Evidence of meeting #73 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 vocational.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:35 p.m.
NDP
Gord Johns NDP Courtenay—Alberni, BC
That's great.
I have a question. You talked about the 33 veterans who have been employed by VAC. How many of them are case managers?
12:35 p.m.
Director General, Service Delivery and Program Management, Department of Veterans Affairs
I don't have that exact number, but again, I can go back and look into it for you.
12:35 p.m.
Cmdre Sean Cantelon
Could I just add what I think is an important note? Of SISIP's Manulife case managers, 70% are ex-military in their files, and about 50% of those have had a disability, so that speaks to the case management on that side.
12:35 p.m.
NDP
Gord Johns NDP Courtenay—Alberni, BC
Maybe you could speak a bit about the differences in needs between young and old veterans—that's World War II veterans versus Afghanistan veterans—and how the programs are adapting to the differences.
12:35 p.m.
Director General, Service Delivery and Program Management, Department of Veterans Affairs
I do have the numbers on this. First, I will go back and give you what our veteran numbers are right now.
Currently we are serving 191,000 veterans. The CAF numbers are increasing, and currently we have 93,795 CAF veterans. Our war service veterans have decreased to 23,000.
We are again looking at services that meet the needs of our war veterans, but also ramping up the benefits and services that meet the needs of our CAF veterans.
In terms of war veterans, obviously some of them will be getting disability awards, disability pensions, but our biggest program for those war veterans can be.... We look at our VIP program, which is really a gold standard around the world. We look at things such as snow removal. We look at care within the home, such as ensuring they have Meals on Wheels or some type of nutrition in the home to keep a war service veteran in their home. There's a whole spectrum of care along that, ultimately ending with long-term care if that's where they need to go.
As you may be aware, we have contract beds and also community beds for our war service veterans.
12:35 p.m.
NDP
Gord Johns NDP Courtenay—Alberni, BC
On Vancouver Island, where we have a high number of veterans, we have a housing crisis, as you know. Real estate has gone through the roof. We're seeing a lot of veterans falling through the gaps and ending up homeless.
Could you talk a bit about your outreach to homeless veterans and how you're reaching them?
12:35 p.m.
Director General, Service Delivery and Program Management, Department of Veterans Affairs
As of April 1 of this year, we will have a new veteran emergency fund. That veteran emergency fund will be available for veterans and spouses, and it will have from $2,500 up to $10,000 yearly. If a veteran has an emergency need, such as having nowhere to live or needing to have a medical bill such as a drug bill paid, for example, or to buy some drugs, they can use that money for those purposes. Currently we also have trust funds that pay for those types of emergency medical services.
We were speaking earlier about our partnerships with non-profit organizations, and there are numerous non-profit organizations that do reach out to our homeless veterans.
Susan, is there anything you'd care to add to that about trust funds?
12:35 p.m.
National Manager, Rehabilitation, Career Transition Services and Income Support, Department of Veterans Affairs
Yes. We currently have a number of non-public trust funds. There's one specifically for Vancouver Island. We've done outreach to ensure that the case managers in the various offices—the veterans' service agents—are aware of the funds and that they use them. There's a lot of outreach. There's also a quick turnaround time. It's usually within 24 to 48 hours that the money can be placed in the veteran's hand.
12:40 p.m.
NDP
Gord Johns NDP Courtenay—Alberni, BC
Can you speak a bit more to the outreach? How are you getting to the people on the street who aren't going in to get help or access the service? How are you working with those non-profits that you discussed?
12:40 p.m.
Director General, Service Delivery and Program Management, Department of Veterans Affairs
Our case managers quite often are aware of the situations with some of our veterans, but over and above that, we do have in place right now a contract with Vets Canada. They do outreach to vets who are homeless.
12:40 p.m.
NDP
Gord Johns NDP Courtenay—Alberni, BC
I raised that because obviously there are still a lot of veterans who are falling through the cracks, and we're looking at how we can improve that outreach.
12:40 p.m.
Director General, Service Delivery and Program Management, Department of Veterans Affairs
That is why the new program, the veteran emergency fund, which has already been announced, will be implemented on April 1 of this year.
12:40 p.m.
NDP
Gord Johns NDP Courtenay—Alberni, BC
We'll do our best to make sure that people are aware of it in our communities.
Are the experiences of reservists and their families different from those of Canadian Armed Forces members? Can you talk about the difference in the experience?
12:40 p.m.
Director General, Service Delivery and Program Management, Department of Veterans Affairs
Do you mean in terms of homelessness or in terms of overall programs?
12:40 p.m.
Director General, Service Delivery and Program Management, Department of Veterans Affairs
It depends again on eligibility for our programs.
For example, our new career transition services will be available April 1 for reservists who have completed basic training. We try as much as possible to ensure the reservists are part of our veteran family and that they are treated with respect, dignity, care, and compassion in our program and with our services.
12:40 p.m.
NDP
12:40 p.m.
Cmdre Sean Cantelon
I can certainly speak to where we're going with reservists.
With respect to the reserves, it's important to note that there is a nuance, which I think the committee is very aware of, with respect to whether they were in class B or class C service. We know the vast majority of our reservists are class A. In the “Strong, Secure, Engaged” plan, one of the places we're increasing our services is in the personal support program, where for the first time ever we've hired fitness and well-being instructors who will be working solely with reservists.
I have a case example that's very close to you. We've never had full-time staff in Vancouver. We've added two full-time staff members there to work with the reserve units in the delta and up into mainland British Columbia. We'll be doing that across.... We're doing outreach to all our reserve organizations through our MFRC partners and also through our CAF appreciation program, CANEX, and SISIP. We've been briefing them about the services there. It's a total-package piece. That should prepare them with the knowledge so that when those unfortunate circumstances arrive, they know about My VAC Account and all of that. It's the class A community in particular that we're worried about, because they're doing that part-time, call-out, weekend training—those types of activities.
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
Doug Eyolfson Liberal Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB
Thank you. I'd like to give my time to Ms. Romanado.
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
Sherry Romanado Liberal Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC
Thank you.
Thank you all for being here today.
I'm not sure if my colleagues will agree, but I have to say it's great to see DND and VAC at the same table answering questions. We've heard a lot about the VAC portion of available benefits and services because we are the ACVA committee, but seeing it from the time that you're still an active member until the time you become a VAC client is, I think, really important.
On that note, I'm a very visual person, so while you were talking and giving your testimony, I was drawing my little timeline here to walk myself through the workflow process of somebody leaving the Canadian Armed Forces involuntarily due to a medical condition. For instance, the person becomes ill or injured and goes into the JPSU for a maximum period of three years. At some point during that time they are identified as breaching universality of service, and then six months prior to release they start having the conversation regarding LTD and so on.
When they leave, regardless of whether they're receiving their CAF superannuation pension, with LTD they can go up to two years. Is that correct? When do they fall into the VAC client pool? Does the LTD impact what they would receive in VAC?
I just want to make sure I'm walking through the timeline correctly.
