Veterans Affairs Committee on March 20th, 2018

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

All they want is a brochure?

[Michel Doiron]

Well, they want a brochure. They want to understand a certain program. They're not applying for a program. They'll walk into an office and say, “Do you have a certain program?” Or sometimes they come to us and say, “I know somebody who needs help. Can you help them?” I actually dealt with one in Valcartier not too long ago, where somebody just said, “I have a battle buddy who's not well. Can you guys do something about it?” I mean that happens.

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

Right. You don't track that?

[Michel Doiron]

We were not.

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

Okay. That's interesting, because my recollection, having been on this committee in 2008 to 2010, was that those statistics were being kept.

[Michel Doiron]

Well, they may have been. I've only been here four years. You outdate me on that, sir, so I apologize.

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

Could you offer a reason—or maybe Mr. Butler could offer a reason—why you would stop taking those statistics?

[Michel Doiron]

I can't. Mr. Butler could, but I can't offer you a reason. I know when I started asking for the granularity of that, we did not have it, and I've asked for it.

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

Mr. Butler?

[Bernard Butler, Assistant Deputy Minister, Strategic Policy and Commemoration, Department of Veterans Affairs]

To be honest with you, however, the operation does fall under Michel, and any changes to data gathering that might have occurred over time, I would not be privy to it, not at that level of detail, my apologies.

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

Okay, but you will provide what you have?

[Michel Doiron]

Yes, absolutely. I'm surprised you haven't received it yet.

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

Sure. You know, it is a good thing that parliamentarians can get the services of the Library of Parliament, so we'll do some research on when that decision was made, why it was made, etc.

We've just heard the minister today say that there's a significant cultural change that he recognized needed to happen at VAC. We have had you here as witnesses over and over again, through the years. What is the difference between the promises you've made for the cultural change and what he's trying to make?

[Michel Doiron]

“Care, compassion, respect” is where we're going, and where we are in many places, notwithstanding some of the examples I heard earlier. I have to say, I was quite upset at that. I'll figure out who the veteran is and I'll figure out what happened there. That's my area.

I have been here four plus years, and there has been a fundamental change when it comes to how our staff deal with veterans. Now, it is not perfect. They are individuals working on the front line, and things happen, but there has been substantive change when it comes to care, compassion, respect, and actually getting to yes. How can we actually get the help that the veteran needs when the veteran needs that help?

There has been a lot of stuff done. Now, there are still pockets of areas, and they're not all in one branch or area. Some people have been doing the same job the same way for 25 or 30 years, and to try to get them to look at it from a different perspective is not always easy, but we've come a long way in the past four years, and many veterans actually tell me that. When I arrived at Veterans Affairs four years ago, I probably had a serious issue or two to contend with on a daily basis. Now I actually get thank-you notes from veterans, and I have to say that four years ago they were very rare.

We've done a lot of work on that, but there's still a lot of work to be done. The service excellence that was approved by Treasury Board—we used to call it service delivery review, but we've changed it to service excellence—is actually inculcating that care, compassion, and respect in our staff. I always challenge my colleague, Mr. Butler, that it's not just the service that has to be excellent and veteran-centric; it has to start from the policy and move into service so that we can deliver this. We're working very hard on doing that.

As an example, last year, we pushed out the disability award. You didn't have to apply for the increase in your disability award. We actually sent everybody an email through their My VAC Account, or by normal mail, to tell them the money would be in their bank account, and on the third day of the month—because the first and second happened to be a weekend—the money was deposited automatically.

Unfortunately, we had a lot of phone calls from people asking what the money was for, which killed my stats on the phones for a month, but the reality is the money was there. That's taking a different approach. Previously we would have required that they come to us and apply, we'd adjudicate it, and we'd get the money to them in a month. When we did the DA change, it was in their bank accounts.

We are working on it, but we still have a long way to go, because there are still some people who have to come along.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Your time is over.

Mr. Bratina.

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

On the money side, Ms. Stuart, maybe you could help me out with this. How do you actually come to decisions on the amounts of money required? I heard an interesting comment from a lady you probably all know. She said regarding the caregiver's allowance, that there are 700,000 veterans, so there are 700,000 caregivers. If you do the math, we'll never have enough money.

How do you actually break down the estimates and put them into a document?

[Rear-Admiral, Retired) Elizabeth Stuart (Assistant Deputy Minister, Chief Financial Officer and Corporate Services, Department of Veterans Affairs]

Let me try to answer you succinctly in that regard.

At Veterans Affairs Canada, we have a very professional long-standing relationship with the office of the chief actuary. Every year, we re-evaluate our client base out six decades. I would add that I've been here for two years. No two veterans' cases are alike, so when we are considering program changes or new programs, we work very closely. We also work with Statistics Canada, to understand the statistics for various age demographics in the country. That would pertain more to the families of the veterans. The annual review is done by an independent third party every July, and that helps inform some of the changes in programs that occur. As the deputy mentioned, we have the quasi stats, so whether one person or 10,000 come forward, we ensure that there is always money to pay for those who are eligible and entitled to benefits and services.

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

It sounds as if we should be reasonably confident that those numbers are based on solid evidence.

[RAdm Elizabeth Stuart]

Yes.

I would add, if I may, on the question on Mali. In my previous life, my staff and I would do the validation of the incremental costs for operations. From a temporal point of view, that would be an incremental cost. One would expect to see incremental changes in our client base in Veterans Affairs, whether they still be serving or post-serving when they present themselves to us with their issues.

That ties in very well with what I just mentioned about the annual valuation of the client base. What we're dealing with today are the supplementary estimates (C) and the interim estimates, which are very focused on this time and place. With the Mali mission, which was just announced last year, as we see the outcomes of that mission, we are going to be adjusting our client base with that information.

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

Mr. Doiron, we've had a number of conversations and we keep hearing the kind of message you just delivered, which is that things are changing, and changing for the good. But then we always open the newspaper and there's....

How do you and your staff relate to this kind of information? Whether right or wrong, it's out there. That's what the discussion is about, and people tearing up their cards, and stuff like that.

[Michel Doiron]

To be honest, I take it a little bit hard, because my job is to get it done right the first time. Unfortunately, we don't always get it right the first time.

I think what happens is that we miss the millions of transactions that actually go right. We actually do millions of transactions a year, whether for the veterans independence program, the DA, or case management. We do on occasion, but we rarely hear about those.

We always hear about those that go wrong, and some of them actually go wrong. It's a very unfortunate reality, one I don't like. To me, there's a person attached to every single one of these. That's why I take it seriously.

We have open lines of communication with most of your offices. Most of you send them to the minister's office—they actually land on my desk. I read every single one of them. I have a team that works on them. I probably get 20 to 30 a day. I'm going to raise it because somebody else is going to hit me with it shortly. Right now most of them are about the backlog. I won't hide that. But every once in a while, there's one in there that is more than that. We deal with them. We take them very seriously.

I had a call from somebody two Thursdays ago. This veteran, dying of cancer, had never come forward to us for anything. By Friday evening we had VIP.... We had full-time care for him, an OT assessment. Everything was done for him. And God rest the veteran's soul, he died on Saturday. You may say that's a lot of work maybe for.... You wonder why. Well, now the widow is entitled to some of our programming. That's how seriously we do take it. When this goes astray, we feel...and we try to rectify it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Thank you.

Mr. Johns, six minutes.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Thank you.

Thank you for being here.

I want to go back to the $42.8 million. Is there a number the department asked Treasury Board for? Again, it's my understanding that the department asked for double what they got. Can you confirm that?

[Michel Doiron]

I wouldn't say it's double. We did ask for more money, but it depends on—

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Can you tell me the number?