Veterans Affairs Committee on March 8th, 2017

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

To go to my question, when General Natynczyk was here back in December, he mentioned the hiring of short-term employees because of the increase in the file workload. We're starting to see that through these supplementary estimates. What number of short-term employees has VAC hired? How many are actually working on caseloads? Do you have that information in front of you?

[Michel Doiron]

I'll provide you with that information.

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

Okay.

[Michel Doiron]

I don't have that. You mean terms and casuals? I do have a breakdown, but I don't have it here. I'll provide that.

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

Okay.

I'm going to cede my time to Ms. Wagantall.

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

Thank you so much.

I'd like to talk about Saskatoon again just a bit. I understand that 400 new positions have been created; 381 have been filled, and 113 of those are case managers. That means there are 19 positions left to hit 400. In Saskatchewan, the indication is that there's a potential caseload of 2,900 veterans, and to date we have one case manager. We would need 115 more.

My question is, since a significant number of those 400 were in the queue already under the previous minister, is this government prepared to continue to hire past that 400 to make sure that the 25:1—

[Michel Doiron]

Mr. Chair, I think I'm going to correct something in that. Yes, there are 2,900 veterans, but the 25:1 is for case management.

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

Okay, so it's the harder and more difficult....

[Michel Doiron]

It's the harder cases. Also, in Saskatoon, presently we have five case-managed veterans.

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

Okay.

[Michel Doiron]

That's why there are not 100 case managers in Saskatoon. It's the same thing for every office. We can pick the number. The other veterans are handled by our veterans service agents, who carry a much bigger load because it's not the same service.

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

Yes.

[Michel Doiron]

Somebody may be on VIP and get a call once a year. That's the veterans independence program.

Let's say there's an issue—

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

Okay, that makes sense.

How many of those are situated in Saskatoon?

[Michel Doiron]

We have one case manager. We're ready. If there's a demand, we will increase that. We have six employees, total, in Saskatoon.

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

Thank you.

[Michel Doiron]

Also, I think we're fully staffed at the moment in Saskatoon.

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

Thank you. That's my question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Okay. Mr. Graham is next.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Thank you.

I have a variety of questions. I'm fairly new to this committee. Minister Hehr talked about 381 new hires, and Mr. Brassard broached this a little bit. Do we know how many of those are veterans, and do we have a breakdown of their rank at retirement? I'm curious to know if we have a lot of enlisted personnel, or if it's mainly admirals and generals who are getting these jobs.

[Michel Doiron]

I don't have the number of the 381 who are veterans. We can get that. We have the total number of veterans in Veterans Affairs. When it comes to rank, though, we hire them at all levels. We have senior officers, like the rear admiral or the general here. We also have a lot of corporals, sergeants, and junior and senior NCOs with various skill sets. They're all over the organization.

As an example, in my adjudication unit I have a fair number of corporals and sergeants who do adjudications. They were nurses or medics in the armed forces, and often they are officers, but they're not all officers. We hire nurses or medics if they have the qualification.

I can try to get you the number of the people we've hired, because I don't have the breakdown of the 381.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

As to the 381, I'm curious if there's a bias towards certain skill sets and ranks or if it really does cover everybody.

[Michel Doiron]

We do have the number of total hires. Do you want to...?

[Rear-Admiral, Retired) Elizabeth Stuart (Assistant Deputy Minister, Chief Financial Officer and Corporate Services, Department of Veterans Affairs]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As a follow-on to the statement made earlier by the deputy minister regarding the veterans in the public service hiring unit, we've stood up a team in late November and early December. It's very small at the moment, but we have a phased approach to improve the hiring of veterans in the public service. The phased approach looks to Veterans Affairs Canada being a role model, first and foremost. Obviously DND is very experienced, because the Canadian Armed Forces and National Defence work in an integrated fashion.

We are seeking in the next phase to have a positive effect on hiring throughout the entire public service and then to branch out into industry. Also, we know there are a lot of not-for-profits and organizations that are already assisting in this manner.

Since the coming into force of Bill C-27, the Veterans Hiring Act, we have seen some take-up by priority veterans who have been medically released, either for reasons attributable to service or reasons not attributable to service. The Public Service Commission has a mandate to collect data on those veterans, but to date there is no mandatory reporting of hires in the public service who are veterans. For example, at Veterans Affairs Canada we have sent every new employee a voluntary survey. It's still not mandatory to self-identify as a veteran, and I would imagine that some veterans may not wish to do so, but it has improved our reporting.

I can give you some statistics. From the coming into force of the Veterans Hiring Act on July 1, 2015, we had 315 priority hires in the public service, 18 of them within Veterans Affairs Canada. The total of veterans employed at VAC who have self-identified through our survey currently is 115.

We are working with the Public Service Commission to try to improve our ability to collect data on veterans, and we have sent a letter asking to have a question regarding military service added to the public service employee survey.

We're working on several venues, and we haven't finished our work by any means as yet.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

I got into this committee right in the middle of our study on veterans' suicides. That's all we've discussed until today, so I've learned quite a lot in a very short period of time.

One of the threads that I've seen is a loss of confidence in Veterans Affairs by veterans over the past decade. I'll call it that. We've seen a lot of damage caused by huge cuts by the previous government. What we're finding is that the veterans don't care about the parties; it's that they don't have confidence in the service anymore. It's not just about money.

How do we more broadly rebuild that confidence with the veterans? What steps do we need to take, and what's the path to get there?