Veterans Affairs Committee on March 8th, 2017

[Michel Doiron]

Sir, we have a long way to go to rebuild that trust. We're doing a lot of stuff presently. We have stakeholder summits where we bring in veterans or our various advisory committees. We're spending a lot more time.

Some of us chair some of the advisory committees that have more interaction with veterans. It's having more open communication with veterans and trying to explain what's behind the decisions. Sometimes the right answer is no. It is unfortunate, but it is the answer. Then it's explaining why it's no and trying to make it understandable to the veteran.

We have a long way to go, because over the years—and you will excuse me if I don't get into politics, being a bureaucrat—for all kinds of reasons, when it comes to services, that trust has eroded. We're working very hard.

There was a question about training. We give a lot of training to our new employees. We're hiring. We're spending a lot of time in training those 381 new employees to bring care, compassion, and respect.

You have to remember that Veterans Affairs is not—

I'm being told to stop.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Thank you.

Ms. Mathyssen is next.

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

Thank you very much. Welcome back.

I want to begin with you, Mr. Doiron. The last time you were here I asked you about military sexual assault. You said:

We've been working very closely with “It's Just 700” and we take this extremely seriously. We're talking to them so our adjudicators have a better understanding of sexual trauma. Our doctors are very well aware, and we're working with them to put something on our website.

We've heard testimony from other organizations, quite recently actually, and they said that they haven't heard anything in months. I'm wondering whether you are going to create space on the VAC website with clear links and information for veterans with military sexual trauma.

[Michel Doiron]

Thank you for the question, Mr. Chair.

First, we have been talking to the associations. I can't tell you if my director general of adjudications spoke in the last month, but in 2017 I was debriefed on a conversation he had with one of the associations, so there are some conversations going on.

We have trained our adjudicators on sexual trauma. We don't get a diagnostic for sexual trauma. We get a diagnostic for mental health. We get a diagnostic sometimes for a physical injury. Most times it's a mental health injury. We have trained our adjudicators to recognize it and to actually escalate it when there's any doubt, to make sure that we are properly covering it.

I think it was December when I was here, but since then I know we've overturned or actually looked at some pretty controversial and difficult cases. I don't want to get into them because they're personal, but they were very difficult cases.

As for the website, I'm not aware. I know we were working to put some stuff up, but I don't know if it's up or not. I'll have to check that, but I'm not sure.

The space we will put up will just say that it is something we are looking at or something that you can apply for, but you can't apply for military sexual trauma. It's not a condition. The condition they get is a mental health condition or a physical injury. There are a lot of different injuries. From working with the chair of It's Just 700, we have been educated quite a lot on what some of the psychologists and psychiatrists out there are actually diagnosing, which we did not know. We're actually working closely with them to address some of this.

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

I'd like to know exactly what is going on when you determine that, because it seems to me that a veteran knows if he or she has been sexually assaulted and understands that yes, this is an injury, but that veteran needs to find out where to get help. If that website is the conduit, then he or she needs to be able to use it in an effective way.

I'll go to my next question. I was talking to veterans over the weekend, and they talked about still feeling very vulnerable in regard to their financial needs and this whole issue of denial. Just receiving a letter from Veterans Affairs can trigger post-traumatic stress.

In terms of repairing that broken relationship, how are you improving communications in terms of those managers? We have to do better in terms of how we deal with these individuals. Is that getting down to the rank and file and those people who are directly involved with veterans?

[Michel Doiron]

We can always do better. I think I'll start there. It doesn't matter that we're approving them in the mid- to high-80s, we can always do better.

Before we say no in adjudications, we do call the individual to ask if there's anything else they can provide us. Sometimes they have the documents and they didn't send them. They didn't think it was important, but as for the “no” letter, we know about the envelope syndrome, that receiving an envelope from the Government of Canada is for some people traumatic. It's not just an envelope from Veterans Affairs, but from income tax or anywhere else, so we are working and have worked closely with the ombudsman's office to try to simplify our letters.

I have to say that although they're better, I don't think we're there. We still have to do some work on that. As I said earlier, sometimes the right answer is no, because it's not related to service. We do have to comply with the act that we are given to administer. There are some traumatic stories out there, and I see them, but the reality is that if it was not caused by your military service.... The veterans affairs act says it's supposed to....

We've changed in the last three years, giving the benefit of the doubt to the veteran now. We've changed that. When I arrived a little bit more than three years ago, you had to prove it was caused by service. You had to give us your CF 98 that said you had been injured. We've now moved on that. Do we always get it right? No, but I think we've gone a long way, so that now, if you're in certain trades, if your knees are gone and you're an infantry person and you've served 25 years and you come to us, it would be a yes. You may not have blown your knee in one jump, but over 25 years of humping who knows how many miles, the joints are gone.

We're working on that, but there are still some “no” letters that go out, and they're traumatic for the individuals.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Thank you.

Ms. Lockhart is next.

[Alaina Lockhart, Liberal, Fundy Royal, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you all for appearing today.

In the context of looking at the main estimates, under operating expenditures there's an increase of $60.3 million. We've done a service delivery report, which I assume you've seen. Is there anything concrete that has happened from a service delivery standpoint, either resulting from that report or work that you're doing? I know you've just mentioned a few things, but are there other things that might be reflected in that dollar amount? Perhaps this isn't something that needed additional budget.

[Michel Doiron]

Thank you for your report. Yes, I have read your report very closely, and we're providing a government response to it, but I was quite pleased, as I said last time, with what was in the report. ACVA has always given us some good direction over the years in their reports, and we actually use them sometimes to change the rules or the laws.

We are continuously working on change. The deputy and the minister talked about the service delivery review, which we did at the same time you were doing your review. It just happened that way. We are implementing the service delivery review, which is all about improving services, improving the communication, being more veteran-centric. Those are all points that you raised in your recommendations, so we're doing the same thing.

As for the $63 million itself, maybe the admiral would like to speak.

[RAdm Elizabeth Stuart]

Yes, I'd be delighted. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Our vote 1 operating expenditures, as they are contained in the main estimates for the next fiscal year, consist of the following increases: $13.5 million in regular operating expenses for the department; other health purchase services increasing by $60.9 million, for things such as glasses, nursing services, medical and dental treatment, long-term care, and prescriptions reimbursement; and new Veterans Charter support services increasing by $13.5 million, mainly for vocational and medical rehab issues. We have a decrease in Ste. Anne's Hospital, given the transfer of jurisdiction for the hospital last year from the federal government to the Province of Quebec, and a bit of a decrease, $2.6 million, in the education centre at Vimy, because we've largely completed what needed to be done. The net of all of those is a $61.4 million increase from the main estimates of last year.

[Alaina Lockhart, Liberal, Fundy Royal, NB]

Thank you.

One of the other things we're hearing about is support for families. I'm wondering if you can talk to us about any changes or improvements in our service to families.

[Michel Doiron]

Yes, we also hear about supports for families, and unfortunately the way the act is construed is that the services for the most part come through the veteran, and we have to comply with the act. However, that said, we had the pilot on the MFRCs—

[Bernard Butler, Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic Policy and Commemoration, Department of Veterans Affairs]

Those are the military family resource centres.

[Michel Doiron]

—military family resource centres, which we're piloting across the country and where veterans and their families can go and receive certain services. We have our 1-800 helpline that a family member or a veteran can call. They can receive up to 20 sessions, because we know that when the veteran suffers, the family suffers. It's okay to bring them to an OSI clinic, but some veterans will not invite—if I can use that term—the spouse. They can go, or a kid.... I was talking to one veteran not too long ago whose child had some trauma because of the parent's trauma. We do have some programming.

The family caregiver relief program is another one that was put out a couple of years ago to give a caregiver some respite. It's not a huge amount, but it gives them some respite to help them take some time off if they're always taking care of the family. I think we have a lot more to do on the family side, but it is in all our conversations because we know that if you can help the family, you're also helping the member.

[Alaina Lockhart, Liberal, Fundy Royal, NB]

One of the other items that has come up from our testimony is the practice of reimbursing families for third party services. Is that something that's being looked at? It's been stated as being a barrier for families.

[Michel Doiron]

Do you want to take that one?

[Bernard Butler]

I'm sorry; it's for reimbursement for what type of service?

[Alaina Lockhart, Liberal, Fundy Royal, NB]

It's for third party services. It's perhaps an equestrian camp or something like that. It's services provided by a third party.

[Bernard Butler]

Mr. Chair, thank you for the question. I can speak to the issue generally around those types of ancillary support programs.

As you probably know, we have pilots going on in equine therapy, looking at dog therapy, and certain things like that as they become more robust in terms of formal decisions on where we're going with them. As Michel indicated, our whole approach right now is to try to tailor all of our programs in way that is more veteran-centric, as opposed to being program-based.

From a program point of view, it's sometimes much easier to do things with a contribution arrangement, insisting on receipts and a lot of invoices. This new approach that we're looking at is trying to convert as many programs as we can to grant-based programs, which would be beneficial both to veterans and to families. The whole idea is to try to streamline our approach, to reduce the administrative burden on veterans and families, and then to try to ensure that access to them is quicker, more effective, and less troublesome for them.

[Alaina Lockhart, Liberal, Fundy Royal, NB]

I'm happy to hear that. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Thank you. That ends this round of questioning. I would like to thank you for appearing today and for all the great things you do for our men and women.

With that, I'm going to have to have some votes on the estimates. We're just going to keep going, as we're short on time.

First we'll vote on the supplementary estimates (C), 2016-17:

VETERANS AFFAIRS

Vote 1c—Operating expenditures..........$65,448,828

Vote 5c—Grants and contributions..........$69,400,000

(Votes 1c and 5c agreed to)

Shall the chair report votes 1c and 5c under Veterans Affairs of supplementary estimates (C), 2016-17 to the House?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Now we'll vote on the main estimates, 2017-18.

VETERANS AFFAIRS

Vote 1—Operating expenditures..........$931,958,962

Vote 5—Grants and contributions..........$3,728,239,000

(Votes 1 and 5 agreed to)

VETERANS REVIEW AND APPEAL BOARD

Vote 1—Program expenditures..........$9,449,156

(Vote 1 agreed to)

Shall the chair report votes 1 and 5 under Veterans Affairs and vote 1 under Veterans Review and Appeal Board of the main estimates, 2017-18 to the House?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Thank you.

I have a motion to adjourn from Mr. Bratina. All in favour?