Evidence of meeting #74 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 military.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:25 p.m.
Conservative
Cathay Wagantall Conservative Yorkton—Melville, SK
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you both for being here. It's good to see you again, Deb. I think that with your charity's amazing work and from what I hear of your wishes for our veterans, it would put you out of business, if we could do what we should do. Is that correct?
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
Cathay Wagantall Conservative Yorkton—Melville, SK
That would be a good thing, yes.
Thank you so much for the role that you're playing. Again, the importance of veterans helping veterans, and Canadians coming alongside of them to do what needs to be done, is remarkable.
Now you mentioned serving members who have come to you. However, they're already in the process of releasing, so they're part of that JPSU environment, correct?
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
Cathay Wagantall Conservative Yorkton—Melville, SK
So, there are some significant issues there for some folks, obviously, as they're transitioning.
I have a quick question, too, with regard to making things better for them so they don't come to the point where you're needing to help them.
We heard testimony earlier from the Veterans Transition Network. You're probably familiar with the services they provide.
How important do you think it would be to have those kinds of services actually be the priority as our members are looking at possibly facing the decision to no longer be part of their service at an earlier time?
12:30 p.m.
Chair and Co-founder, VETS Canada
I think it's imperative that those services be offered earlier. I 100% agree with what Oliver said: that he would like to see the Veterans Transition Network become a service provider to DND as well as VAC. I think that would be a wonderful thing.
I know that with our organization we also are trying to work our way through the DND door to educate them a little bit more on the services that we do provide. There are members who release and appear to be doing just fine. Then they kind of fall on hard times and need us. I think that it's important for DND to make its members aware of the resources that are available when they do release.
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
Cathay Wagantall Conservative Yorkton—Melville, SK
You did mention that the reasons for their crises tend to be financial, health-related, and social. However, social tends to be at the top of the list.
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
Cathay Wagantall Conservative Yorkton—Melville, SK
Again, if we were dealing with that as more of a priority, then are you saying that it would impact how they are able to proceed with the others?
12:30 p.m.
Chair and Co-founder, VETS Canada
I think so. I think that, as I've said, when they release they do lose that social support network, particularly members who are medically releasing. They're a little bit more isolated. Members who are struggling with PTSD, particularly, tend to self-isolate. The social aspect is extremely important, as well as that sense of purpose. There are many veterans who are not able to go into a secondary career when they're released, but they still need a sense of purpose. It could be something as simple as volunteering for an organization like ours. Many of our volunteers feel that is their purpose. It offers them an opportunity to continue to serve.
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
Cathay Wagantall Conservative Yorkton—Melville, SK
Mr. Lipana, the visual you just gave us of our troops along that road is powerful. They've lost a buddy who has protected their back. We tend to think of injuries, I think, in far too small of a window. Just that alone.... Can you just elaborate a bit on how psychologically that impacts them? They're not coming home at that point, right?
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
Cathay Wagantall Conservative Yorkton—Melville, SK
Could you give us just a little bit more on how that impacts them now and also when they're going to be facing a change in the future?
12:30 p.m.
Former Lieutenant-Colonel, United States Air Force, As an Individual
We call it the “flash to bang”. The nasty part of the post-traumatic stress is that “post” word because there is that point of injury, whether it's trauma, which grossly has to do with the experience, or moral injury, which has to do with the connection between people and the morality of that connection. That trust between an individual and the institution, as well, has a delayed effect because he or she in that zone doesn't have time to fully grieve the loss and deal with the ensuing emotion that comes with it. That makes that person vulnerable in a combat theatre of operations, and that's not good.
We become very good at putting that stuff into a box and setting it aside, compartmentalizing it in order to complete the mission. Even upon return, that has negative effects. What Mark was speaking to about a member not being ready, maybe, for a particular program or to enter an intervention is absolutely true. The social support that Debbie and your other witnesses have spoken to, even Dr. Norris on February 1 with regard to bringing in the family and looking at the member holistically and at where he or she is, is absolutely necessary.
What that individual deals with is the loss of identity, the loss of someone that they've had, the loss of who essentially they were, because sometimes the moral architecture that the individual goes into combat with does not withstand the demands of war.
12:35 p.m.
Liberal
Bob Bratina Liberal Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON
Thank you.
Mr. Lipana, my city of Hamilton, Ontario, sent about 400 soldiers to Afghanistan, and if you came to my office, you would see the city flag that flew in Kandahar, which was given to me when I left office in Hamilton to come here. I'm very proud of the work they did. Some lost their lives there. Some lost their lives here.
When we toured Walter Reed army hospital—our group went over—we saw some of the innovations that were being brought into treatment. When we hear the terrible stories that we heard previously—we're talking about barriers to transition—we also want to look to new, innovative ways of dealing with that transition, and one of them—I looked up your bio—is through the arts.
Could you speak to that? I still have photos of the masks that the veterans had done in Washington. They were just staggering. They blew us all away. Could you comment on that?
12:35 p.m.
Former Lieutenant-Colonel, United States Air Force, As an Individual
Sure. I'm on the board of directors for an art foundation named for the soldier, in fact, who rode in my vehicle and was killed by an IED, the David J. Drakulich Art Foundation. The purpose of the foundation is to offer art as a medium for military-connected community, to reassimilate, reintegrate, and intentionally shape the narrative for warriors coming back.
Too often you're cast into one of two modes. You're a hero or you're broken, and maybe both of those are true at the same time. Again, I'll refer to Mark's circumstance. Just because his disability makes him incompatible for military service, that does not make him incompatible for continued service in his community.
Art is a way to do that as a therapeutic mode. Soldiers, airmen, and marines don't have to be artists. There are tactile modes. We do combat papermaking, in which we turn uniforms into paper. It's a way to draw a community in, and it's a way for a community to take ownership of their veterans. It provides a good safe medium for veterans, regardless of their political stance or their disposition towards the war. It's a common medium and it's a safe place for a community to recapture their veterans at a personal level.
12:35 p.m.
Liberal
Bob Bratina Liberal Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON
I'm sorry we're short of time. I'll go to Ms. Lowther.
In terms of your databases, how do you keep track of your activities and the outcomes?
12:35 p.m.
Chair and Co-founder, VETS Canada
We are required, through our contract with Veterans Affairs Canada, to produce reports for them at the end of every month. Because of that reporting system, we do have to keep quite significant documentation and records regarding the veterans we assist and the services we're providing. We have to report things like how many veterans in the run of a month we prevent from losing their housing by paying rental arrears, and how many veterans in the run of a month we simply provide peer support to.
We are required to keep rigorous records.
12:35 p.m.
Liberal
Bob Bratina Liberal Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON
If I caught your submission correctly, were you sort of hinting that we train soldiers but we don't train veterans? We teach you how to be a warrior but not to transition?
12:35 p.m.
Chair and Co-founder, VETS Canada
Yes. When you look at somebody who goes through basic training, they're not much more than a child, really, when you look at someone who's 18 or 19. They have no life experience, and so everything that they know, that they are indoctrinated to become is a soldier, sailor, or air person. So at the end of the line, we see people struggle with simple things like paying their phone bill. They don't know how to do that because their wife or their husband, the person who was at home, always took care of that.
I've heard stories from people who have said, “My CO told me when to go get a haircut”, and things like that. At the end of the line, those are things that people do struggle with, simple things.
12:40 p.m.
NDP
Gord Johns NDP Courtenay—Alberni, BC
Thank you both for your testimony and for the important work that you're doing.
I'll start with you, Lieutenant Colonel Lipana. Your story is so important. Thank you for coming to Canada and sharing that story with us, and for your service as an ally. I really hope you feel like you're at home, because we're all brothers and sisters, and you really connected us there. So thank you.
In terms of best practices in Canada, maybe you could speak about what we do well, and where you see some gaps, and maybe you could speak about where you're doing well. It's my understanding, in terms of return to work, that a lot of your caseworkers, 30% I think, are former military service members.
Could you talk about the importance of that familiarity? With regard to Mark's story, I think if he were dealing with people who had served, maybe there would be that understanding, that important piece. Could you speak to the return to work, and case managers in that sense?
12:40 p.m.
Former Lieutenant-Colonel, United States Air Force, As an Individual
Many of your witnesses have commented about changing the culture. I think the apparatus itself is well in place and the interventions are good. Having caseworkers who are former members is a huge benefit. He looks like you, sounds like you, understands what you've been through, and speaks your language.
Again, from the testimonies I heard earlier, you share so many of the same problems. There are a lot of good interventions, and the program is built to do good things. But we're paying a trust tax at lower levels of bureaucracy, where an individual who is processing a piece of paperwork or needs a signature—oh, this box isn't checked, he missed a signature—doesn't have the authority at his or her level to exercise judgment. So that norm has to be broken. The trust tax has to be taken off both the member, people like Mark, and certainly the individual doing the middle-level management in that face-to-face casework, for sure.
In the Department of Veterans Affairs in the U.S, the experience varies widely. You can have great caseworkers and you can have awful ones. It's difficult in a big bureaucracy, for sure.
12:40 p.m.
NDP
Gord Johns NDP Courtenay—Alberni, BC
Do you get the sense that someone who has served is better suited to that job overall? Is it a trust factor?
