Evidence of meeting #59 for Veterans Affairs in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was veteran.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Emmanuella Lambropoulos Liberal Saint-Laurent, QC
Hello. Thank you for being with us today and for answering our questions.
You mentioned that you help veterans and their families with transition, and you manage an independence program that helps them in their homes. What other programs do you offer veterans and their families to help with transition?
Director, Integrated Wellness, New Zealand Defence Force
As was alluded to earlier, the defence force in New Zealand has really recognized the importance and significance of providing holistic transition support. In theory, we have come to the conclusion that transition begins on the very first day of employment.
So we are now taking a bit of a different perspective, knowing that we would be treating our members as being in a transition stage from day one, meaning that we would be looking at giving them the life skills, giving them the support, giving them awareness of what may be happening outside of the defence force, so that when they are prepared, or do decide that they wish to exit, they are much better equipped and able to manage some of those challenges that might present themselves.
Liberal
Emmanuella Lambropoulos Liberal Saint-Laurent, QC
Is it mandatory for all veterans to get these services, starting from day one?
Director, Integrated Wellness, New Zealand Defence Force
Yes, as far as internal staff are concerned. In the future, we will absolutely be looking at building a framework around this. There will be a number of policies and initiatives. We're looking at a holistic view of how we can go about addressing some of the educational awareness perspectives of it, including what we would deem the whanau, the indigenous word for family. A lot of our offerings go much broader than just our employees; they're almost community-related activities.
Liberal
Emmanuella Lambropoulos Liberal Saint-Laurent, QC
Would you say that, at this point, the largest number of veterans is quite young? Would you agree with that?
Manager, Veterans' Services, Veterans' Affairs New Zealand
In terms of the veterans who come to Veterans Affairs once they're no longer serving, at the moment the largest group we look after is older veterans.
Manager, Veterans' Services, Veterans' Affairs New Zealand
Yes, over the age of 70 and to 100 years old.
Liberal
Emmanuella Lambropoulos Liberal Saint-Laurent, QC
Do you have a plan in place to reach the younger veterans?
Head, Veterans' Affairs New Zealand
Yes, we have.
As I was talking about before, particularly about communications and linking with others, I think the biggest issue we have is people recognizing they are veterans. That recognition is really important. We are linking with our advocacy groups and others. We're also linking with government agencies, because a lot of the time they might have the first interaction with a veteran. General practitioners in the community, who are primary carers, link back with us as well.
Part of our rehabilitation strategy is to have them at the table and to look at what information they need to get. What capability do they need in their workforce to be able to deal effectively with veterans when they come to them? What specific issues come from the service?
Liberal
Liberal
Emmanuella Lambropoulos Liberal Saint-Laurent, QC
What would you say is the biggest problem, the thing most veterans have the most difficulty with, when it comes to transition? When they're transitioning, what's the most common difficulty among veterans?
Col Clare Bennett
I'll comment on that.
It does range for people, but commonly when people have served for many years, it's around their loss of sense of identity. The transition to civilian life and civilian employment is quite difficult for many people. Historically, we have provided housing, health services, and so forth. The challenge for many people is being able to establish debt in the civilian world.
One of the things we have focused on and are thinking about is how we do more of a soft handover between [Inaudible--Editor] and Veterans Affairs so that they are hooked up. If they opt out of being on the books with Veterans Affairs, we ensure that they are connecting with their GPs and so forth as part of the transition program we're putting in place.
We are very much drawing on learnings from what other nations have been doing in this space, including Canada and the Canadian Forces.
Liberal
Bob Bratina Liberal Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON
Thank you very much.
When friends of mine in high school—and that's a very long time ago—were travelling, they stopped in New Zealand and never came back—
Liberal
Bob Bratina Liberal Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON
—because, apparently, you have beautiful beaches and it's a great place. It may be a great place to retire as a veteran as well.
My first question is about the Vietnam experience. We talked with our American friends, and their highest suicide rates are in the Vietnam cohort.
Are there special issues related to the Vietnam group for New Zealand?
Manager, Veterans' Services, Veterans' Affairs New Zealand
Yes, there have been. Historically, there was a feeling that their service wasn't valued Zealand when they came back, settled back into the community, and so forth. It was quite a difficult period for them. What the New Zealand government did was to make a public apology. We had a welcome home, and a memorandum of understanding was put in place. It has gone a long way in helping those veterans feel like they are valued and their service was valued.
We now have a presumptive list for a number of conditions related to service in Vietnam. If a veteran has a particular medical condition, and it's on that list, they don't have to prove that it's linked. We will just accept that it is linked because of the research that has been done around that. Yes, that has gone a long way.
There are still some veterans who struggle with the public perception when they came back to New Zealand. Certainly, in terms of Veterans Affairs' helping, the experience become more positive for them. We have seen over years, as the one-on-one case management service has been provided, that they feel there is value in their service and that we recognize its value to New Zealand.
Liberal
Bob Bratina Liberal Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON
Yes. That, then, leads to qualifying operational service when soldiers were in harm's way. Is there any controversy about that designation, that someone was in harm's way or that “I should get the same benefit or opportunity”? Does it work okay?
Head, Veterans' Affairs New Zealand
It works okay. It's difficult, particularly going back and looking at service records and at the qualifying factors. It is something we continue to try to simplify for the veteran, but it's probably the one area in which they would like to see change in this country.
Liberal
Bob Bratina Liberal Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON
You mentioned veterans who don't know they're veterans. It sounds strange, but we have the same experience here. When you stop someone on the street and ask, “Are you a veteran?”, they may say no, and if you say, “Were you ever a member of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders Regiment?”, they may say yes. So they were a veteran.
In terms of veterans choosing to not receive, do you have a very large group of veterans who just walk away from the service at the end of their active duty and don't report or don't have case management? Is that a very common thing or not?
Head, Veterans' Affairs New Zealand
Yes, it is, if you look at the possible numbers of veterans in this country. Let me say that we have an excellent public health system here in New Zealand, and so many of these veterans, through their general practitioner, are also linked to secondary services. Our ACC system for accident and injury is fantastic as well, as it also provides for that population.
Liberal
Bob Bratina Liberal Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON
Yes. We have what we call “universality of service”, which means that the active-duty member has to be able to deploy on a day's notice. Should they not, for mental, physical or other reasons, they may well find that they're at the end of their career and all of that stuff that you talked about: they're no longer a member of the team and are rather excluded.
Can you comment on the situation in New Zealand regarding universality of service, as to whether there are ways to keep active service members within the ranks until their issue has been overcome? Or is that something that you deal with at all? I may not be asking the right people, but perhaps you could comment on this.
