Veterans Affairs Committee on April 23rd, 2015

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

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

Mr. Rafferty.

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

Thank you, Chair, and thank you all for being here today.

I agree entirely with the Treble Victor Group concerning transition well in advance and education, and so on. Is it that you would envision, after basic training, that the first hand they shake are the commander's and then the Veterans Affairs representative is right beside him or her, as they enter into their career in the military? Is that what you envision? Is it feasible?

In addition, within DND is there room for Veterans Affairs to be prompting people all the way through to be thinking about their post-career?

[Don Ludlow]

I certainly like to think there's room for someone to be doing that. Whether it's Veterans Affairs or another department or group within DND is probably best figured out by you folks and DND, but you really need this to be a part of the career management and planning system. It can't be something at the side of people's desks, because otherwise they'll ignore it.

It should be part of the discussion that people have as part of their career: how you do educational skills and upgrading and start to set yourself up for success not only in your military career but in a post-military career as well. It's almost like a value proposition.

The U.S. is very good at saying, come and serve with us. You'll have some fun, you'll do great things, travel the world, and by the way, you'll be able to get a university degree and when you leave tons of people will want to hire you. As a result of that, it's seen as an employer of choice. They get lots of great talent, and lots of people leave and then are great advocates for veterans. I'm not sure we quite have that great virtuous circle going in Canada yet.

[David Macdonald]

It's important to note that currently for Veterans Affairs.... You asked whether they might be able to come into play with DND. I can say from my personal experience as a reservist that there's no way to go but up.

When I first came home, there was no Veterans Affairs representative waiting for me. I didn't know the process. There was no one there until I finally talked to someone four years later. Having no representation there, I can say that there's definitely room to have someone there right now like that.

To get back to the question of where to start the process of having that career transition, there's no reason we can't start right at the basic training level, put an hour or two into the training assignment to start the career transition and the skills training right there.

One reason it takes so long to transition afterwards, when you have joined the military, rather than doing it the other way around, is that you literally get beaten into you what it's like to be in the military. You start talking military, you start literally exuding and living military. Then, when you come out and you meet an employer, you'll explain, “I'm a sergeant with an AWACS course and Task Force 308 experience.” This doesn't mean anything, unfortunately, to that corporate hire. You may have a CEO who is going to hire a thousand veterans a year for the next 10 years, but then it gets down to the HR level and they don't understand.

You can teach that veteran to talk corporate and to get that skills transition, but if you don't teach corporate Canada to speak a little military and to understand.... It's a two-way street. Right now we're only teaching the one way, and it's hitting a roadblock on the corporate side. We need to do it on both sides.

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

Okay, so—

Yes, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

Would you mind sharing your time with Mr. Stoffer for half a minute?

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

I'll leave it until the very end.

[The Chair, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

Well, make sure he doesn't go beyond the end.

Go ahead, Mr. Rafferty.

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

Just very quickly.... I may have lost my train of thought here now.

Are you suggesting that Veterans Affairs really needs to begin some sort of system of outreach, not just within DND but outside of DND in the employer world, something that Veterans Affairs does not do now?

[Don Ludlow]

Part of it could be in the way a veteran is defined and what they view as the universe of people they're working with. Is it simply people who have approached Veterans Affairs and are seeking support and services, or is it everyone who has served in uniform? Is it everyone who even might still be in uniform?

We would argue for the broadest possible definition in terms of support and talking with everyone about how they set themselves up for a post-military career, because at some point everyone leaves serving in uniform.

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

Does Mr. Ralph have a moment to respond?

No? Okay.

Peter.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

When I first became an MP, there were concerns about private companies raiding the military for highly skilled technicians. Sometimes we can be too successful in training and educating mechanics, avionics technicians, and those types of workers. Companies come along and say, “Wow! I have a 20-year guy here in the military. I just offered him something. He's going to get his pension, and we offer him a nice little job over here, and we don't have to do much training—he just slips over.”

I don't want to sound negative, because obviously when military people retire they can do whatever they wish, but is there not also the possibility that sometimes the government is spending all sorts of money investing in a military person and it's a private company that ends up benefiting from all of it? Once that 20-year person leaves, for example, Shearwater, we have to get somebody else in there, and it takes an awful lot of money and resources to build that back up.

Sometimes we can be too successful in this regard. How would we avoid those pitfalls?

[The Chair, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

I want you to note that you have eaten up all the available time, but I'm curious, too.

I invite you to be more succinct than him.

[Phil Ralph]

Yes.

Now you're talking about an overall societal benefit, because it works both ways. For the longest time, as I told you, I served with an engineer unit. We had guys who were truck drivers, all civilian-employed. They couldn't get equivalency in the military.

You might say, for example, this thing has a backhoe and everything, yet we have to take the military course. This makes no sense. We're using taxpayer resources to train somebody to do something they already know how to do. It works both ways, but as an integrated...because it benefits all of society. The more skilled any citizen is, whether inside the military or outside, the greater the benefit to society.

We haven't really had people knocking down base doors to get people out of uniform to employ them. That hasn't been our problem. The problem has been transitioning people out of uniform.

[The Chair, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

Mr. Hawn.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all for being here.

Following up on that last point, Edmonton and Cold Lake have had a heck of a time being raided—by the oil patch, primarily. It is a benefit to society—that's not an issue—but it can be a problem for certain areas.

Mr. Patriquin, you talked about the importance of understanding that PTSD is not just military. My wife, who is a nurse, had a short incident with PTSD over the loss of a rodeo accident patient who died under her care; she saw our son in that young man. She got over it fairly quickly, but it's a question of education,broad education.

This may be peeing in the wind, but is there a role for the media to play—there are all kinds of programs, such as W5 or whatever—in doing a broad educational piece across a couple of networks on what PTSD means and who is affected by it, in order to get away from the PTSD connection with the military or veteran community? Is there a role for the media to play in that?

[Tim Patriquin]

I think there is.

On a very small scale we have Lieutenant-Colonel Chris Linford and his spouse, who are travelling the country talking about his experience, and not just his experience as a veteran but his wife's and his family's experience through the PTSD trials and tribulations. I think that's one small example of how we can educate folks. An idea such as a W5 or a broad Canadian educational program that doesn't talk about PTSD as a veteran-specific issue but as a societal issue would, I think, be very beneficial.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Mr. Macdonald, you talked about the difficulty of interviews sometimes, and so on, and the employer not understanding. Is there a role for case managers to play? Somebody in that situation, I would assume, probably would have a case manager. Is there a role for a case manager to play in an interview? Or would that be too much baggage to take to an interview?

[David Macdonald]

I would say that there's always a role, necessarily, for a case manager to play. But you have to remember also that our case managers currently are quite occupied, we'll say, with the caseloads they have, so unless we're willing to throw in some extra money to hire some more case managers to handle that case—

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

We're hiring another 100. I don't know if you're aware of that.

[David Macdonald]

Yes, I'm aware of that. I'm just saying that I have several friends who are case managers in different areas throughout Ontario, and they're absolutely jam-packed right now. They can't take on a case of transition, so—

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

I think it's all part of educating society and corporate Canada.

[David Macdonald]

Yes, it's about building that resiliency from the start for anything like that, because what it comes down to, and I've said this. In any of these programs this can't be seen as a handout to the military, because as a member who wears the uniform I'm not going to accept a handout. I've gone through 10 years of military training. You can call it “too proud”, but also, I believe in my own skills. I believe that I have the right stuff to do the job. I've always proved, both in Canada and overseas, that I can do the job, so this has to be seen as a hand up, not a handout.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

I understand.

We have two excellent organizations here. There are many other excellent organizations, as we've talked about. Were both organizations, the Treble Victor Group and Wounded Warriors Canada, at the stakeholder summit here last week?