Veterans Affairs Committee on Feb. 15th, 2018

[BGen Mark Misener]

No, ma'am, it really just elevates the experience of the person who is responsible at the local level for bringing all our partners together to support our ill and injured members. It puts them on par with the other commanding officers around them at the bases and wings so that they can have a more frank and honest conversation about the support required.

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

Can you tell me when it moved to being a priority number two? It was six. When did it move to two?

[BGen Mark Misener]

I believe it was in 2016 that it happened. I say “I believe”, ma'am: I've been in the job for about seven months. It was a priority two when I arrived. I believe it was a year before that when—

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

Could we get a date for that?

[BGen Mark Misener]

I can confirm when we went to priority two.

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

Thank you. I appreciate it.

Also, page 4 of your statement reads:

In addition, JPSU headquarters is undergoing reforms to its structure to prioritize the effort on transition services

Could you identify those reforms?

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

I apologize. We're out of time, so can you make the answer very quick?

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

Otherwise, you could provide it to the committee as well.

[BGen Mark Misener]

Very quickly, ma'am, a colonel has been brought in to focus specifically on that effort. Before, it was done through a broad staff effort; everyone was participating. We're putting a focus on it, putting an experienced, high-ranking member in charge of it to focus on that specific issue.

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

Okay. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Ms. Lambropoulos is next.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you once again for being with us today to answer our questions. I have quite a few, but I'm going to start off by making sure that you are telling us that when a veteran shows up at one of the service offices across the country, nobody is ever turned away. They're automatically dealt with.

[Elizabeth Douglas]

I'll turn this over to Ms. Pham.

[Nathalie Pham]

Absolutely. Field operations are mandated to provide direct service delivery to our veterans. Any veteran who comes into one of our offices across the country—we have more than 130 IPSCs and satellite offices as well—is going to be meeting with one of our staff to screen, to see what the issues are and what the barriers are, so that we can provide service and programs. There is no wait-list. We meet them immediately.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

These staff are your case managers, correct?

[Nathalie Pham]

We have case managers, but we also have veterans services agents in field operations who meet with our veterans.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Okay. Just to better understand the process, let's say that you have a veteran who ends his service and is trying to transition, who shows up at one of your offices or creates a My VAC Account, and there is zero information from DND. You guys don't have anything; they just show up at your office, and—

[Nathalie Pham]

We will start, absolutely. If you're talking about an IPSC, because we have staff there, we will hopefully meet with them before they even release. As CF members, they would have known the IPSC in many circumstances. In the case of a My VAC Account, we will have already initiated the My VAC Account while they're still serving.

If a veteran comes to one of our offices, we will greet the person. We need some basic information that they can provide, and very quickly we can verify their service and open a file, and then, as we move along, get more documentation to assess programs and services.

The process of identifying whether the person is a veteran is done fairly quickly. They often have their DND information, and with that we're able to track.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Okay. Once they have been determined to be a veteran and have explained what issues they are dealing with or what services they expect, how long does it take for them to actually receive the services?

[Nathalie Pham]

As you can see, it depends on the complexity and the needs of the veteran. The needs of some of our veterans who come in might be very targeted and straightforward, so we can address them immediately. We try to find VAC resources. In some circumstances there may be something not related to VAC, and we also help that person with the community services or the provincial services.

Veterans who have complex needs—veterans who we see fairly quickly have barriers that we can't address with one meeting or with a targeted program—will be assigned to a case manager immediately. That case manager will then take the time to do a thorough assessment.

Most of the time we will resolve these situations in case planning, where case managers will assess and identify the needs, together with the veteran, and do the case planning process to overcome those challenges with the veteran and the family.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Okay.

[Nathalie Pham]

There is no wait time to be assigned to a case manager or to be working with a veterans service agent.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

When we talk about the backlog, then, what exactly are we referring to?

[Elizabeth Douglas]

I can speak to the backlog. The backlog is solely for disability adjudication for our disability award or disability pension.

I think this is a very important question, because I do not want to leave the impression that's it for all of our programs. Indeed, we just completed a national client survey last year in which veterans stated that 81% were satisfied with our services. Many and most of our services are meeting their deadlines, meeting their service standards. In some cases, such as disability adjudications, they are not.

The other point I would like to clarify is that not all who are waiting are in transition. In fact, there are currently serving CAF members who receive disability awards and disability benefits, so it does not represent a whole group that is there without any funding.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you for the clarification.