Ms. Mathyssen.
Evidence of meeting #19 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 veterans.
Evidence of meeting #19 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 veterans.
June 14th, 2016 / 5:45 p.m.
NDP
Irene Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON
Thank you, Mr. Zimmerman and Mr. Kovacs, for being here. We certainly appreciate hearing your input. One of the things that I think we have at this point in time is an opportunity to do some positive things, and, as you pointed out, Mr. Zimmerman, there were some very difficult decisions that were taken over the last 10 years. Believe me, I sat in the Parliament of Canada for those 10 years, and I indeed did see things that concerned me very much in regard to the treatment of veterans.
We've heard from a number of folks. One of them was the DND ombudsman, Mr. Walbourne. He said one of the problems—and there are many problems—is that DND and the Canadian Forces, Veterans Affairs Canada, and SISIP,all have their own case managers and vocational programs, and some of the programs offered become inaccessible because of a lack of awareness on the part of the member or due to the sheer complexity of it all. He said it would be best to have one knowledgeable point of contact that you can trust for the entire journey. You seem to be saying the same thing. I wonder if you could comment on what the ombudsman had to say.
Also, I wondered if benefits that are identified by DND—this is what you have lived through, this is what you get—should be constantly reviewed as a matter of course in subsequent years.
5:45 p.m.
As an Individual
Yes, I would agree with the ombudsman. The short answer is absolutely.
One of the things that we discovered in health care when I was working with the surgeon general's office, one of the things that became very clear, was that there is a tremendous dissatisfaction of members because they would come in and they'd see Doc Blue on one day, and then come a few weeks later with the same complaint and have to go through the whole process again with a different doctor, and then a third doctor. It was a major dissatisfaction. One of the things the defence department did and the surgeon general did was to create a system by which you were assigned a physician, and that was your physician while you were in that particular location. That took a significant amount of anxiety off the patients who were coming in for services. It would be the same kind of thing. If I knew that my point of contact, who I had known for the last two or three years, on my release—especially if I'm dealing with health issues—is going to be the same person afterwards, my sense of anxiety...and connection with the Government of Canada, and their sense of obligation to me, would be very profound and very meaningful.
Those would be my thoughts on the ombudsman's recommendation.
Sorry, your second point was?
5:50 p.m.
NDP
5:50 p.m.
As an Individual
Yes. I think one of the things that needs to happen over a period of time is some kind of review process be taken regularly as to: are we meeting the needs of today's veterans in their current situation? God forbid if we end up putting more soldiers in harm's way, and we end up with a different kind of veteran, as we saw with the Afghan veteran and so on, because it was a different kind of war, a different kind of conflict, creating different kinds of issues for us. Unless we have a way of monitoring the needs of these serving members after they've been released, how do we know we're meeting their needs today?
5:50 p.m.
NDP
Irene Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON
That leads into my next question. This is something that I've been very concerned about for a number of years, and it is access to long-term care. Post-Korean vets do not have the same access as World War II and Korean vets. In my own riding I've seen issues where someone served during the Cold War, acquired injuries through that service, but because he was post-Korea didn't quality and had nowhere to go. He had nowhere to go, and was told quite point blank, sorry, you have to leave now. Your surgery is over. Go away. It took a great fight in order to finally get him a bed in a long-term care facility, but he didn't have the same support as other vets.
I just wanted your thoughts in regard to the policy that excludes our modern-day veterans, because they are going to need a great deal of care. We've already seen that in these first few years after Afghanistan and the peacekeeping efforts in places like Kosovo and Cyprus.
5:50 p.m.
As an Individual
I would agree and you're right. As this population ages, there's going to be a point where the pressure that they're going to put on public health services will be significant.
I'm not convinced and haven't seen strong evidence that the public service medical care really comprehends—especially if you're dealing with trauma, long-term trauma, psychological as well as physiological issues—how to deal with these people, so they end up falling through the cracks. Many of these patients can be difficult patients.
One of the things we observed with PTSD that occurred through military action was a significant distrust of authority figures. You don't see that in motor vehicle accidents, having PTSD. They still trust the police and they still trust the system, but for some reason our military PTSD patients had a real suspicion of authority. As that population ages, how are they going to deal with a civilian organization that just doesn't understand that kind of dynamic?
I would absolutely agree with you that those veterans...Why would we not as a country want to care for them with the same degree of care, sensitivity, and funding as we did for our Korean veterans?
5:50 p.m.
NDP
Irene Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON
I quite agree. I have a long-term care facility, a veterans hospital in my riding. The expertise and knowledge that staff have in terms of dealing with veterans, and not just their special needs physically but emotionally with the culture that a veteran is part of, is extraordinary. My fear is that it will be lost. When those Korean vets are gone, those beds will close and we will have lost something very valuable.
My last question for the moment has to do with homeless vets. Canadians discovered that we have homeless vets and seem to be astounded by that fact. The reality is we are not sure even now how many there are. Groups are scrambling. Jerry talked about the growing cottage industry and one of those groups is trying to make up for that loss of housing policy, the loss that happened back in 1994.
Should there be a national housing policy for everyone and something specialized with regard to homeless vets, so that they can get that home and begin that road to recovery?
5:55 p.m.
As an Individual
If I may, Mr. Chairman, I'd like to defer that question to Jerry because Jerry was working on Saturday looking for homeless veterans in Ottawa, so he's further ahead on that issue than I am.
Before I do that, one of the things we discovered when we were trying to set up the occupational stress injury clinics across Canada within the military was that—just to underscore your concern about the lost expertise, should we close those beds and lose that staff—when we were looking for suitable civilian facilities to treat our veterans or to treat military members with post-traumatic stress disorder and other occupational stress injuries, it was very difficult.
It was in the early days when PTSD was not that well understood. We were getting all kinds of pseudo-science or non-science, sometimes just sheer profit-seeking people who had the panacea, who had the answer, and we would have to field all of that, and it came out of the civilian world out of a necessary need.
When we started to reach out to different organizations that treated mental health issues including PTSD in the civilian world, their level of expertise was not that great at that time. Things have changed somewhat but not a lot. The PTSD veteran would be activated and would become sicker as a result of not being treated with the sensitivity and expertise of a military person dealing with a military mental health issue.
I'll leave it at that.
5:55 p.m.
As an Individual
When we're talking about issues such as hospital care and housing, you know that we're involving another jurisdiction or two, such as the province or the municipality. It's important to work with these other jurisdictions in finding solutions. We can also look to other jurisdictions such as the United States. President Obama's campaign to end veterans' homelessness is an example. The City of Medicine Hat, Alberta, claims to have ended homelessness in Medicine Hat. If there are no homeless people in Medicine Hat, there are no homeless veterans in Medicine Hat.
The issue sometimes arises in finding a temporary solution for a veteran who finds himself or herself on the street for one reason or another, and that's why some organizations—and you're probably referring to veterans emergency transition services, VETS Canada—are involved with having boots on the ground to actually find homeless veterans.
We were out on Saturday afternoon in Ottawa and we didn't find any in Centretown. There are all sorts of different reasons for that. We were out at not necessarily the best time—Saturday afternoon. Some veterans don't like to identify as being homeless. Some veterans are couch surfing. Some veterans are living in a car or a van. Now is a great time to be out camping if you like camping, and I don't mean that in a derogatory way. But if you don't have a home and you want to set up a tent or a small trailer in a campground or near a river in a park, the summer is a good time to do that. There are all sorts of challenges in actually identifying these homeless veterans and where they are, and trying to help them, because some of them, for one reason or another, want to be helped, and others just don't want to be helped. That in some way goes to this attitude in the military of not wanting to identify any weaknesses you have, which George knows about.
In your particular cases, when it comes to hospital care, you need to work with the provinces. When it comes to housing, you need to also work with the provinces and the municipalities. But it's necessary to also have an ongoing review of these issues and problems, because they're somehow cyclical in nature. Remember, we heard a lot about homeless veterans during the winter, and less during the summer.
One of the things the new Veterans Charter was to do—and this goes back to one of your earlier questions—is to provide a continuous review of the new Veterans Charter and how it is working, and that just didn't happen. That's where committees such as this parliamentary committee have an important role to play.
6 p.m.
Liberal
Alaina Lockhart Liberal Fundy Royal, NB
Thank you for this opportunity.
Mr. Zimmerman, I wanted to come back to one of the points you made, which was about the need to take care of families. You referred to the mandate letter, which talks about counselling and training for families who are providing care, as well as ending the time limits for vocational rehabilitation for surviving spouses.
Can you expand for me how you see this rolling out, what you think encompasses taking care of the family?
6 p.m.
As an Individual
Let me answer that with this analogy. If you have one member who's ill with post-traumatic stress disorder and living in a family of four, you're treating one-quarter of the problem if you're not dealing with the rest of the family members. The nature of mental health issues is systemic, and the whole system is involved. As treatment is taking place there needs to be a psycho-educational process, certainly for the spouse, if not, depending on age, the children.
The mandate to provide funds for that, of course, becomes a really significant problem, because as I'm aware, this is not an inexpensive proposition. However, on the other hand, if you're treating only one-quarter of the problem, this is one of the things for which we have to bite the bullet and find a way to do that, find a funding process to help those families.
The ongoing needs of surviving spouses will change with age and time and capabilities, as they do for any other person over a period of 25 years, with child care and so on. At the end of the day, they may need a different kind of vocation in order to cope with the changed environment of their time. Do we really want to say, at a certain point, “Your skills are no longer required—even though we put you in this place, and had your spouse not been killed, you would not likely be in this impoverished state or position in which you cannot work”?
6 p.m.
Liberal
Alaina Lockhart Liberal Fundy Royal, NB
One of the things we've heard from some of the witnesses who have been before the committee is that spouses struggle with is the fact that they need to access services via the member, the vet.
Sometimes that's very challenging if the veteran is suffering from PTSD or doesn't recognize the issue.
6 p.m.
As an Individual
You're absolutely right. My wife takes great umbrage at the fact that that in order to access my file, she has to go through me. It puts her in a position where she's accessing her future through her partner. In today's society, that almost puts the spouse in the position for which we used to use the phrase, “dependants, furniture, and effects”. They were sort of lumped together as second-class citizens or second-class subordinates to the members. In today's egalitarian system, that has to change.
With appropriate levels of privacy, there's no reason why my wife could not find ways of accessing the kinds of benefits that she would be expected to receive in the case of my death.
6:05 p.m.
Liberal
Alaina Lockhart Liberal Fundy Royal, NB
The other thing—and feel free to share as much as you'd like—is that both of you have served. I'd like to talk about your experience transitioning. Could you share that with us?
We know that some people transition more easily than others. What did that look like for you?
6:05 p.m.
As an Individual
I had no transition experience. I was in the reserves. I went into the commanding officer's office. The paperwork was already prepared. I was told, “Sign here. We don't need to tell you where the door is because you already know.”
I'm going back a few decades now, and a lot has changed since then, thankfully. In my personal case, I just left. I wasn't made aware of any services or benefits that would have been available to me at the time.
6:05 p.m.
Liberal
6:05 p.m.
As an Individual
There's been considerable improvement since then, for which we are all thankful.
6:05 p.m.
As an Individual
For me, because I don't have any ongoing health issues as a result of my service, I'm not a beneficiary of Veterans Affairs. I'm not entitled to it and I don't need it.
On the other hand, on a personal level, there are significant difficulties in moving from a uniformed, structured system into a system that is not structured and has the ambiguities of civilian life, which I didn't experience when I was in uniform.
That transition is difficult, and the lifestyle is difficult. The lifestyle that I enjoyed of regular work, hard work, travel, those kinds of demands, and the rigours of that system, were suddenly gone. Making adjustments to that required some psychological work on my end. I got myself a counsellor and worked with a psychologist, quite effectively, over six months to a year to make that happen. It was successful, but I had to pay for that process. I'm not complaining about that, personally. I'm just fortunate to be in a position where I could afford that service.
6:05 p.m.
Liberal
Bob Bratina Liberal Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON
I want to reflect on your time as a chaplain. One of the things that we've heard, which you'll be aware of, is the reluctance of soldiers and veterans to share their personal issues or physical or mental injuries with their commanders or their comrades, especially while on active duty, for the obvious reasons of the culture of the military and the fear of losing their jobs.
When you were a chaplain, did people share things with you that they may not have otherwise?
6:05 p.m.
As an Individual
Absolutely.
One of the main strengths of the Canadian Forces chaplaincy is we that don't keep notes. We don't write reports on conversations we have. The level of confidentiality is significant within the legal bounds of confidentiality and counselling.
Regardless of rank, chaplains would move freely and become the sounding board for trauma, personal difficulties, marital disruptions, moral dilemmas, anger, and for distress with commanding officers or a superior or frustration with subordinates. Chaplains get it all and we're in a very privileged position to receive that information. Sometimes all that's necessary is to walk that individual through their event and the resolve. Other times we advocate for services they may need, or we may encourage them to come forward with a particular need.
When I was thinking about the drug addiction that I ran into personally with a number of individuals years ago, the role was to work with the individuals until they were ready to self-disclose. They couldn't afford not to disclose, because they were simply getting sicker and sicker.
6:10 p.m.
Liberal
Bob Bratina Liberal Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON
This is a problem that will continue, and we've had veterans decry the culture that forced them not to admit to whatever the situation was. When you read memoirs of D-Day or Dieppe, so many of those soldiers were absolutely terrified but would put on a brave face. I'm sure it's happened in every theatre everywhere.
Once again, would you be able to suggest to them that they do seek counsel, or are you just being their confessor?