Veterans Affairs Committee on May 5th, 2016

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

That—

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

I'm sorry. We've run out of time.

Ms. Lockhart.

[Alaina Lockhart, Liberal, Fundy Royal, NB]

Thanks to all of you for being here today and sharing with us the information you have. As we've said, it's very useful for us as we try to get a grasp on how we can positively impact Veterans Affairs.

I have some questions for you, Mr. Cuppens. I'm pleased to see you here today. We met last fall back in New Brunswick when we were planting tulips to commemorate the liberation of Holland. I appreciate your being here today.

I'm going to ask you some questions about the services that we have in New Brunswick and how they're delivered, partly because I'm biased in representing Fundy Royal, but also because I think it does represent a scenario where we have some urban and rural services.

Could you tell us a little about what service delivery looks like for veterans in the Saint John area and the rural areas surrounding it?

[LGen Louis Cuppens]

As I mentioned in our testimony, veterans can access Veterans Affairs services either on the Internet or by telephone, or by going into a Veterans Affairs district or area office. Those are not extant in all communities.

You mentioned Saint John. There is the area office in Saint John that has quite a staff. Also, they're next door to the largest army base in Canada, Base Gagetown, where they have a Veterans Affairs group of people embedded in the joint personnel support unit. Serving veterans and even veterans who live in the nearby communities can go there for assistance.

If you reside in other rural areas in New Brunswick—in Sussex, in Moncton, or out in the countryside—and need special assistance, you would have to commute to those facilities and meet with a counsellor or a case manager. You can contact the Canadian Peacekeeping Veterans Association, the Legion, or ANAVETS, and also the many reach-out organizations, including the Red Cross and the medical society. All these folks know how to find resources to help veterans, and if they don't know, Veterans Affairs hasn't been doing their job to communicate.

You were asking about veterans facilities. It's very much the same in many places in Canada. New Brunswick has four large wings for veterans. One is located in Saint John and is called Ridgewood, and we have one in Moncton, one in Fredericton, and one in Edmundston. These are located near the big centres and affiliated with the local hospitals there. Veterans have access to these facilities, but only World War II and Korean veterans may go there. Spouses cannot be collocated with the veteran when admitted there.

As the client base from World War II diminishes to zero, which according to demographic predictions will happen within 5 years, then you're into the Korean veterans, and the demographic prediction for them is the same only 11 or 12 years away, so these facilities will have no veterans in them. The whole methodology then would be to transfer them, since we haven't changed the eligibility criteria, to provincial health authorities for full-time use.

Modern-day veterans—and I'm talking about those who have served since Korea—can access the facility if their disability is related to a service condition and they're being treated for something they've already been given a disability award for by Veterans Affairs. They can go there, but again, spouses may not.

I hope I've answered your question, Alaina.

[Alaina Lockhart, Liberal, Fundy Royal, NB]

Yes, thank you.

As we see this change in demographics, which is going to happen, are those facilities...? I understand that they're managed by the province, correct?

[A voice]

Yes.

[Alaina Lockhart, Liberal, Fundy Royal, NB]

What condition are they in? If we were able to move forward, do we have the infrastructure to say that we could extend services?

[LGen Louis Cuppens]

Most of these facilities opened within the last 15 years. They're very modern, state of the art, and well staffed. They don't have palliative care facilities. They just have a ward, a two-room facility, for people who are dying.

They are state of the art, though, and they're supported strongly by the regional hospitals in their area. There are people there from veterans support entities. Many volunteers go there to help transport them, to play music for them, or to do anything they can to make their lives better. The facilities are quite new.

[Alaina Lockhart, Liberal, Fundy Royal, NB]

As we move forward and talk about how we provide veteran services to new veterans, too, are there any other things that we should be doing—and this could be for you or any other witness—and be focused on to kind of start to build that bridge?

[LGen Louis Cuppens]

I'd jump a little bit bigger and talk about what I mentioned in our written testimony to your panel. We mentioned things like the larger facilities, Ottawa, the Perley and Rideau, Toronto, and the Deer Lodge Centre in Winnipeg. All these old facilities that Veterans Affairs Canada initially funded are still working, and veterans are going there, and volunteers are going there to help the veterans. These facilities are diminishing in population, and perhaps Veterans Affairs Canada might want to look at placing veterans with other veterans.

I'll give you the example of the Colonel Belcher centre in Calgary. When I was on the advisory council, we went to visit that. We were shown a very modern new hospital that was opened up. We went into one area, which was a veterans wing, mostly populated by World War II and Korea veterans, and then we went to see the state-of-the-art systems that they had in place to help aged people.

Then we came across another area where there were long-term care people, and we encountered four modern-day veterans there, two of them were amputees from Afghanistan, and we asked, “How come they are not with the veterans in the veterans wing? It's simple, because they have an affinity to one another. We're a family, we're a brotherhood”. They said that they were not eligible. That's an area I think we should pay some attention to.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Next we have Ms. Mathyssen.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you to this extraordinarily talented panel for all of this information.

I wanted to take up where my colleague left off in terms of long-term care. In London, Ontario, we have the state-of-the-art Parkwood hospital, and they are closing the beds. They're closing the veterans beds, and we need them. We need them for modern day vets, and it's as simple as that.

Mr. Cuppens, you touched on the fact that spouses are separated, and I want to tell you about Victor Rose, who was 97 years old. He passed away last November. Victor was separated from his wife of 70 years for 10 of those years, and it was the most cruel thing I think I've ever seen. If you were to suggest that veterans and spouses be allowed to have long-term care in the same facility, I would support that very, very much, because, ultimately, it's about families and how we support those families.

I have a number of questions. Do you support the principle of one veteran, one standard, that veterans should be treated equally no matter what?

[LGen Louis Cuppens]

I sure do. You've heard from the Veterans Ombudsman, even from the deputy minister of VAC, the Legion, and others that a veteran is a veteran is a veteran. They are all people who have committed themselves under the unlimited liability to serve and so they should all be treated equally.

Is there a difference between a veteran who went overseas to England in 1939 and remained in England until they went to the continent in 1944 and the veteran who went to Afghanistan or the veteran who went into the invasion of Cyprus? There's none. They all went into harm's way because the people of Canada asked them to, so one standard of delivery should be extant for them all.

Your opening remark, though, deserves some comment. These facilities that we talked about, with the exception of Ste. Anne's, do not belong to Veterans Affairs. Veterans Affairs provides funding for them, but the health care that's rendered to people across Canada is the responsibility of Health Canada and the provincial governments. The veterans facilities that we talked about are co-funded by Veterans Affairs Canada and the provinces, but the provinces have the ultimate responsibility for delivering health care in Canada since Veterans Affairs is no longer in that business.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

No, but I think the point is that the funding is only limited in terms of veterans, and a lot of modern day veterans cannot access those facilities. They're closing down beds in very, very good places and denying people the supports they need. You alluded to that comradeship, that need to be with people who understand the situation that you have lived, and the support that comes from that.

[LGen Louis Cuppens]

Your question and your observation are most valid, and they should be included in your long-term report.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Okay, thank you. I expect that's probably going to be the case.

We've had veterans and spouses here in the last few meetings. One of the spouses said that she didn't know what was available to her. I was speaking with someone who works with veterans, who said that in DND there are 27 definitions for a family, which has created a great deal of confusion about how you support that family.

First of all, what supports would you suggest for the family, because that's the unit that helps the veteran to manage and to get through what that individual needs to challenge given what they've come up against? What do you do for a veteran who doesn't have that network, who doesn't have that support system? How can they be supported? Should Veterans Affairs be looking at that?

[LGen Louis Cuppens]

You've asked another significant question: the business of redressing the awareness of releasing Canadian Forces members and their families, about what's available to them. You may recall that in my testimony I mentioned that in a lot of NATO nations—not ours—the process of release is jointly managed by those who support veterans and the military. There's an examination process that takes place months before their release, in which the case is studied by competent people. In the case of the U.K. forces, for example, the joint veterans support entity and the military write down, “This veteran is pensionable for these conditions.” The family is also involved in the same process in providing that pre-release counselling. The Neary report, which I was a part of, recommended that to Veterans Affairs. Unfortunately, it never happened. They're working away at trying to enhance and repair the release process for military members so that they, too, receive counselling and the families receive the counselling they need too. Again, I would urge you to put that in your recommendations in your final report.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Okay, thank you.

I think my last question—

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

You have 15 seconds.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

—is in regard to homeless veterans. We've discovered that there are thousands of homeless veterans in this country, who up until very recently no one seemed to know about.

What kinds of supports are currently in place for them, and how can we improve on them, if there are indeed thousands who have been lost?

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

We're out of time unless you can make it a 10-second answer.

[LGen Louis Cuppens]

You've already had testimony from the legion concerning the monies they've set aside to look for the homeless veterans. Provinces have become involved too, as has ANAVETS, and others. It comes down to a part of your study, the mental care of veterans, including PTSD and the issue of pride. A lot of them won't reach out for help and find themselves homeless, and they suffer through that. It's a matter of reaching out. A whole bunch of volunteer entities need to do that, but the government could go a long way in repairing the releasing process of sick veterans.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Mr. Eyolfson.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Thank you all for your service, and thank you for coming.

Mr. Kokkonen and Mr. Cuppens, there doesn't seem to be an adequate time frame, once you start the evaluation, between when they may need to be released and their actual release. What would you recommend as a time frame? You have a service person who has an injury, either physical or mental, and it's determined that they will have to be released. What would be your recommended time frame for that? How long should they be kept in the service so they can be transitioned to being a veteran?

[LGen Louis Cuppens]

I don't know if you've had testimony from the defence department in this area, but I've read the testimony of the deputy minister when he talked about the releasing process. There is an accommodation process within the military. When you're injured, they will retain you for a period of time, until they can no longer see a way to look after you because of the universality-of-service requirements. In the Neary report we recommended that this release process commence as soon as possible when the release is the final mechanism decided upon by the defence department. That can be as early as two years, one year, six months, but it should start as soon as the defence department has decided that it intends to release this person. Then the counselling should occur for both the member and the family. Those recommendations have been made to Veterans Affairs Canada before, and maybe your panel should ask them what they've done about it.