Veterans Affairs Committee on Feb. 15th, 2018

[Elizabeth Douglas]

I think that those are two separate questions.

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

I'll ask a separate question, then. Answer it, please.

Do all senior managers meet all of their goals all of the time, sufficiently that they stay in the job?

[Elizabeth Douglas]

I would say that there are probably areas where some senior managers do meet their goals and maybe some where they do not meet their goals, but those are different from measurable outcomes and how we measure performance and provide metrics around our programs.

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

Thank you for that answer. I find your answers, frankly—and I'm saying this will all respect—to be exactly what we've heard characterized around Veterans Affairs from a lot of our witnesses, in particular by veterans themselves, and they carry the biggest weight, in my personal opinion, around this table. It's that Veterans Affairs is centred around a bureaucracy priority instead of a veterans priority.

We hear from people inside the public service from Veterans Affairs, time and time again, the testimony that's being delivered here today, who say, “No, we concentrate as hard as we can.” Then two totally independent ombudsmen give 190-plus recommendations for streamlining, for bettering the system, and we hear that a small fraction of those get implemented. Ombudsman Walbourne, has reported one of these recommendations in numerous reports as a simple procedure, yet the imperative seems to be delivered here today through your testimony that the priority should be on the bureaucratic process.

Do you have anything to say to that?

[Elizabeth Douglas]

I do, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to do so.

I would suggest that VAC certainly recognizes that we need to do more in terms of service delivery and service delivery renewal. To that very end, we've had a service delivery renewal exercise under way over the past 18 months. We are focusing on a variety of approaches as to how to address this.

I would also say that we are just as frustrated when we find out and hear from veterans as to some of the difficulties that they have encountered, and we all try to go forward with care, compassion, and respect for veterans in all we do.

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

I'm going to stop you there, if you don't mind.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

You're out of time.

Mr. Bratina is next.

[Bob Bratina, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Brigadier-General Misener, first of all, thank you for your service.

One of the barriers to transition, in testimony that we've heard, has been the JPSU, in terms of veterans who served a few years ago and were quite adamant in their feeling that they weren't really being cared for.

If you can—because I know you're new to this job—could you take us from the creation of JPSU, which was in 2009, through the problems to the point where we are and where you are, which is to correct those problems and improve the transition?

Basically, was this a good idea that wasn't thought out in terms of execution at the beginning? How would you see the progress with JPSU from start to present?

[BGen Mark Misener]

Thank you for the question.

The JPSU is a very important capability. It was a capability that was born out of the Afghanistan conflict to take care of our numerous casualties from that conflict. It was a very good idea that was put in place very rapidly to deal with a very challenging and important situation. It has continued to grow and develop in that time—almost 10 years now.

What we've done is go from basically focusing on physical wounds, which is what was happening in Afghanistan, to taking care of all of our complex ill and injured cases. With that comes more complexity.

You have also heard that through that timeframe and the awareness of the JPSU as a place to go if you're ill or injured—a place to go to recover, to reintegrate, to heal—more people have come up, so the demand also grew.

I think what happened over the years is that the demand likely outstripped the capacity to provide the same personalized service they had been doing. We've been slow, but are now catching up, adding additional resources to get to ratios that I feel are good to be able to provide that service again.

We have been adding additional personnel over the years to grow the capacity to deal with all of the ill and injured in complex cases. Concurrent to that, we have also been streamlining many of our processes, as I was saying earlier, and bringing many of the partners together at that one location so that it becomes a one-stop shop, and it has become a one-stop shop for all of our ill and injured who are being cared for there.

[Bob Bratina, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

What's your global budget for JPSU? Do you know off the top of your head?

[BGen Mark Misener]

The global budget? My operations and maintenance budget is approximately $22 million per year—

[Bob Bratina, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Twenty-two million?

[BGen Mark Misener]

—for the JPSU.

[Bob Bratina, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

That has increased. I was reading an article critical of the time, which was 2013, when I think the budget was around $19 million. Obviously, more resources have been brought to bear.

[BGen Mark Misener]

Yes, sir. That speaks to the resources I control. Again, the importance of the integrated personnel support centres is that they are integrated. There are many other stakeholders and partners there that offer services that I don't fund or directly control. It's through that team effort that the positive experience comes out.

I talk about positive experience. We do annual surveys of the members who participate, who go through the JPSU or the IPSCs, and the same thing with the commanding officers. When I look down at the item “I feel that my file and personal situation were treated respectfully”, I see that in 2015, the results were 91.2%. In 2017, they were 92.9%, so there was as increase in satisfaction. There are still some people, though, 6.1%, who feel they did not get the services they needed.

As I said, we have work to do to improve the service, but I think we've come a long way, and we continue to make improvements.

[Bob Bratina, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

In fairness to the critical nature of the question, I think a lot of the testimony we heard came from the first five years of the organization, when people were really upset and wanted to get back and tell their story. It's good to hear that response you just gave.

On the notion that “I am responsible to ensure that they are properly cared for,” any one of us who has had to deal with the public knows that there will be people whom you will ultimately not satisfy. They will always say, “No, what you're saying is not true.”

How often are you confronted with the sort of situation in which you say, “These are the benefits that we feel you're awarded,” which then triggers a report to the ombudsman?

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

I apologize, but be very short on that answer.

[Bob Bratina, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

I'm sorry for the long question, but I'm curious about that.

[BGen Mark Misener]

I regularly speak to my commanding officers about challenging situations, and it's not necessarily because of what they're entitled to, but just because of the situation.

We regularly get feedback from the members who are not completely satisfied, and we work through the chain of command and with all of the partners to try to resolve those as well as we can.

Having said that, we are, in the end, limited by resources in what can be achieved, but we do try to do our best to take care of our members.

Thank you.

[Bob Bratina, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Go ahead, Mr. Choquette.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I will come back to General Misener.

We heard previous testimony from Barry Westholm that the JPSU is a low-priority unit. In the priority ranking system, JPSU is number six, which was described as the battalion ping-pong team.

Barry Westholm underlined that the inherent problems with JPSU are created by this low rank on the priority system. Has this priority level been upped, or is it due to be upped?

[BGen Mark Misener]

As mentioned, it was indeed a priority level six. However, it is currently a priority level two, which is the one immediately after level one where members are deployed in operations. Our priority has therefore been high.

As mentioned, I will confirm the date of the change of priority.

[François Choquette, NDP, Drummond, QC]

Will this change in priority solve the problems that existed before? What improvements will result from moving from priority six to priority two?

[BGen Mark Misener]

Thank you for the question.

It helps us to have the human resources to move forward. I can honestly say that we are not at 100% when it comes to human resources. For various reasons, we have positions that are not filled. However, we are trying as much as possible to fill our positions because having more people allows us to provide better services to our members.