Evidence of meeting #121 for Veterans Affairs in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was recommendations.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Neil Ellis
I call meeting 121 to order.
Today we have witnesses from the Office of the Veterans Ombudsman: Craig Dalton, veterans ombudsman; and Sharon Squire, deputy veterans ombudsman and executive director. Welcome to both of you.
We'll open up with your testimony. Thank you.
Craig L. Dalton Veterans Ombudsman, Office of the Veterans Ombudsman
Mr. Chair, committee members, thank you for inviting me here today and for providing me with the opportunity to share the results of our 2019 Office of the Veterans Ombudsman Report Card.
As mentioned, I'm joined here today by the deputy ombudsman, Sharon Squire.
Excuse me if I go back a bit to first principles, as this is my first time to appear before you. As you're aware, the Office of the Veterans Ombudsman has really a two-part mandate, and the first and most important part of that mandate is to respond to individual veteran's complaints, or complaints raised by spouses or survivors. The second part of our mandate is to recognize and identify issues that may be affecting more than one veteran, therefore representing perhaps a systemic issue. Under our mandate, we have the opportunity to investigate those issues and, where appropriate, make recommendations to VAC to improve programs and services. That's really where the report card comes in and that's why we're here today.
This is the third year that our office has released the report card. It was first released in 2017. The report card is a tool for us that allows us to capture, track and report publicly on recommendations that our office has made to Veterans Affairs Canada to improve programs and services.
The report card allows us to do a couple of things as we report publicly. The first is to acknowledge progress that's been made, and in fact to celebrate where changes have been made to programs and services to the benefit of veterans and their families. More importantly, from our office, it allows us an opportunity, on a regular basis, to shine a light on areas that we think still need some attention, and that's what the report card this year does.
I'd just like to share a few highlights with you, if I may.
Three areas where we've seen progress this year, progress that we believe will be well received by veterans, are as follows. The first is that veterans will now be able to retroactively claim reimbursement for treatment costs to the date of application as opposed to the date of decision for disability award and now pain and suffering compensation applications, which we believe is a significant improvement. The second is that, at the age of 65, all veterans who have a diminished earning capability assessment will now receive 70% of their income replacement benefit, which is very important in terms of financial security post-65. The third is that it's good to see movement on issuing of veterans' service cards, which the veterans community has been calling for, for quite some time.
We do like to acknowledge and recognize these improvements that have been made.
As I said, it's also an opportunity for us to shine a light on areas that still need some attention. As of the point of reporting this year, there are still 13 OVO recommendations that have yet to be addressed. The majority of those recommendations relate to the two areas that we hear about most commonly in complaints from veterans. They are in the areas of health care supports and service delivery.
In releasing the report card and sharing it with the minister, I took the opportunity to highlight three of those recommendations that we think would warrant attention as a matter of priority. They are as follows.
The first is expanding access to caregiver benefits, which is something we hear and continue to hear about on a regular basis from veterans groups and veterans advocates.
The second is covering mental health treatment for family members in their own right. Having had the opportunity in my first few months to meet with a number of veterans, and spouses in some cases, and to hear about some of the circumstances and challenges that family members, and in particular children, face when dealing with having a parent who was injured or is severely ill as a result of service, makes me wonder whether or not we're doing all we can do to support children and families. We think that's an important area.
The last is to provide fair and adequate access to long-term care and, to a lesser extent, the veterans independence program.
Those are three areas that we believe are important and I highlighted those to the minister. We will continue to follow government's actions in response to our recommendations and will continue to report publicly to you, the committee, and to Canadians on progress as needed.
As I mentioned earlier, I'd also like to take this opportunity to share my priorities with you, after having spent six months on the ground now and having had the opportunity to speak to a number of veterans, a number of veterans groups and advocates. We've taken some time to identify the priority areas that we think need to be addressed next. Again, these aren't ideas that we came up with sitting and talking amongst ourselves. This is what we hear from veterans who phone our office and from veterans groups and advocates. I'd like to share those priorities with you briefly.
The first priority, from my perspective, goes back to the key component in our mandate, and that's providing direct support to veterans and their families when they believe they've been treated unfairly. We're still a fairly young office, and our front-line staff have done very good work to this point in time. However, based on what we've heard from veterans and what we hear through our client satisfaction surveys, we have some work to do to make sure that we deliver an even better service and that we clarify what our mandate is, what we do and what we don't do, so that veterans who need our help will actually come to us. This is a significant priority for me and our number one priority.
Additional priorities include health care supports. As I mentioned earlier, this is the area that we receive complaints about the most. I'm led to believe that this area has not been looked at in quite some time, so we want to help move things forward in this regard by taking a broad look at VAC health care supports to identify areas we think might need some attention.
Third would be transition. I think we're all well aware of the importance of the transition process and ensuring that veterans and their families are well set up for post-service life. This is an area that continues to, thankfully, gain a lot of attention. We're particularly interested in looking at the area of vocational rehabilitation and the programs and services that help veterans find purpose in post-service life.
As we do this work—and we've also heard this through engagement over the last number of months—there are a few groups that we believe need to be considered a little more closely and a little more deliberately. They include women veterans. I've had the chance to speak to a number of women veterans and women's advocates. It's clear that a number of the programs and services they have access to were not designed specifically with women service members in mind or women veterans in mind. This is an area that we think is going to require significant focus going forward.
Second are veterans of the reserves. We've received a number of complaints, again related to specific programs. In looking into those complaints, it's become clear that, while the program is well intended, well designed and works well for regular force veterans, that's not always the case for reservist veterans. We think there's enough of an issue there to broaden that scope a bit and make sure the programs and services that are being provided adequately take into account the unique nature of reserve component service.
The last priority—and I mentioned this earlier—is families. Just in the brief amount of time I've been here speaking with veterans and families, we believe that this is another area we need to look at a little more closely to make sure we understand what the impacts on families, particularly children, are and that we have programs and services that adequately take this into account.
The last piece I would mention is just a bit of ongoing work that we initiated a number of months ago in terms of conducting a financial analysis of the pension for life. That work is more than just a financial analysis. We're going to monitor the implementation, and we are monitoring the implementation with a view to producing a report sometime late this year or perhaps even early 2020, after we've had time to watch it be implemented and get a sense of what the impact is on the ground.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to share an overview of the report card and also speak to some of our priorities going forward.
I'd be happy to take any questions, if there are any.
Conservative
Phil McColeman Conservative Brantford—Brant, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you for coming today, Mr. Dalton and Madam Squire.
I wonder if you've had any feedback since the announcement of pension for life. In a recently published news article, there's an advocate veteran named Medric Cousineau, who mentions that, through his analysis, some of the most needy veterans will not be receiving the same level of benefits that they were prior to the new veterans pension plan scheme. Have you had any occasion to speak with veterans, or have veterans come to you to express any views on this matter?
Veterans Ombudsman, Office of the Veterans Ombudsman
In general terms we did not receive the anticipated degree of calls from veterans related to pension for life. The majority of our calls were related to seeking to understand the program, particularly for those who were transitioning from the Veterans Well-being Act to pension for life.
We did receive a number of complaints related to the timeliness of the payout for the supplementary relief benefit, and we're looking at that.
We did receive a couple of concerns about perhaps some unintended consequences of changing programs from non-taxable to taxable and how that may impact a number of veterans, but we haven't worked those cases through with them.
I've met with Mr. Cousineau and I would say, first off, that the information he has shared is accurate and I think it corroborates what the Parliamentary Budget Officer has reported in terms of the financial comparison of the three benefit regimes that are now in existence, and it aligns with the work we've done in our financial analysis to date.
I would say that it almost defies simple comparison from one benefit regime to another benefit regime. In our work early on, we did note the implication for the most ill and injured veterans who, under pension for life, as it is written today and is being implemented today, would be less well off financially than they would have been under the Veterans Well-being Act.
I would also say that when I look at the three benefit regimes now, it's pretty clear that we have veterans under each of those benefit regimes who are not being treated the same way, even though they might suffer the same level of injury and they might have similar needs. That's certainly an issue that we'd like to see addressed moving forward.
Conservative
Phil McColeman Conservative Brantford—Brant, ON
As the ombudsman, when people—meaning veterans—call you about this particular issue, just to take it one step further, are you aware of the complexities of determination, of the types of changes and how they will affect...? Are you clear in your mind, do you have a policy that is laid out and that you understand so that you can obviously have a conversation in a fulsome and educated way?
Veterans Ombudsman, Office of the Veterans Ombudsman
Yes. We did a significant amount of preparation of our staff to be able to respond to veterans, both before April 1 and after April 1. In fact, we published what I think is a very effective graphical explanation, which we have here and could share with you, to help veterans understand the transition.
Veterans Ombudsman, Office of the Veterans Ombudsman
Having said that, it's complicated.
Anytime you transition from a suite of six or seven programs into three, you're going to have some complicated issues to try to explain to folks, but we continue to work through that.
Conservative
Phil McColeman Conservative Brantford—Brant, ON
Okay.
Going back to your testimony, you said there were 13 recommendations not acted upon. Were those out of the auditor's report? You had mentioned the name of the report.
Veterans Ombudsman, Office of the Veterans Ombudsman
No, those are 13 recommendations that our office has made over the course of the time that we've been in existence.
Conservative
Phil McColeman Conservative Brantford—Brant, ON
I wanted to clarify that.
You articulated three to us today that you feel should take priority. Will you advise the minister of the fact that you would like action on these three?
Conservative
Veterans Ombudsman, Office of the Veterans Ombudsman
That's both an interesting and a difficult question. They're all of relative importance.
We make these recommendations fully aware of the context in which the department receives them, which is that we're not the only organization that's looking at veterans programs and services and making recommendations to the department.
They get their guidance in the form of ministerial mandate letters, as you would know, and from time to time, direction from government and from the minister. Our recommendations are taken into account as they decide what it is they're going to focus on in terms of program changes and when they're going to do that. We need to be aware of that, which is why we took the step to try to highlight those three because those are the three that we hear about most frequently from veterans.
Conservative
Phil McColeman Conservative Brantford—Brant, ON
Of the three, you mentioned that number one is caregiver benefits.
Conservative
Phil McColeman Conservative Brantford—Brant, ON
I just returned with a veteran's son whose father had passed away recently. He's Métis and there was a wonderful ceremony of him giving to the Juno Beach Centre his dad's uniform and his medals and everything to be on display at the Juno centre.
I had some extended conversations with him on the way back about the fact that he had been the principal caregiver of his dad over the last number of months of his life and that he, of course, had to rearrange his life significantly to be that principal caregiver.
Are these the types of situations you're talking about, where often people...? I know it well from the disabled community, where a parent will have to quit their job to take care of a loved one who has a severe disability or was born with a severe disability. Are these the types of situations you're hearing about, or could you give us your examples of the kinds of things you hear?
Veterans Ombudsman, Office of the Veterans Ombudsman
That's very much what we're hearing. The first thing we hear about is just general access under the program—in particular, individuals with mental health diagnoses who might not qualify under the current eligibility criteria. It's a very complicated set of criteria based on the activities of daily living, and I won't get into it, but the number one complaint is just eligibility. If you look at the number of people who are in receipt of it, it certainly begs the question of whether the eligibility criteria make sense and whether they allow adequate access to the program. That's the first thing we want to look at.
An example that was shared with me recently by a veteran was that, under the eligibility criteria, you have to demonstrate that you are challenged in meeting a number of those activities of daily living. There are four, I believe. He used the example of eating and, yes, this individual can physically eat. However, to be able to eat, you have to shop, you have to drive a car, you have to go to a place where there are crowds and you have to be able to prepare that meal. There's the question of whether you have the capability versus the capacity. We think that needs to be looked at.
The second piece that has also been shared with us is when families have to readjust because the burden sharing of running and operating a home—everything from buying groceries to cooking meals to taking kids to soccer to doing whatever it is parents normally do—gets disrupted, and some spouses have had to take significant pay cuts and in some cases quit jobs. That is something we also hear about and it's also an aspect we think should be looked at.
Liberal
Doug Eyolfson Liberal Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for coming. There are so many things to go through, and I understand it's a very complicated thing to wade through all this. Thank you for all your work on this.
Among the things that have been done when we talk about service delivery.... As you know, we reopened nine of the veterans service centres and then opened an additional one. Have you had any feedback on the ability of veterans to receive their services since those have been reopened?
Veterans Ombudsman, Office of the Veterans Ombudsman
I have not, in the time I've been here, but I'll just check.
Sharon Squire Deputy Veterans Ombudsman and Executive Director, Office of the Veterans Ombudsman
No.