Good afternoon, and thank you very much for having invited me to this meeting. This is a first for me, so please be indulgent if I stray from protocol at times.
My name is Marie-Claude Michaud, and I am the chief executive officer of the Valcartier Family Centre. I have been working with military families for 22 years.
The purpose of my presentation is in keeping with the brief the Military Family Resource Centres submitted to the Minister of National Defence last June. This document asked that military families be integrated into the defence policy, since they are an operational component in the mission of the Canadian armed forces.
The brief, however, also contained the following recommendation.
Do you want me to wait a bit until you put your headphones on?
Fine.
The second recommendation in the brief we tabled concerns veterans and their families. We asked that the resource centres provide service to all veterans and their families.
Why did we make this request? In 2014, a partnership was formed between Veterans Affairs Canada and National Defence to set up a pilot project for military members released for medical reasons and their families. This allowed them to have access to seven resource centres throughout Canada. Consequently, these seven centres now provide services to veterans released for medical reasons, and to their families.
Now, we are in a way the victims of the success of this operation. We knew at the beginning that reserving access to these centres to a particular category of veterans could have certain consequences, which we are currently dealing with.
We have created two categories of veterans in Canada. First, there are those who were released for medical reasons and have access to the services provided by the resource centres. Unfortunately, there there are only seven of these for all of Canada. Then there are the veterans who were released for all other reasons, or who were released before 2014. They do not have access to the centres' services.
Please allow me to speak to you briefly about the experience of the Valcartier resource centre, which is one of the seven pilot project resource centres in Canada. We have provided service there to former military members and veterans for 18 years. We have an agreement with the Government of Quebec regarding our employment assistance service. At the time, the Government of Quebec was looking for an organization that could offer an employment assistance service for reservists and veterans. That is why we developed expertise in helping former military members in their transition to civilian life.
And so we were ready to receive this clientele when we were included in the pilot project developed for veterans released for medical reasons. However, requests for service exploded from the moment we held our press conference. People turned to us for help, not only those who had been released for medical reasons, but also veterans as a whole.
In the course of a single year, 715 people -- 293 of these were veterans -- who were entitled to our services came to our offices in Valcartier. We also had to respond to 127 requests for service from clients who were not eligible. I'm sure you will understand that when people come through the door of our organizations, we cannot investigate to find out whether they were released for medical reasons or not. If people need help, we try to help them. These people are experiencing the loss of their careers and their identity, and their self-esteem suffers as a consequence. Employment is a major factor for these people who are leaving a career in which they invested most of their lives, as you know.
Among the most important services we offer are information and guidance services; we guide people toward resources, provide education and offer a helping hand. We had expected that these three services would be the most in demand, and that is exactly what happened.
Let me say a few words about the clientele our employment assistance service has helped. Sixty-five per cent of them were between 26 and 46 years of age. They are the people the resource centres supported on various missions over the past 25 years. They are young. Over the past two years, we helped rewrite 157 military resumes to make them relevant on the civilian labour market. That is one of the important issues. How do you modify the military resume to help people successfully transition to civilian life?
Over two years, we helped with 150 of these, at the Valcartier Family Centre alone.
Seventy-eight per cent of these people have no diplomas or have a high school diploma. Most of them suffer from physical or psychological injuries. Their mental health is precarious. Many are now considered unfit to work and want to rebuild their lives in some way. They need to be supported individually, in a way that respects their dignity, to get through this.
The Valcartier resource centre has had positive results. This was a good initiative that produced results, but it created two classes of veterans in Canada. We consider this unacceptable, in light of the contribution these people have made to our country.
We also prepared a financial brief outlining how the resource centres could provide service to all veterans and their families. We sent you a copy of that document.
The various mandates that were given to the Minister of Veterans Affairs and Associate Minister of National Defence are related to what the resource centres could offer, such as reducing complexity, restructuring the delivery of services, and strengthening partnerships between Veterans Affairs and DND. What is being done in the resource centres is a concrete example.
Career assistance and vocational assistance are also provided to veterans. That is what we offer in Valcartier, and the results are very positive.
Resources centres have over 25 years developed expertise in providing better education, counselling and family training services that provide care and support to veterans afflicted with physical or mental health problems related to their years of service. When military families are transferred from one location to another, even if only for operations, they are constantly undergoing life transitions. In those cases they benefit from our expertise in the field. For 25 years, we have been working in constant partnership with civil society. We have developed expertise which could be very useful for this category of people, who are very important for Canada.
Finally, I'd like to direct your attention to the fourth recommendation in the brief submitted to the Minister of National Defence last June. It concerns the creation of an intergovernmental cell to deal with the issues facing military families everywhere in Canada. Most of the issues faced by military families and veterans fall under provincial jurisdiction. When veterans are released, they must access provincial medical services. We think the creation of such an intergovernmental cell would be a good thing.
I recently met with the deputy premier of Quebec and the Minister responsible for Intergovernmental Affairs, Mr. Jean-Marc Fournier. Quebec is considering the creation of a mechanism aimed at easing adverse effects on military families and veterans and at allowing veterans to access provincial services more easily. Ontario is setting up a similar mechanism.
We have to get off the beaten bath and find innovative solutions to meet all of the needs of this community, which is made up of a million people in Canada.
I thank you for the time you have given me.