Veterans Affairs Committee on May 1st, 2017

[Sharon Squire]

Also, I would add that maybe another piece is that when a veteran does need benefits, that they are able to sit down with a Veterans Affairs agent and go through their holistic needs, not just the one need they are coming towards. That way they could look at their whole picture and what they might need. As an example, if they have a disability award, they don't know that as an amputee they can get a clothing allowance unless someone tells them that, so they would look at them holistically and help them with that.

The other thing I think they could do is to make the letters they send to the veterans understandable. They're really, really hard to understand right now.

[Alaina Lockhart, Liberal, Fundy Royal, NB]

We've heard that before.

Have you seen a system that we should be trying to emulate?

[Guy Parent]

No, but I would expect that if you speak to representatives of other nations, you'll find out how they actually reduce complexities in their own delivery of benefits. It's not a simple solution, obviously.

Again, I think most of it has to do with the outcome. If an outcome were determined, then you'd have something to measure. You could have a benchmark and you would know when you got there. Right now, because so many solutions have been introduced over the years by different governments and the benefits have been superimposed one on top of the other, to meet the needs of a few hundred veterans here and a few hundred there, or to meet the needs of a post-mission.... After Korea, after Afghanistan, and even when Afghanistan was over, there were programs developed by National Defence, quality-of-care programs, that actually were very good programs. In fact, one of the caregiver benefits was part of that as well, but there was one caveat at the bottom: they must have served in Afghanistan between 2000 and 2010.

A lot has happened over the years, and that's what now makes eligibility complicated.

You might have heard from some older war pensioners who couldn't get benefits because they didn't serve 365 days out of the country; they served 360 or 363. All of these things have been superimposed over the years, so that's how we have ended up with something like this. It's almost like the old legislation approach that if you introduce one policy you should remove one, so that you always stay within a certain area of familiarity and simplicity.

[Alaina Lockhart, Liberal, Fundy Royal, NB]

Okay.

You had spoken about the integration between federal and provincial systems, and I'm going to ask the same question again. Are there any of those relationships that are working better in Canada that we should be looking at to compare them with?

[Guy Parent]

The first thing that comes to mind—and it's a good question as well—is that it's not just provincial. Municipal is important as well. If you look at homelessness, for instance, or look at housing, look at medical care, and then the federal benefits, everybody there has a responsibility, all levels of government. I think that's important. Nova Scotia, for instance, has a veterans affairs committee in their legislature. I know a few other provinces have approached us to get information about that, to see whether it could be done or not. I think that's the kind of thing that we need to look at: what are other provinces, and municipalities, doing?

We recently did an outreach visit out west, and Edmonton, for instance, has a civilian liaison officer for military and veterans' families within the municipal hierarchy, which is nice to see. If you could get a place like Halifax, for instance, to have that, then you would have all levels of government involved in dealing with veterans. I'm not necessarily saying integrating, but at least coordinating and complementing.

[Alaina Lockhart, Liberal, Fundy Royal, NB]

I would think that the way we deliver services federally is probably somewhat intimidating for provinces and municipalities to sort out how they can complement that and not further complicate things. But it is good to hear that they're starting to align. It's something maybe we can talk about some more in this study.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Thank you.

Ms. Wagantall.

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

Thank you.

Thank you very much for being here. I appreciate it.

I'll simply take a step back to the testimony of a couple of weeks ago from Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire, who made the comment that we spend an incredible number of tax dollars on preparing our soldiers, on deploying them, and then when they come back we don't put the same emphasis there. The tax dollars somehow become tighter. When I look at the circumstances we're dealing with here, you've talked about outcomes, a number of times it has come up, and you've said what we need to do is to define that. It has never been defined. We basically are trying to hit a target we haven't defined, so my question to you would be this. Why isn't it defined, who needs to define it, and shouldn't that be done first?

[Guy Parent]

It's a very good point. Yes, obviously. It goes back to what I said earlier: where do we want to go? We need to have some kind of a destination point, which doesn't exist right now. People go beyond destination, and sometimes they have more benefits and income replacement than they would have if they had stayed in the forces. Sometimes they're not. They're before a destination, so we need to have that. I would certainly think it has to come from a recommendation from some of the government committees, whether it's the Senate or here. But outcomes, I think, are very important, or you'll never know when you're there. It's very hard to compare as well, if you don't have a defined outcome somewhere.

As far as the comment from General Dallaire, it's very true. National Defence plans for a mission, but they never plan for the impact of a mission, what the cost of the impact on the military veterans and their families will be. That's very important, but it's not part of the mission planning, and it should be. There should be money allocated right from the start in the planning of a mission to recognize that our families and our veterans and our serving members will suffer. Therefore, we need to.... Again, if we had an outcome, these sums of money that would be determined to be the cost of the impact would be easy to define.

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

It's easier to do in advance—

[Guy Parent]

Yes, that's right.

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

—so we're preparing better.

Also, in the area of what's happening across Canada—and we hear this about our own trade barriers, too—somehow within the country we don't have fairness across the board in a lot of areas. I look at what we need to do for a very small portion, really, of our veterans to really provide for their needs, and they are right across the country. But the services are not available everywhere. Part of that is due to rural, but when you look at the cost involved to run our various levels of government—and I'm in government, so I'm kind of hitting myself on the back here—the reality is that the more levels you have involved, the more expensive it gets and the more complicated it gets.

Would it not be more sensible to have the federal government, since you're saying it pays for the services, be responsible for providing the services to our veterans across the country?

[Guy Parent]

They are now, through Veterans Affairs Canada.

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

They are, but a lot of it is down to the provinces when it comes to medical services and that type of thing. We don't have psychiatrists available. A lot of services are not available because the provinces aren't able to provide them.

[Guy Parent]

I get your point about complementing the health care system provided by the province. It's not a question that's ever been brought to us before. Maybe the department would be better placed to answer that.

Certainly, we know for a fact that there are wait lines and wait times for psychologists, for psychiatric appointments, all across Canada regardless of.... I know that National Defence, for instance, has a hard time hiring enough mental health specialists to meet the needs of its system. It's always going to be a big challenge. Of course, it is Mental Health Week this week, so it's a good time to talk about this.

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

Even as far as that goes, if there aren't enough people in those roles, would the government not be wise to somehow give incentives to individuals to study specifically to serve within the VAC system? I don't know.

[Guy Parent]

National Defence offers that program for people to study and to then be hired by the forces as military—

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

But part of the problem is that they can earn more money working outside of it.

[Guy Parent]

Exactly.

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

We hear an awful lot about veterans helping veterans. When we talk about the various programs, a lot of the biggest successes in caring for veterans are veterans providing those services. We don't have a catalogue of those individuals or people out there available to veterans to go to for help.

I look at what other countries are doing. We say we need the research—I'm thinking especially about service dogs, equine, and that type of thing. A lot of work has been done already in other countries. Would that be a good place for us to go, rather than taking the amount of time it takes to do our own research? I know there are standards out there that we could be working from to come up with solutions so that we can implement good programs faster.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Could I just ask you to make your answer very short, please?

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

I thought that was long. Sorry.

[Guy Parent]

Yes. The standards, I think, are.... It's a matter of the department saying what is safe for the veterans and their families. It has provided some money for research in service dog therapy, for instance.

Again, without an established standard, it's very hard. We have some stories of people who have been attacked by service dogs. Until there's a standard that is set and until the companies that provide these dogs are recognized as meeting that standard.... As in many other types of new therapies, there are a lot of companies out there that have conflicting interests. They're fighting each other about standards, and that complicates matters. Of course, we support anything that can be put in place to help our vets and their families, but it has to be done safely.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Thank you.

Mr. Fraser.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you both for being here.

I want to go back to the complexity issue, which is a theme we've seen throughout everything we've done as a committee so far in studying veterans affairs. Are you aware of a model country that we could look to as a comparison for how to streamline or simplify the way services are delivered to veterans?