out there.
It's a question of knowing what people are looking at and targeting them and getting the message out. People have not had problems finding us.
Conservative
Wladyslaw Lizon Conservative Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON
We've heard from some other organizations: the Royal Canadian Legion and others. Is there any level of collaboration among the various organizations? Sometimes it looks as though the services you offer overlap, and if you're working in your own silo it really doesn't make things any better. Is there a way to join forces?
President, Treble Victor Group
In one sense our organization is a kind of ex-military network of ex-military leaders. We don't really offer services per se. It's more a member support group and everything like that. We're a not-for-profit with pretty limited resources, but we try to help wherever we can. We try to make ourselves aware of all the organizations and services that are out there. There are many of them and they're all doing great work.
There probably is a better opportunity to create some kind of single forum to which people can go and very quickly find at least the organization that might be able to help them with a particular need or something like that. That's something to consider, I think.