Veterans Affairs Committee on Nov. 21st, 2013

[Janice Burke]

Another top priority that was addressed in the new Veterans Charter was how to adequately meet the needs of survivors. These individuals have dedicated their lives to supporting their loved ones and helping them in their military careers and are instrumental in achieving a successful transition to civilian life.

[LGen Walter Semianiw]

All of you in this room can truly appreciate how great the adjustment from military to civilian life is for the entire family. We need to ensure we take care of those who took personal care of our servicemen and women.

[Janice Burke]

The new Veterans Charter provides more for veterans' families than ever before. The death benefit, vocational rehabilitation, and financial benefits are available to spouses or common-law partners in cases in which the veteran is deceased or disabled.

[LGen Walter Semianiw]

The charter is not perfect, but it's a strong foundation on which to build, as we did with a series of enhancements to better support our most seriously injured veterans or families in 2011, also called Bill C-55. As the minister touched on this week, these improvements represent an investment of approximately $189 million over five years and are benefiting approximately an additional 4,000 veterans.

They include, first, an increase in the monthly financial allowance under the earnings loss benefit, bringing the minimum annual pre-tax income for full-time regular force personnel to $42,426—and that is the 2013 rate—for those participating in rehabilitation or who are unable to be gainfully employed; second, improved access to monthly allowances, including the permanent impairment allowance under the new Veterans Charter for seriously injured veterans; third, a new monthly supplement of $1,047 at the 2013 rate to the permanent impairment allowance, intended for the most seriously disabled veterans who are also unable to be gainfully employed; and fourth, more flexible options for the payment of the lump sum disability award.

Veterans and Canadian Armed Forces personnel receiving a disability award of more than 5% now have the choice of receiving a single lump sum payment, annual payments over any number of years, or receiving part of the award as a lump sum and the remainder as annual payments.

Mr. Chair, in closing, and before we take your questions, I want to stress that the new Veterans Charter reflects the government's commitment to the Canadian Armed Forces, an essential piece of Canada's place in the world. In order for Canada to be able to carry out future military recruitment and retention for missions at home and abroad, our men and women in uniform and their families must know that their needs will be met if they can no longer serve in Canada's military.

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Chair, thank you very much for the opportunity to provide this short presentation.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Peter Stoffer]

General Semianiw and Janice Burke, thank you very much for your presentation.

We now go to five-minute questioning, starting with Mr. Pierre Dionne Labelle.

Sir, welcome to the committee.

[Pierre Dionne Labelle, NDP, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Semianiw.

I'm no expert on the matter, but I do have some concerns. My riding is home to a number of veterans who call my office to complain about how long it takes to process their files and what a hard time they have establishing their various health problems. They also tell me that the department is very rigid in examining their cases. I would like to draw your attention—

[Bryan Hayes, Conservative, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Mr. Chair, excuse me. We're hearing the interpretation in English, but the sound level is very low, even though I have my volume cranked right up. I'm wondering whether it's possible for them to turn their volume up.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Peter Stoffer]

As a point of order for one moment, we'll double-check with the interpreters and their equipment.

Okay?

Merci. Thank you.

[Pierre Dionne Labelle, NDP, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Intuitively, my take on the situation is this.

The people who come to see me have several problems and run into challenges when they are trying to assert their rights. The service income security insurance plan comes up a lot. In Quebec, if someone suffers an occupational injury, the CSST pays between 85% and 90% of the person's wages. Conversely, the plan available to reservist veterans, and others, covers just 75%.

How did you arrive at the conclusion that 75% would be enough to satisfy their needs, despite the fact that provinces such as Ontario and Quebec pay 85% to 90% of a worker's income? Why is 75% sufficient for a reservist or veteran? I can't wrap my head around the fact that you came to a different conclusion than some provinces have when it comes to work-related accidents.

[LGen Walter Semianiw]

Thank you very much for that question.

Before I turn it over to Ms. Burke, I want to remind the committee that as we parse out individual issues that come to the table, which I think are extremely important, I would say, Mr. Chair, that if there's anybody in this room who has veterans who have issues, they should just call the department. We're there to help; we're there to support and to get through any specific cases that may arise.

I would come back to saying that it's really dangerous at times, as you go through this important exercise, to pull out and ask, why 75%. We'll provide you with an answer; we'll do that. But remember, 75% is part of a broad program.

As it is, I would submit that if you take a look at the case in Quebec—85% to 95%—and look at what suite of programs is provided, and look at it with a holistic approach.... I'm not clear on exactly all that's provided in the Province of Quebec as part of a program, but regarding the 75%, Janice will explain how we came to 75%.

[Janice Burke]

As Walter indicated, it's often very difficult to compare one system with another, because they can be very different, but for the Veterans Affairs system at the time when the new Veterans Charter was created, we looked at using a dual-award approach to compensate for injuries and illnesses that were impacting upon the veteran. Essentially, perhaps differently from other systems, we created the disability award, which provides up to $298,000 in a lump sum.

In addition to that, we provided the economic benefit, which is, as you've indicated, an earnings loss benefit that replaces 75% of a veteran's pre-release salary. But in addition to that—and this is the reason you can't compare one with another—for our most seriously injured we also provide, in recognition of economic impacts and loss of career progression, a permanent impairment allowance, which can pay up to $1,000 a month. And on top of that, for veterans who are not able to continue to work, we also provide a permanent impairment supplement of I think approximately $1,000 per month.

So you really have to look at the full suite and at both the non-economic and the economic benefits, because they can differ from one system to the next.

[LGen Walter Semianiw]

Mr. Chair, let me build on that. What I'm unaware of is whether the Province of Quebec provides, as we do in this program, up to $75,000 for retraining as part of that vocational rehab, whether the Province of Quebec allows those who are injured to also go to university, or whether the Province of Quebec also allows that within that $75,000 someone who is a carpenter can buy three or four pairs of boots. That change was just recently announced, as part of our change to vocational rehab; we now provide veterans flexibility in that $75,000.

That's part of my challenge. I'm not familiar with the system so as to be able to compare one with the other, but as Janice said, there are many supports on top of that 75% to address this issue.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Peter Stoffer]

Thank you very much, Mr. Dionne Labelle. Your cinq minutes are finished. I'm sorry.

We now go over to the parliamentary secretary, Mr. Gill, for five minutes, please.

[Parm Gill, Conservative, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I also want to thank our witnesses for taking the time to be with our committee.

The Canadian Forces Members and Veterans Re-establishment and Compensation Act, commonly known as the new Veterans Charter, is focused on a holistic approach that supports wellness and transition. It is described as a living charter and is constructed in a fashion that allows parliamentarians and the government of the day to implement adjustments in order to better provide for the needs of our veterans.

This legislation was first tabled in 2005 by the government of the day. Would you please explain the history of how the new Veterans Charter came to be?

[LGen Walter Semianiw]

Yes. We had laid out a synopsis to bring it all together. From 1996 to about 2000, there was a lot of work done within the Department of Veterans Affairs because the department was receiving signals from many people that things had to change for a lot of reasons. One reason was that, given the increase in the operational tempo, given what we were hearing from veterans, and given what we were hearing from stakeholders, we had to change what we were doing in the programs at the time. That then led within the department to teams being brought together to look at this issue, and in the end what that lead to—and this is the watershed—was the establishment of this committee led by Dr. Neary in 2000.

At that time the decision was made to establish a committee, what I call a committee of experts, to bring them in, including all the stakeholders, who then, Mr. Chair, looked at this issue from 2000 to about 2004. As I mentioned, it wasn't linear where they just went into a room, closed the doors, and came up with ideas. They did sit down, they spoke, they did consultations, and, as Janice would tell you, they went out to the field and consulted at times across bases and wings with men and women in uniform.

Once they had completed their work, they wrote their report. Again, I would encourage the committee to read the report, as Minister Fantino has asked the committee to look into this. It's worth looking at. They then used the report to show what had been learned as part of the journey. They presented the report at that time to the government, to the minister, and then the Department of Veterans Affairs established a special team of people who came to work each and every day, and all they did was sit down and start putting together what we call the new Veterans Charter. It's a team that was brought together, a pretty large and multidisciplinary team, that included representatives from the Canadian Armed Forces. As they did their work, they went out and consulted with stakeholders, and at the end, what you have, Mr. Chair, is the announcement of the legislation and coming into force in 2006. I don't know if that answers the question.

[Parm Gill, Conservative, Brampton—Springdale, ON]

Thank you.

Since its inception, the new Veterans Charter has been known as a living charter.

Can you explain how the concept of a living charter came to fruition, please?

[LGen Walter Semianiw]

Yes. At the time, clearly, the understanding from all those involved was that this was not something that we needed to stop and put on a shelf and walk away from. It's something that we need to continue to look at. That was the department. As a result, people such as Janice, who works in the policy group, have a mandate to always be looking at the NVC, not just now, not just last year.

You know, we've been looking at this for a long while to ensure that as we hear from stakeholders and veterans that there needs to be change, that we start bringing forward that change. That then led to the first key major legislative change, with Bill C-55, which actually came to life in 2011. That speaks to that living aspect of the charter.

Bill C-55 came into being. Bill C-55 does direct the government of the time to go back and look just at Bill C-55, so we're very clear. I would ask this committee, if you're interested and have some time off—which I know you don't have a lot of—to look at that question, because I've looked at it with a lot of people, and the mandate was very clear. Just come back here with this group and look at Bill C-55. Clearly, the intent was to respect, to acknowledge the fact of the living charter, which is why we're looking at this one more time, and we will continue to look at it in the future as we continue down the road.

As we said, Mr. Chair, it's not perfect. I don't think any legislation is ever perfect. You know, perfect is the enemy of good enough. You need to keep things going, and as we brought the legislation in place, we realized we learned what we have to do, Bill C-55, and we'll continue to do that. And we wait to hear the collective wisdom of this committee and what you think we should work on.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Peter Stoffer]

General Semianiw, thank you very much for that.

Before we move on, men and women of the committee, I just want to say that someone in our committee is celebrating their 25th anniversary today as a member of Parliament: Mr. Jim Karygiannis. For some reason, the people of Scarborough—Agincourt have voted for this man. He has won eight elections. So, sir, on behalf of the entire committee, congratulations on 25 years of service.

[ Applause]

[The Chair]

And you get an extra 30 seconds for that.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

I get an extra 30 seconds to say thank you and to also congratulate you on being the parliamentarian of the year. It's a great title, but I'd rather keep mine, the one I have.

Chair, witnesses, and members of VAC, I want to thank you for coming here.

I was part of this when we all voted for it in 2005 and 2006. If I knew then what I know now, I would tell you that we were sold a pile of goods.

You mentioned that the needs must be met. I think $290,000 was the greatest figure you mentioned that a veteran can receive as a lump sum. If somebody gets $40,000 or $60,000, that's five years, and after that, that money is gone. If somebody invested it wisely, they'll be okay. If you live in Winnipeg and you buy two houses, you'll be all right. If you live in Toronto, you cannot even buy a shack to live in for $290,000.

I have a couple of questions, and maybe you can take some time and answer us in writing. One, if this was the greatest thing since apple pie and ice cream, why is a large part of the whole community, I would say to you, P.O.'d about the lump sums?

I got a letter last night that I will email you, but I will read it to you. It goes something like this:

I am writing to inquire what will it cost the Canadian Government yearly and over the next 20-30 years if the Veterans Affairs was giving our physically disabled soldiers a monthly payment according to the old method of Military Pension? Can you please also let us know how many soldiers were since 2006 when the NVC come in, how many soldiers have received lump payments? Also what is the total of lump sums to date since the NVC came in to affect? More specifically these soldiers which were given lump payments if they were given monthly payments according to the old system what would cost the government yearly over the next 20-30 years? What savings has the government realizing by implementing the NVC? What are the other costs which the department has given out for other programs? Please get us a yearly sum of these expenses (this should be minus the lump sums)?

Many thanks.

I will email that to you. Mr. Hillier already has it.

In concluding, why is there so much dissatisfaction among the men and women who served? Why are they telling their future comrades not to enlist? Why were we so stupid as to get fooled to support it? Now, some of us were not there, or some of us who were there were sold a pile of goods. I'm told this was arrived at in front of the plane coming back from overseas. The leaders got together and supported it.

Mr. Hawn, you can shake your head all you want. I'm just telling you what I've heard. You have different comments and you have different ideas. This is not the place, okay? If you disagree with me.... That's what I'm hearing.

[LGen Walter Semianiw]

We'd be more than happy to get those answers back to the committee. As you said, Mr. Hillier might have those.

If I may, Mr. Chair, I'd like to provide a number of comments that might add some kind of support and understanding of part of it.

Part of the danger—I just throw this out to the committee—is the challenge that the new Veterans Charter has been kind of labelled or designated “the lump sum”. This was part of our message in our preamble, that we would strongly encourage.... And we understand this. We accept this. We're going to do better and communicate it better: it's more than just the lump sum.

At this point in time, the department that I'm part of—and I say this, that I'm part of it and I want to be part of it—is providing to veterans and their families $3.2 billion a year. That has nothing to do with running the department. That has to do with supporting veterans and their families.

When I tell that to my colleagues, they're shocked that it's so much. I'm not saying it's enough; no one could ever say that. But I come back to a point we made that I think is extremely important when you get into the wellness issue. Remember what the new Veterans Charters was really all about? It was about looking after those who needed the most help. The comment was made that those who are physically injured or disabled are the individuals who we need—and it's the group that the minister did ask this committee to look at, the most seriously disabled, to really focus in—to get that work.

I also heard the word “Government” of Canada. I think that's really, really important. The danger in our presentation today is that you're just looking at what this department provides; the Government of Canada provides so much more.

For example, yes, the department provides $298,000 in money as part of the lump sum, but the SISIP program does as well. What will happen is that if I am seriously disabled, I will receive a lump sum from SISIP and I will receive moneys, support, from the Department of Veterans Affairs. I come back to the point that this payment of $298,000 or whatever it might be is one part of a suite of programs that were not there before.

So for one to say, “Let's take this out, put that in, put this in, and take that out”, it is difficult to look at because it is very much a suite of programs.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

As well—

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Peter Stoffer]

Unfortunately, Mr. Karygiannis, I gave you an 45 extra seconds, so....

[LGen Walter Semianiw]

When you look at it, I think it's important that the committee look at the wide range—