Evidence of meeting #14 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 board.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Liberal
Dan Vandal Liberal Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB
If we wanted to change this situation, then, we would change the legislation.
Acting Chair, Veterans Review and Appeal Board
If you wanted to, yes, but I think you'd want to ask the question about the efficacy of doing that, whether or not there is truly a value in doing it.
The questions are pretty refined. There is the opportunity to submit new evidence. Any issues with respect to credibility and those sorts of things I think are probably well addressed at the review level.
Liberal
Dan Vandal Liberal Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB
I probably don't have a lot of time left.
Can you tell me about the Bureau of Pensions Advocates?
Acting Chair, Veterans Review and Appeal Board
The Bureau of Pensions Advocates are lawyers. There's a body of them in Charlottetown who do most of the appeal work, and then there is Halifax, which serves most of Atlantic Canada. There's a lawyer as well in Saint John, Montreal, Quebec City, Ottawa, Toronto and serving Kingston, also in London, and then throughout western Canada.
Liberal
Acting Chair, Veterans Review and Appeal Board
No, they're not. They are independent counsel. They're set up as an independent group within the Department of Veterans Affairs. I think it's section 6 of the act that establishes it.
Liberal
Dan Vandal Liberal Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB
Is the job that you do part-time, full-time, or voluntary?
Acting Chair, Veterans Review and Appeal Board
All members are full-time GIC appointees.
Liberal
Dan Vandal Liberal Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB
I'm starting right at the beginning here. This has been my first meeting. Thank you.
Liberal
Liberal
Colin Fraser Liberal West Nova, NS
I have a couple of quick questions.
First of all, you mentioned that the board is not adversarial. I assume that the burden of proof, then, when the person appears before the board, the applicant or the appellant, is on a civil standard for them to prove their case.
Acting Chair, Veterans Review and Appeal Board
No, the Federal Court of Appeal has said that they must prove, on a balance of probabilities, the individual facts of the claim, but in a decision called Cole, which is about two years old, said that the question is whether or not it is “reasonable to conclude” that the condition was related to service and that service was a significant cause, which, as the Federal Court writes, is more than 1% and less than 49%.
Liberal
Colin Fraser Liberal West Nova, NS
With regard to the evidence, rules of evidence are to accept any uncontradicted evidence. Can you help me understand, if it's not adversarial, how there can be contradicted evidence?
Acting Chair, Veterans Review and Appeal Board
There are two things. We accept just about anything in evidence, from statements to newspaper articles to recordings—the whole nine yards. With respect to uncontradicted evidence, what we're talking about is contradiction between documents, which are the most common evidence, and some document within the file.
If a document comes to a conclusion about a car accident, and there's another document that says something else about it, that's a contradiction that we're going have to resolve. If there's only one view with respect to those facts, then we accept it.
Irene Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON
I want to come back to some of the information that we've already heard.
Some time ago I did an Order Paper question and asked about the VRAB appeals in years 2014-15 and 2015-16.
In terms of percentages, in 2014-15 about 50% of the reviews were successful. That compares with 44.6% in 2015-16. In terms of appeals, in 2014-15 some 57% of the appeals were successful; then subsequently, only 34.7% of the appeals were successful. It's a significant drop, particularly in regard to the appeals.
I wonder whether you can comment on why the appeals are less successful now as compared with a year or two years ago.
