Veterans Affairs Committee on Dec. 6th, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Thank you.

You have three minutes, Ms. Mathyssen.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Again, thank you for your input.

Mr. Butler, you made reference to the centres of excellence. I wondered, what process is in place for determining where they will be located? Is it correct that three were planned?

[Bernard Butler]

I think if you go back to the minister's mandate letter, there is reference to the creation of a centre of excellence for mental health and PTSD—

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

Right.

[Bernard Butler]

—and for the creation of a second centre of excellence. The work that has been done to date, obviously, links back to the centre of excellence for mental health, and that's the one we talked a bit about in the context of the Royal Ottawa and the work that's been done there.

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

Okay, so that particular centre will likely be in Ottawa, then.

[Bernard Butler]

For that effort, right.

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

Okay, thank you.

I also wonder if the department has done any surveys of injured vets to find out from the vets themselves if they feel there are gaps in services. Has there been an opportunity for veterans to express how they feel about the quality of service, the care they receive, and if not, are there any plans to do such a survey?

[Michel Doiron]

We are in the process of going out. It's on the market right now for a consultant to actually do exactly what you're talking about.

We're also looking at whether there are better ways to capture the information when a veteran leaves one of our offices or makes a phone call. We're looking at that to gather the information, because we hear about the people who are not happy about our services, but I also receive emails and letters from people who are quite happy with our services. We never hear about those, so we do want to go out to make sure that we get the right things.

We haven't been doing public opinion research, but it's on the market, I believe as of yesterday, for 15 days, to get a consultant to go out to survey, hopefully, a very good percentage of the 670,000 veterans we have out there.

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

In this business, Mr. Doiron, you very rarely hear from the happy ones.

[Michel Doiron]

Absolutely, ma'am.

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

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I have one more question and it pertains to the Last Post Fund. I'm sorry, but I missed some of what the minister said. I know that the amount a family can receive has been increased, but has the cut-off changed? It was $12,500. If you had assets of more than $12,500, you weren't eligible. Has that changed?

[Bernard Butler]

The answer is yes, it has. That cut-off was very controversial and with this budget implementation, which came into effect in October, it's actually moved to $35,000. It's a significant change in the amount of income that families can have before they qualify, so we anticipate that will be a significant improvement in access.

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

That's very encouraging because it disqualified so many families and it was an extremely low cut-off in light of the kinds of assets a veteran would have.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Thank you.

On behalf of the committee I would like to thank all three of you for appearing again, and I'm sure through the course of this committee we will see you again. Thank you for your excellent testimony, and on behalf of the committee, thank you for all the good work you do for the men and women who have served.

There is a motion to adjourn from Mr. Fraser.

The meeting is adjourned.