Veterans Affairs Committee on Oct. 4th, 2016

[Andrew Garsch]

I believe it would be. I can speak from my personal experience. I would see my case manager once a month. I would walk in, sit there for five minutes, they would ask me how I was doing, and I would lie and say that I was good because I didn't want to be there on base because I would have anxiety. I couldn't take being there, and they didn't know me whatsoever. They didn't know at all what I wanted to do, or what was meaningful to me. There was no actual plan.

[Alaina Lockhart, Liberal, Fundy Royal, NB]

To be fair you probably hadn't established where you wanted to be, right?

[Andrew Garsch]

I hadn't established a thing. It was a moot point of going to those....

[Alaina Lockhart, Liberal, Fundy Royal, NB]

Is there a matrix that you use to measure success? Do we have a success number out of that? I know it is difficult to measure.

[Andrew Garsch]

When running the research study, we contracted out an epidemiologist from Queen's University to run the matrix for us. This person has done some preliminary work on the first session, and we're going to get more data on that. We're also hoping that by running the next four sessions we'll have enough statistical power from gaining the new numbers in order to show that there is statistical significance behind this program.

[Alaina Lockhart, Liberal, Fundy Royal, NB]

From a funding perspective, who's paying?

[Andrew Garsch]

I believe 80% of the first session was paid for by the founder, and 20% was paid for by the New Brunswick Health Research Foundation. For the next four, we have two corporate sponsors and the New Brunswick Health Research Foundation. The corporate sponsors right now would like to remain anonymous until we're ready to run the sessions and have the final funding.

[Alaina Lockhart, Liberal, Fundy Royal, NB]

So at this point, this isn't a service that VAC is paying for? Correct?

[Andrew Garsch]

That's correct.

[Alaina Lockhart, Liberal, Fundy Royal, NB]

Where in the transition would this work best?

[Andrew Garsch]

There's been a lot of discussion about when the transition starts, and this would be an excellent tool to have right at the beginning, or as part of the yearly discussion of what to do as you transition out of the Forces.

The immediate need is definitely with the people who have already been advised that they're getting a medical release. As soon as those people are advised of their medical release, they should be able to participate in a special course such as this if they feel they need it. You could take that one step further. If an individual is placed on a temporary category, or TCat, they're entitled to two six-month TCat periods before they go on what's called a permanent category. The permanent category facilitates a release. As soon as it's decided that they're being released, I'd say they should be put on a permanent category, and then they can fend their way forward using the tools of VAC and Canadian Forces.

[Alaina Lockhart, Liberal, Fundy Royal, NB]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Thank you.

Ms. Mathyssen.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and my thanks to our four witnesses for being here.

Monsieur Doucette, you said a number of things and I was wondering about some clarification. You talked about the frustrated or persistent vet being seen as aggressive, being seen as a problem. Should there be special training for case managers to deal with this? It would require someone with conflict resolution skills or at least an understanding that this aggression comes from a feeling of not being well served, a feeling of desperation because they're not getting the help they need, or a feeling that they're not getting any better.

[Fred Doucette]

For the most part, the case managers are not too bad with the veterans. They usually understand what they're going through. The difficulty is with the people he has to go through to finally get to that case manager. For instance, about 10 years ago, the first time I went to the Saint John office in New Brunswick to give a briefing, it had a nice little foyer, chairs, a coffee table. Now, though, there's a glass wall about two inches thick. You can't even go to the bathroom without getting somebody to swipe a card for you. I don't know where this fear of these veterans comes from. The case managers get to know them a lot better, and they can solve their problems better.

Of course, people are going to be frustrated, but I think they're playing the violence up too much. It's just the nature of people nowadays. You come armed with information and you want to know why you're not accessing these things. You need an answer. That's where the problem starts, right there.

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

So that first line of contact needs to be better trained, and we need to get rid of the glass walls.

[Fred Doucette]

I understand the need for some security, but it's a them-and-us thing when you walk in there. I gave this country 30 years of my life, and I had my leg blown off and my head screwed up. You'd think I'd be getting the Cadillac treatment, not getting shoved around. It's the indifference to the cause that's frustrating.

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

You talked about different interpretations of the new Veterans Charter. Does that tell us that we need better training, that you simply cannot have one person interpreting it one way and another seeing it differently down the hall? That would, I think, make any veteran upset.

[Fred Doucette]

I think in most cases within the district office, things are pretty well squared away.

However, then you go from the district office, say out of Saint John, and you go to the one—there's none in Charlottetown anymore—in Halifax. Well, they may have another take on certain services. They may know a way of getting something for a veteran that...I wouldn't say it's easier, but less administratively bungled up. I've had veterans say that when they were in Quebec City they applied for this and that and they denied it, and then they moved to New Brunswick and applied again and got it. What went on there?

There are a lot of personal things that come in to working on it. I had a fellow who had to give up the rehab programming because he was too old. He had waited that long. He said, “Maybe I can get three years of good work in.” Then he called me and said, “Fred I'm out of it.” I asked what he meant. He said “I'm going to be 60. I'm not going to go to work now. I started when I was 55.”

A lot of it had to do with his area counsellor. His area counsellor was really PO'd, “Oh, you guys get this support. You get this money. What about us?” The fellow reported him through the system, but the guy is still working there.

It just shows that there are people within the organization who can hold you up if they want. It's horrible to say. However, the lion's share are there to get things through for you as best they can.

I took the new Veterans Charter training in Halifax when it first popped out. I was the only person there who didn't work for VAC specifically. There were about 50 of us, and two things kept coming up, “Who has the signing authority for this part that says you're entitled? Who signs that?” It was, “Well, we are working on that.”

I actually heard some of the people there say, “Well, I've got three more years to serve for pension, I'm not going to get involved in this crap. I'm not going to learn all this here. I'm gone in two or three years.” That whole resistance to change is there, and it was a big change.

It's accessing, hitting the right button, having the right tone, and so on.

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

Thank you very much.

Mr. Estabrooks, I was very interested in what you had to say.

You said that the change in the Veterans Charter 2005 happened just as you were going in to battle.

Could you expand on that? What do you think that was about? I would be very interested in your take on it.

[Kevin Estabrooks]

Veterans who were injured prior to that time used to get the lifetime pension, whereas now they've gone to a lump-sum payment. That change, coincidentally, was made at a time when we were warned that we were going into combat in the Kandahar region.

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

I just wondered if you were thinking that because there were going to be a lot more seriously injured veterans that it was rather coincidental, or interesting, that the change occurred at that point.

[Kevin Estabrooks]

I don't think I would be alone in that. The veterans I have talked to said, yes, that was quite coincidental.

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

It's very unfortunate.

We seem to have all kinds of financial resources available to take men and women into battle, and then they seemed to have dried up when those men and women came home.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Thank you.

Mr. Rioux.