Veterans Affairs Committee on Feb. 15th, 2018

[BGen Mark Misener]

Excuse me. May I just add to that?

I think it's very important to understand the integrated personnel support centre. The integration part of it is that Canadian Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs are co-located. Actually, part of the process of somebody's coming to and going through that location is that there's a deliberate process in which they are met by both teams, Canadian Armed Forces and VAC, and deliberately handed off well before they are released from the Canadian Armed Forces.

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

Thank you.

Can you speak to how services have improved? You said that some of them are being put in place still and that there are transition services that are in the process of being put in place. Can you speak to what those are?

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

I apologize. We're down to about 30 seconds.

[BGen Mark Misener]

I spoke a bit about more resources being put to JPSU renewal. We're also focusing very much on updating the release renewal process.

In 2015, there were long wait times for pension payments and severance payments of 12 to 18 weeks. That has all been reorganized and redone. Now we're talking about all of this being done in three to six weeks. We have, then, made some significant improvements, re-engineering and redoing processes, recentralizing how we do things, so that the experience is much more seamless and much slicker.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Thank you.

Next we'll have Mr. O'Toole for five minutes.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. It's always a pleasure to be back at the veterans affairs committee.

It's nice to see all the witnesses. It's nice to see you, Ms. Douglas and General.

I have a number of questions, but I'm going to try to limit them.

I would like to inform my friend Mr. Fraser that more than 300 of the people he referred to as being hired were hired when I was minister, including 146 in Atlantic Canada who would serve his region. I know that they're working hard to try to help our veterans and get the wait times down.

My question is about the recent contract to a company named Agilec on the transition front. What is funny about this is that I've worked on transition of veterans probably more than anyone else in the country for over 10 years as a member of Treble Victor, as a volunteer, and as a mentor.

I also represent part of the city of Oshawa, so when I heard that an Oshawa-based company got that award, I was happy but puzzled, because I'd never heard of them before. Certainly I was familiar with Canada Company. Then a CBC report said that they are well known for ties to the Ontario Liberal government. That certainly caused me concern, because transition is critical.

My question is this. Were there any veterans involved at Agilec in its submission, and how many veterans are employed by that company to run this program?

[Elizabeth Douglas]

I would have to go back to find out that information, but what I can share with you is that this is a contract run by Public Services and Procurement Canada and ourselves. We were looking for and had a statement of work that was based upon career counselling, upon how you provide services, upon how best to assist veterans to learn about specific skill sets, such as resume writing, career counselling, job placement.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

My concern is that when we found, through government lapses in the past, that one of the lapse areas was the lack of take-up of transitional funds available to veterans, part of it was that they felt organizations would not understand military or veteran culture.

What processes are in place with Agilec, who probably do a great job at workplace injury, to actually deal with the culture of the military and of employment? This is a very unique subset.

The complaint I often heard about VAC when I was the minister, and that we still hear—there are people talking about it on the front steps of Parliament today—is that it has an insurance company mentality. To me, it seems as though this contract is going to a private sector player with zero background in veterans.

[Elizabeth Douglas]

Again, we will look into the statement of work as to what was required, but we have full confidence in the way the contracting process was run, the way it was tendered, and the way the company was selected.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Can you undertake to this committee to provide us with the number of veterans who are employed at Agilec, and then perhaps the assessment criteria? MET, the military employment transition program run by Canada Company, had its challenges, as do all other programs, but certainly veterans were deeply embedded in it. It was non-profit and charity-based, so a number of people were surprised when they did not get the contract. If a comparison that Public Works used to assess and the criteria that were used could be released to the committee as well, I think that would be helpful.

My other question is about the JPSU, or the IPSC, or whatever we call it these days, General.

When I was minister and Minister Kenney was in place, we gave direct orders, if you can call them that, to our deputy ministers about not having anybody released until a case manager was in place and briefings had been given about their benefits. I remember a case of an Edmonton veteran who was being released into a home that was unfinished because of contractors. I remember committing in the House of Commons to not having him released.

Can we say with absolute certainty that this is happening now when veterans are released? I still anecdotally hear that people are released without full knowledge of Veterans Affairs programming.

[BGen Mark Misener]

I guess what I would say is that we do our very best to ensure that nobody is missed. I have instructed my commanding officers and my units to make sure that all the administration is in place and all the benefits are in place prior to anybody's releasing from the Canadian Armed Forces. I've told them to bring it up to my attention if it's a specific case, so that I can make sure that if we need to make any necessary changes, we do so.

Sometimes unforeseen circumstances happen or, I guess I would say, errors are made—people are human. Unfortunately, it happens that somebody slips through the cracks, but we do our utmost to try to avoid that happening. We've put in place processes and release checklists to try to make sure that everybody goes through a very standardized process so that nobody is missed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Thank you.

Mr. Choquette, you have three minutes.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

I want to come back to the question Mr. O'Toole asked. Canada Company, a non-profit charity, offered several programs to transitioning members and their families, such as Military Employment Transition Services and the MET spouse program, which was recently launched, in spring 2017.

Which, if any, of these transitional programs will be offered by the for-profit company?

[Elizabeth Douglas]

First, as you mentioned, METS was run by Canada Company, which is a private organization. We also felt that they did incredibly good work and we are saddened to see that they are closing.

In terms of the services they offered, the services that Agilec went out to tender for and won the contract for talk to the way we translate military service experience into civilian life experience: how Agilec will be able to help veterans do so; how they take the skill set they have and translate it into possible jobs, or at least possible wording for CVs; how to write cover letters; how to get motivational counselling. Many of those programs will be in place—certainly not in the METS program per se, as that is owned by Canada Company—but there will be similar types of programs and services offered by Agilec.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

General Misener, since the IPSC transitional unit has been created, have you noticed any trends specific to cohorts of releasing members? For example, is homelessness more common in one cohort than in another?

[BGen Mark Misener]

As I mentioned, the JPSU was created in 2009. I've not been a member of the JPSU all that time, but what I can say is that there have been studies done on this. The life after service study talks a bit about this.

The most recent one, in 2016, does highlight cohorts who tend to be younger, with less experience. Our junior NCOs have a tougher time transitioning than our senior NCOs or our officers. To me, that makes sense: they have less life experience. That is a cohort that is outlined in the life after service study.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Thank you.

We'll go to Mr. McColeman.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Thank you.

I'd like to pick up on my colleague Mr. O'Toole's questioning to the general, which he ran out of time on.

How much effort or concentration is there on looking into opportunities that may exist within the forces for a transitioning member? For those who present as having a tough time transitioning out of the structure of the military, how much emphasis is on looking for other roles that they could play within the military?

[BGen Mark Misener]

Thank you for the question.

Coming back to my opening comments, we're definitely ensuring that we retain our people, unless they want to leave. We make sure that prior to departing, all their administration is done and we line up the benefits. We also want, however, to enable them to do other things.

Well before somebody is released, we ask them if they want to do something else in the military. The reason they would come to the IPSC is likely their having a medical limitation of some sort. Through that process, if they're not able to serve in their current trade, they might go to do something else in another trade. We offer them the opportunity to do something else in the military well before releasing is an option.

Even after that, if they choose to release, we obviously try to set them up for success as much as possible, which might mean remaining and trying to become employed as a DND civilian. Many of the civilians in my organization are former military members, veterans who have retired, who wanted to come back to use their expertise of transition to help others.

Lastly, obviously they have an opportunity for public service priority hiring, so they can then continue to contribute to the public service.

What we try to do is retain as many of our experienced personnel as possible before they release.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Would this be right across the board, for all members who are in that position? There wouldn't be a member of whom you would say, “Sorry, there's no compatible thing for you within...”?

[BGen Mark Misener]

That is correct. There is a requirement to be operational—we spoke about universality of service. If you're not able to meet universality of service and the Canadian Armed Forces needs you and you can do some work, we will try to retain you for a period of up to three years so that you can help us, and then you can prepare for the transition.

It also depends on what they are being released for.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Thank you.

I'll go back to Ms. Douglas.

We talked earlier about the metrics you would use to measure performance and such. Are you aware of any senior manager who has been removed from Veterans Affairs as a result of not meeting the goals of the department?

[Elizabeth Douglas]

There are none that I'm aware of.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

In other words, all of the people meet their goals all the time?