Veterans Affairs Committee on Oct. 18th, 2016

[Marie-Claude Michaud]

You raise an excellent point. That is what our centre's employment assistance team tries to do with employers, colleges and universities in the Quebec region, among others. We try to transfer military skills in order to obtain as many equivalences as possible.

However, there has been considerable recruitment over the past 10 years. Many young people joined the forces in order to experience Afghanistan. They had not necessarily finished their studies, and are now experiencing repercussions from the missions. We have to guide them toward a career change or help them to go back to school.

What we see is that some of them need some time to absorb reality, psychologically speaking, before taking on a new challenge. There is a lot to do to get military skills recognized. Earlier, for instance, I spoke about negotiations with the provincial level and educational institutions. This could produce some results.

[Jean Rioux, Liberal, Saint-Jean, QC]

I am going to try to be more specific.

[Marie-Claude Michaud]

Please go ahead.

[Jean Rioux, Liberal, Saint-Jean, QC]

I understand what you are telling me. You try to obtain equivalences for people once they have left the army. But could that not be done in the course of...

[Marie-Claude Michaud]

... their career?

[Jean Rioux, Liberal, Saint-Jean, QC]

Yes, I am talking about their career path in the army. If a soldier is a plumber, electrician or policeman in the army, training could be provided at the same time as he is doing his military service. When he or she returns to civilian life, they would already have vocational qualifications.

[Marie-Claude Michaud]

I agree with you. I'll give you an absurd example. Military police officers are rejected by provincial police forces. A police officer is a police officer. And yet, they are not accepted. Consequently many military police officers become security guards. And yet they have the necessary skills to be police officers.

Honestly, I don't know the answer to your question as to whether an equivalency system could be set up in the military environment. Officers who have a BA already have established skills and equivalencies. The situations we are talking about are experienced by non-commissioned officers for the most part.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Thank you.

Go ahead, Mr. Eyolfson.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Thank you, everyone, so much for coming.

Mr. Gannon, you mentioned working at Deer Lodge. I actually live very close to Deer Lodge. It's in my riding. When I was in medical school, it was where we first learned to examine patients. They had volunteer patients who let us practise on them, basically.

I understand there are OSI clinics in places like Deer Lodge. Could you give us some suggestions as to what VAC could do to improve these OSI clinics?

[Carl Gannon]

Since we are talking about Deer Lodge, I know Deer Lodge has put in a proposal to expand their services. I know they are going to be going ahead with certain parts. I don't know exactly where the department is on it and I don't know the level of funding the department is going to provide, but I know there's going to be a major expansion, and we are seeing that across the country as well with OSI clinics that are slowly expanding and increasing their capabilities.

For example, at Deer Lodge they are talking about expanding it to first responders and to other individuals who may not necessarily be currently covered, but who are in somewhat of a quagmire, doing wonderful work but not necessarily having those supports.

They definitely have to be expanded, and we have to look at who they're actually serving to see if we can expand that as well.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Thank you. It's good to hear that they are on the ball trying to do some more good work on that.

Mr. Mac Culloch, different types of personnel carry out peacekeeping duties. There are military, RCMP, and civilians who work there. Would you say there are large differences in how these three different populations would transition after a peacekeeping tour?

[Wayne Mac Culloch]

Very much so.

If you are military, there is still the military family, which will take you back in after you come back from overseas. It is not as severe a jolt if you're in the RCMP, but if you're in municipal or provincial police forces, in effect, there is no safety net.

We notice that in the association because we have peacekeepers from all the police forces, plus the military. It's really worrisome to see the lack of support that exists across the country for those whom we, as the federal government, send into these missions, and then when they come home, they are just left to their own devices.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Thank you.

If plans go ahead to increase our peacekeeping duties, we will see more former peacekeepers needing these services. These new up-and-coming peacekeepers notwithstanding, do you foresee an increasing number of former peacekeepers needing these services over time? Is it going to drop off, or are we going to see more peacekeepers from these previous missions wanting care for, say, delayed diagnoses of...?

[Wayne Mac Culloch]

We're going to see more wanting care. Many of the injuries we're seeing these days take a long time to develop and present themselves, so it's not uncommon these days for a veteran who was released 10, 15, or 20 years earlier all of a sudden appearing at a Veterans Affairs office asking for help.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Thank you.

I can attest to that from personal experience with my father, who from the RCMP. His PTSD manifested decades later.

Ms. Michaud, I read in your brief how the family is such an important part of the life of military members, both when they are serving and when they become veterans. You might have said this in the presentation, but how could Veterans Affairs better integrate families into this process?

[Marie-Claude Michaud]

In the final analysis, the veteran is accompanied in his journey by family members. Families experience all of the years in the Canadian armed forces with the military members. Over the past 25 years, Canadian military families have also been operational. Without them, the armed forces could not have accomplished their missions. It is family members, either spouses, children or parents, who are the witnesses and often the natural caregivers of the person who is injured physically or psychologically.

Even in the case of members released without medical reasons, the impact of the transition to civilian life is also experienced by the family. The two can't be separated. The family becomes a component that has to be dealt with by Veterans Affairs. It can also be a tracking tool for veterans' health problems. There is also the whole financial aspect. Over a certain number of years, the spouse put her career on the back burner, and when the member transitions to civilian life and has to find another job, there is a financial impact.

All of these elements mean that family members have to have their own identity and have to be able to access services. Throughout their lives, these women and men, the spouses of the military, did not have their own identity and could not access necessary services. They have always been identified with the members of the armed forces, and the same thing applies to veterans. Their family members can only access services only through their military spouses. We cannot separate the two any longer.

I hope I answered your question.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

It does. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Ms. Wagantall is next.

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

Good afternoon, and thank you so much for being here.

I have a few unique questions that come from conversations with veterans just last week in my office about the dynamics that they're facing. I'm not sure whether it fits into this or not, but one of the concerns is with service delivery and with medical services.

They have a card, an older card, that has all the information on it, and it is very clear about what services they receive and whatnot. Now veterans have a new card that has a strip on it, and that's what they're to give to get their medications or whatever. However, that card doesn't have anything on it that explains who they are or what they are. The card also requires a reader that the business must have to be able to provide for the veterans now.

Are you experiencing dynamics with that? There's a lot of frustration. Is this something you're familiar with or not, Mr. Mac Culloch?

[Wayne Mac Culloch]

Very much so. There is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the newer card. Folks were quite happy to see the old card, which had 13 or 16 categories on it, as well as whether or not you were able to access some services in the various categories. When that disappeared, part of the veteran's sense of comfort went with it.

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

Okay. Should we be looking at trying to somehow combine this into something that serves the veterans and the businesses?

I know drugstores have to have a reader. I'm from Saskatchewan, as we discussed. Even if there is an office in Saskatoon, that's four hours south of me, and my riding goes four hours north. Anyone getting to that one location has a long distance to go. We need to be able to receive our services wherever we live in the province, and we find that we are lacking significantly in access.

That brings up my next question. From both of your perspectives, Mr. Gannon and Mr. Mac Culloch, what are we looking at in access for more remote areas? It's really poor, from my perspective. You talked about expanding our OSI clinics to serve more people. They're serving more people who aren't necessarily veterans in an area, yet for my veterans to get their services, the government's prepared to pay for a taxi to drive them three hours to Regina to get on an airplane and then come all the way back.

Surely we could provide a mobile OSI clinic, or something like this, in areas that are more remote.

[Carl Gannon]

I absolutely agree with you.

One of the things that we are continually promoting is outreach. We need to get better at outreach, and not just in those types of situations. We find that veterans have to find us. Why is the onus being put on the veteran and not being put on the department? That's the way it should be. We should be out searching for veterans, whether they be homeless, whether they be couch surfing, whether they be in not the greatest of situations.

We have tried to turn the page a bit with transition interviews. Now when somebody releases, there is a process they should be following so that we can hopefully identify some issues and maybe bridge that gap, but it's still an imperfect system.

I agree 100% that we need better outreach. Whether that be a satellite office or whatever the case may be, we need to be able to reach our heroes, because they are still suffering right now. It's great that we open up an office in a centre, but if we don't have, say, staff to go out and actually visit these individuals or if we don't perform efficient outreach, then it really doesn't necessarily help their situation at all.

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

Okay. Thank you.

[Wayne Mac Culloch]

Outreach is a real issue for us. We understand how thorny the problem is, but still we feel for the veteran who's sitting in his basement somewhere just south of Yellowknife. How do you get services to that individual? We would very much like to see more contact from Veterans Affairs to the veterans who are in sparsely populated areas.

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

Thank you.

With regard to hiring and to the issues with getting the number of case managers that you need, I understand your frustration with those who have been hired so far. Very few are actually coming from new money; they're still from the old.

Are you finding the quality of case managers that you need? Is the training being put in place to handle what would hopefully be significantly more case managers? Where would veterans themselves fit into providing these types of services? I am asking because often we ask everybody else, but we don't actually use the people who probably would be most able to provide the services that we need.