Veterans Affairs Committee on Oct. 18th, 2016

[Carl Gannon]

I will discuss the training situation first.

The reality is that we still have a huge gap right now with training. It stems not just from the training, but from backlogs and from what the numbers look like right now on the ground.

As soon as we get somebody in, there's a huge effort to get them the very bare basics and get them out into the field serving veterans. Until we are able to mitigate that situation, we're still going to be left in that quagmire of bringing new people in but not necessarily having enough time to get them up to speed before they're being requested to serve the veterans. They're serving veterans, basically, without always knowing exactly what they're doing. It's a dual-pronged issue with both training and staffing.

What was the second part of your question?

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

You'll have to answer the second part in about 20 seconds.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

That's all right. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Thank you.

Mr. Bratina is next.

[Bob Bratina, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Thank you.

First of all, Mr. Mac Culloch, with all of your service medals, I think you've seen a bit of the world. Have you ever had dialogue with some of your comrades from other places as to their veteran situation? Is there anything we can learn from other places?

[Wayne Mac Culloch]

I think there's always a lesson that we can learn from others. It's difficult to apply it directly to the Canadian culture, because Canadians are a unique culture on the planet.

Certainly we can learn from the mistakes of others about things that did not work, as opposed to repeating them ourselves. The press south of the border provides many examples of how people have thought that the veterans administration has fallen short in its abilities.

I haven't seen the same type of thing up here in Canada. I think that in the main, Canadians and our culture are sufficiently different that trying to pattern ourselves after someone else has limited applicability.

[Bob Bratina, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Thank you.

Madam Michaud, there's another part to the question of equivalency that Mr. Rioux brought up. This goes back to when I did helicopter traffic reports and flew in a helicopter flown by a pilot.

I remember a conversation with him that sometimes military helicopter pilots had trouble getting civilian jobs because there was a sense that they...not crashed them, but made hard landings and did the kinds of things that you see in movies when they bounce off the ground and so on.

Is there any stigma or discrimination about an ex-military person getting into a civilian job? Does that exist?

[Marie-Claude Michaud]

Yes, that is still the case, unfortunately.

We have done a lot of awareness-raising over the past few years with civilian employers and even public institutions. You would be very surprised to know how few people, even within provincial political institutions and the public administration, are aware of the reality of veterans and recognize the skills they have acquired.

I would add that things have changed, but we have to continue to increase people's awareness. We have to let people know that these military members and veterans have skills and that they can be very useful in enterprises. It has taken our resource centre 18 years to meet that objective. Of course we are in Quebec, and the challenge was a big one. It is possible to meet it, but it takes a collective awareness-raising effort. The stigma still exists.

[Bob Bratina, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Thank you.

Do I have some more time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Yes. You have three minutes.

[Bob Bratina, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Gannon, the Charlottetown office will have a staff of four case managers and two veteran service agents. Does that mean there are six people who will work in that office?

[Carl Gannon]

No. That would just be at the very beginning, when it first opens. Staffing with the office is more complex, because most of it is going to happen in waves. There is not going to be a full complement of staff when an office opens. You're pretty much going to have—I'm not going to call it a skeleton crew, but you're basically going to have the bare minimum at that particular time. Then slowly, over the span of a year or 18 months, we're going to continue to hire in those places.

[Bob Bratina, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Typically, in a fully accomplished office setting, what would the administration and structure be like? In almost the ideal situation, what would you have?

[Carl Gannon]

It's hard to answer that generally, for the simple fact that it has to be based on the requirements for that particular area. The needs for that area have to be met, but every area is going to be slightly different. However, reaching that 25:1 ratio is a very good place to start across the country.

[Bob Bratina, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

What we've heard about over and over again is the lack of information on the part of a veteran, who may have left for a number of circumstances, now suddenly finds himself in need of service, and doesn't have the transitional background to understand, which puts pressure on the office. Is that a fair observation?

[Carl Gannon]

Yes, most definitely. That's the reality of the situation. There has to be better integration when they're leaving the forces so that we are there, so there's a seamless transition in support. It is starting and ending, but there's no gap in that service. As soon as there's a gap, then I will tell you that my members are going out to basically bear the brunt of that on the front lines.

[Bob Bratina, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

In recruiting members, what kind of person do you want to hold those jobs? You've mentioned the fact that they raised the standards. Maybe a degree isn't quite the skill that someone would require. What would you say about that?

[Carl Gannon]

I would totally agree with you there. I would say that to work on the front lines, especially at Veterans Affairs, it takes a dedicated and special person, because some of the things you are going to deal with are going to be different from those in a lot of other departments.

You need to understand military culture. There are certain things that you have to understand. You have to understand the way that an injured soldier's mind works at times, so that you're able to mitigate situations before they actually arise. It's difficult. Sometimes you can be having a conversation and things can change very quickly, and if you don't understand that, if you don't know that this is reality, then you're probably going to leave very quickly because it's not what you thought you were signing up for.

[Bob Bratina, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Thank you.

Now we'll switch to five minutes. I'll call upon Mr. Brassard.

Welcome to the committee. It's great that they assigned you to us. We're looking forward to having you here today and to your continuing on. Thanks.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's an honour to be sitting on this committee, to be frank.

I'm going to jump right into it because I only have five minutes.

Mr. Gannon, you mentioned this, and I think you did as well, Mr. Mac Culloch. It's somewhat disturbing to me, and unconscionable, actually, that two out of ten Blue Cross claims were being rejected at one point. Mr. Gannon, you said that it's now up to four and a half out of 10. Why is that happening? Is it a problem with our provider? Is it that information is not being filled out? At a minimum, how can that be corrected?

I'd like Mr. Mac Culloch to step in on that one as well.

[Carl Gannon]

Right off the bat, we have to understand that we're changing to a for-profit insurance company from a public service. A public servant's mandate is not the same thing as, say, Blue Cross's mandate.

The reality is that in those treatment authorization centres, for those analysts who work with the providers and the veterans, if you were to look at their job description, you would see that their job literally was to try to help that person get approved. That's not what Blue Cross's mandate is. Any time there's a change, any time that you're going from a dedicated public servant to a for-profit insurance company in the exact same model, there are going to be issues. That's what we're seeing. There's a level of thoroughness that is not there anymore.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

In the process of procuring Blue Cross, there would have been certain standards and measures set by the government to make sure that our veterans would not be denied the type of access to benefits that they require, so where's the breakdown? That's what I'm trying to figure out here, Mr. Gannon.

[Carl Gannon]

One thing I will say is that with a contract of that particular magnitude, they were there to do a particular thing. They were there to process claims and pay the claims. They were not there to hold anybody's hand. They were not there to assist, per se. That's not what is in the contract. The contract says, “Here's your claim; you process the claim, you pay the claim, and then you're done.”

That's not what the mandate is. That's not in the oath you sign, the oath you take, when you become a public servant. The way they look at what they do is inherently different. They're an analyst at Blue Cross who works for Blue Cross. They're not a public servant. They're not a federal government employee. They have no vested interest in the well-being, per se, of that actual veteran, while for somebody who is working for Veterans Affairs as a public servant, that is exactly what their vested interest is: it's in improving that situation, because it helps them as well in moving forward.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Are you saying that the reason that we've gone up to this four and a half out of 10 claim rejection is directly because of Blue Cross?