Veterans Affairs Committee on May 31st, 2016

[Thomas Jarmyn]

We have 23 hearing locations. We travel to those locations at least once each year. To locations like North Bay, for example, I think we only go once a year, simply because there's not that a significant volume of applicants there. Our six high volume locations are the ones I mentioned, which are Halifax, Charlottetown, Montreal, Quebec, Ottawa, Edmonton, and to a lesser degree, Toronto.

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Are the veterans who decide to go to your tribunals compensated in any way financially? Do they have help?

[Thomas Jarmyn]

Veterans' expenses are covered. For example, when we're sitting in St. John's, I've had a number of veterans come in from Labrador City. Their flights are paid for. Their hotels and meals, etc., are all paid for as well.

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

People from the legion in Quebec City told me that sometimes some veterans will get aggressive. Does it happen often that security must remove veterans because they are violent, physically or verbally?

[Thomas Jarmyn]

We've never had that occur. We've engaged security for a couple of veterans in anticipation of a situation arising. I hear a lot of cases. Veterans sometimes get excited, sometimes get emotional. It's never been a circumstance that's unmanageable.

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

How do you see the future of your tribunal? Will it expand or reduce, because we just went through the Afghan war, the longest war in Canadian history. It was quite different from the Second World War, but in terms of duration it was quite long. How do you see the future of your organization?

[Thomas Jarmyn]

We could probably logically anticipate that the overall caseload will decline. What I will say, though, is that the ability to create or generate documents—which largely seemed to happen since the 1990s—has caused the volume of paper in an individual file to explode. We now look at statements of cases that are 150 and 200 pages long simply because people are able to click, click, click and produce all kinds of files and documents. That's not true of records from cases that are from 20 years ago. Those were 50-page statements of case.

I think the raw number of cases may go down, but the volume of information that is being presented and the length of the hearings is probably going to go up. As well, we are getting a better understanding of some of the psychiatric cases, some of the more complex cases.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Part of what we've talked about a lot of times in our committee meetings is the issue of who is supervising the supervisors, which was touched on a little earlier. Again, Ms. Mathyssen brought the question up, and we've asked it in many different committees. The answer I think I heard from you was that you're not really doing that. Am I wrong in thinking that?

[Thomas Jarmyn]

Do you mean who's supervising us?

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Is there a quality control on your assessments? Who's determining whether the people who are doing your assessment or your tribunals, and so on, are doing what they should be doing?

[Thomas Jarmyn]

We have a performance assessment process for members as well. That factors into my recommendations with respect to reappointment, and the choices we make with respect to training.

I probably sit on about 300 cases a year. Of the probably 3,300 decisions, I've read more than 1,000. I provide feedback to members. We have a quality management unit that reviews decisions as well, to make sure these decisions are well written and to explain to veterans what decision has been made and why.

I don't ever want a veteran to leave and not have received benefits and not understood why that happened. As well, I don't want other veterans.... If they see an individual with a knee claim who got entitlement, they need to be able to read that decision and understand why, so they can try to fill that out. That's why I'm so committed to publication.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

We are going to have to limit it to three minutes for the next three panellists here.

Mr. Fraser.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

I have two quick questions, and then one that may require a little bit of expansion.

First, is VRAB subject to the Auditor General's scrutiny? Has that ever occurred?

[Thomas Jarmyn]

Yes, we are. We were factored into the last report on service delivery that was made. Now, we were positioned, I think, in the overall cycle and so we had a small portion of that.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Okay. Have costs ever been awarded against VRAB appearing in the Federal Court of Canada? Does VRAB actually appear and argue their own cases? Is that done by—

[Thomas Jarmyn]

No, we are not a respondent in those cases as a general rule. We appeared in a case where VRAB was actually named as a party, in January, and I directed our counsel to appear. That claim was dismissed.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Are you aware of whether costs have ever been awarded on those cases that are unsuccessfully argued by the respondent?

[Thomas Jarmyn]

I'm not aware of that. I'm not privy to those determinations.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Just to tie things up, I'm wondering if you can help us understand what direction VRAB is going in, and what the top three priorities would be for VRAB, in your view.

[Thomas Jarmyn]

I want to improve the efficiency of the handling of files and the handling of paper, so I can keep on crunching turnaround times.

There comes a time, when you get up into the 90% on a turnaround time for a decision, that's when you begin to think about whether you can drive that turnaround time even further. I think there's some possibility of doing that.

I want to keep focused on quality control with respect to the nature and quality of our decisions. Some of it is that these things have to be well written, too, and they have to be very clear in how they explain things.

Last, the other part is the communication and explanation of what we do and why, so that veterans understand why decisions have been made, so veterans can take that information, bring it forward at the first stage when they make their applications, and hopefully have filled out those checklists better.

Our decisions are the first time that a veteran can look at another application similar to theirs and say, okay, this is what I have to do, independently.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

All right. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Mr. Kitchen.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

You mentioned training. I'm wondering if maybe you could expand upon that a little better for us.

When you say you're training all of your board members, is it a conference style? Is it a textbook? Is it a video conference? How often would you do that?

[Thomas Jarmyn]

The training takes three forms: the initial intake is done through a combination of instruction, textbook, and then work performance exercises.

The second form of training is in more of a conference format, where we bring people in who are experts in particular fields to speak to us. For example, at the conference we just completed last March, we had a number of military doctors in the field of harassment and psychiatric injury who came in and talked about the way the military is handling those things, and some of the understandings with respect to that.

The third form of training is monthly teleconferences or webinars, on which we do some video conference materials, as well.

Then, last, there is the individual feedback that I give on a regular basis to all members.

[Robert Gordon Kitchen, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Would it be fair to say there would be some medical legal training in that as well?