Thank you very much for having me here again today.
Barriers to transition and measurable outcomes of successful transition is a complex subject, so prior to my coming here I submitted a detailed briefing note, which I hope you all have, and annexes to allow you to cover my commentary in detail. You can get back to me any time on any points I may have raised that pique your interest.
Similar concerns on this subject, and solutions to them, have been discussed and tabled since at least 2009. But in listening to past witnesses before this committee, I feel that a review of post-release oversight is required, as it is key to our subject matter.
In 2009 and again in 2012 Auditor General reports recommended the following:
ill and injured members will be tracked by the Canadian Forces until an individual returns to unrestricted duty; a former Canadian Forces member (including reservists) is able to resume or seek employment; a member is able to cope independently without any further assistance; or a member expresses that he or she no longer wishes any further contact.
....In partnership with Veterans Affairs Canada, the Canadian Forces and National Defence will, also by June 2013, examine options to improve systematic post-release follow-up.
These are hugely important as somebody leaves the military for civilian life.
The above two recommendations were agreed to and provide this committee potential access to two sources of information toward answering questions of today's topic.
The first source of information should be 10 years' of records collected by the Canadian Forces and Veterans Affairs Canada in monitoring military personnel during transition and after release. This record would include barriers and solutions to them, as injured soldiers and their families went from Canadian Forces support to Veterans Affairs support and then went on with their lives.
However, the findings of that collection of data will have to be tempered by the fact that the means to a successful transition, the joint personnel support unit, remains under constant reconstruction and has been mismanaged the entire time.
The second source of information would be if this data were inadequate, or didn't exist at all, because the Canadian Forces and VAC are not fulfilling their prior agreements in monitoring their troops during transition and post-release. If this is the case, then you've found, in that absence of data, a component answering today's topic.
Post-release oversight for transitioning members is crucial to ensuring that whatever the barriers the transitioning member might encounter, they are identified, addressed, and catalogued for use in the future. The Canadian Forces calls these “lessons learned”.
However, what level of priority does the Canadian Forces place on soldier transition?
I have some experience in this area, as my former position in JPSU included transition and post-release oversight. Neither could be accomplished properly, given the low priority and poor management of the JPSU. Underscoring this point are the comments of Lieutenant-Colonel Cecyre, joint personnel unit deputy commanding officer, in his email from 2014 as follows:
The demand for JPSU Services is increasing exponentially (18.5% increase in the last year);
The bulk of our customer base consists of extraordinary challenging files to manage; and
This results in the JPSU staff being severely overworked at all levels (senior staff on duty 24/7).
The mitigation strategy was due to the criticality of the JPSU, which required that the VCDS priority be raised from 6 to 2 the soonest.
I just want to explain really generically what these VCDS priority levels are. Priority 1 is deployed on operations, so you're in battle. If you need something, you get it right away. Going down one is priority 2. It could be a joint operations command in Canada, where they're watching the battle. They're number 2. It keeps going down to priority 6, such as the battalion ping-pong team, for example. That's at the bottom.
From 2008 to 2014 the JPSU was given the Canadian Forces' lowest priority level, level 6. That the Canadian Forces gave the lowest priority to injured soldier transition may explain why we're having this discussion today and why there's been so much trauma inflicted upon transitioning soldiers, military families, and new veterans.
Therefore, a major barrier to addressing barriers to transition and measurable outcomes of successful transition is the Canadian Armed Forces' approach to soldier transition, which is, of itself, a barrier to transition.
The first step to a successful transition is an efficiently functioning JPSU, a unit that has been stuck on its own starting line now for nine full years. Until that's in place, measuring anything to do with soldier transition, it is really a waste of resources, because we haven't even started the game yet. However, once it's in place, the answer to barriers and measurable outcomes will be easy to assess, as veterans work toward things that we all strive to have in our lives—the care of our families, a good quality of life, and a good standard of living. This is something that we all want and that our veterans would want, as well.
That's the end of my statement. I look forward to any questions you might have later on.
Thank you.