Thank you.
Evidence of meeting #9 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 guys.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #9 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 guys.
A recording is available from Parliament.
11:40 a.m.
As an Individual
But it wasn't the mental health facility that was necessarily the problem. It was the physicians. Once again, I've never had a military charge in my career, but if you look at my release medical, it states that I'm an alcoholic and a drug addict. I have never had a charge, drug or alcohol-related. How could I be an alcoholic and a drug addict but have never been charged, if I've addressed these issues?
I've never been in a rehab clinic. I've never been to an outpatient clinic or anything else. It wasn't the mental health facility that was willing to look after you. It was the physicians who were willing to kick you out, and that was my—
11:40 a.m.
Liberal
Doug Eyolfson Liberal Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB
Sir, were you offered rehabilitation for the substances? Did they offer you a rehab program at any time?
11:40 a.m.
As an Individual
Absolutely not, and the reason for that is that I'm a parent. I have a six-year old son, and the Manitoba legal system, based on the fact that I have PTSD, was able to strip me of all rights of being a father on hearsay. Once again, I've never been in trouble criminally or civilly, family and child services have never showed up to my house, I have paid all my child support, and I've followed every rule and regulation you've placed upon me. I've been stripped of all rights of being a parent on hearsay and because I suffer with a mental ailment that I deal with properly on an everyday basis.
11:40 a.m.
Liberal
Doug Eyolfson Liberal Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB
Thank you.
I think I'm out of time now. Thank you, sir.
11:40 a.m.
NDP
Irene Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON
Thank you to all our witnesses.
I have a number of questions. I would like to start with Mr. Westholm, because I want to understand the following.
The JPSU has had three reviews—by a Canadian Forces ombudsman, a chief of review services, and General Anderson's internal review—yet it doesn't seem that these reviews have finished.
Why do you think it's taking so long to rectify the situations or the problems within the JPSU?
11:45 a.m.
As an Individual
A lot of what you're hearing today from three individuals here is the reason I quit the JPSU. It's because they said they could do things, promised people they would do things, and failed to deliver.
As it is now, it has gone through all these different reviews, and the next one, I believe, is 18 months long. I think that really what they're trying to do is bleed it out; that is, to let the contracts that people have in it expire, let the people who are currently posted to it for rehabilitation get out. I've helped quite a few in the last little while who are in the JPSU, who are really in dire straits medically and are pretty much abandoned. I think that's the plan: they're just trying to wait out the people who are in it and the contracts and then start with the JPSU version 2.0.
11:45 a.m.
NDP
Irene Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON
What would be their rationale? Is it that it had become so complicated? It sounds extremely complicated in terms of the interactions of the Canadian Armed Forces with VAC? Just from the description of the paperwork from our two witnesses, Mr. Kuluski and Mr. Veltri, my head is spinning.
11:45 a.m.
As an Individual
I feel for you, because when I was a sergeant major there, I used to watch Parliament on TV. I saw my commanding officer giving information about the JPSU, saying that the manning was fine when in fact it was going to hell in a handbasket and the handbasket was on fire.
This is what happened. They had so many people come in, and they wouldn't staff the unit properly, and crisis after crisis stacked one on top of the other. They started treating people like files and not people. The onus was on procedures, policy, all these things that take the humanity away. There was emphasis on time when there should have been emphasis on care.
11:45 a.m.
NDP
Irene Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON
You make mention of time. I'm going to ask you a question about an Oder Paper question that I submitted in February. It was about wait times. Essentially, I wanted to know what the wait time was from when someone first asked for help and support with their mental health and when that help was forthcoming. The answer I got was that wait times are measured from the time of referral to first available treatment, and that Veterans Affairs works to ensure that this wait time does not exceed 60 business days and has an internal target of having 80% of veterans wait less than 60 business days to receive their first available treatment with a psychiatrist within the operational stress injuries national network.
What is your reaction? Is that true, or is this 60 days misleading?
11:45 a.m.
As an Individual
I'm going to back that up a little bit. I'm going to go to the case in which they're serving in the military.
If a soldier serving in the military realizes that they have a mental health issue and they go to see a doctor, if it's of such a degree that they can't maintain presence in their unit, then the commanding officer and the medical officer can at that point transfer the person to the JPSU. If the JPSU is functioning properly, there that person will get a break and be allowed to take the time to address the issues with the proper health professionals and then decide whether or not the person is okay to go back to military service, or then transition to Veterans Affairs Canada.
Now, if everything was working well and that person had gone into the JPSU and was put into the stream for civilian society—and it is a different society completely, I have to emphasize that—there would be a handoff between the medical services of the Canadian Armed Forces and those of the civilian services with Veterans Affairs Canada. There really should be no gap, if it was working in that manner.
11:45 a.m.
NDP
Irene Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON
Based on what we're hearing from Mr. Kuluski and Mr. Veltri, it seems like it's not working, that there are gaps, and that there's something wrong in terms of the connections that have to be made.
11:45 a.m.
As an Individual
Yes, the connections aren't there. Again, when you mismanage a unit.... You guys can appreciate this; we had some sections of 70 people. You don't have 70 ill and injured people with one section commander. That's actually a cruel thing to do. Then people fall through the cracks that have emerged, right? Then people commit suicide. We had three in my region alone, because of the way that the place was staffed.
To get the thing working right, you have to confront reality, not gloss over it, and put the right people, the right staff, in there to help these guys transition one way or the other. These two guys could still be in uniform if that JPSU were running properly.
11:50 a.m.
NDP
Irene Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON
Do you have confidence in the restructuring or in the review that's going on right now?
11:50 a.m.
Liberal
11:50 a.m.
Liberal
Colin Fraser Liberal West Nova, NS
Okay.
Thank you very much for your appearance today, and for your testimony. I want to echo the comments of my colleagues and thank you all very much for your service to our country.
As a committee, we're committed to taking your information and trying to improve things. I know there's a commitment on all sides to do that. While I hear frustration in your voice, please know that we're working to try to make things better.
I'd like to start by asking Ms. Gilmore and Mr. Mitic a question.
I recognize that you have a young family, two daughters as you said. I really appreciate your comment, Ms. Gilmore, and the concrete example of having email access with your case worker, with somebody you can actually relate to and communicate with easily. That's a really good, specific example of something that seems really easy, which we should be able to fix.
I presume that when you do have personal contact with a case worker or a person, you're dealt with appropriately. Would you agree with that? Would you agree that it's not the people who are the problem but the system?
11:50 a.m.
As an Individual
No. That is not to say that a person goes out of their way to be ignorant. It's all about education. If you're going to sit in a job, you need to know what the service is, what the product is, what it is you are dealing with. When you don't know that, that's where the frustration on the other side of the line comes from.
Ultimately, I think that whatever position you're going to play in Veterans Affairs, you must know your job. If you don't know it, know where to get the answers.
They have brought it up a few times. I've had the same dealings. I had a major issue with putting in a disability claim and the paperwork that went along with it. It actually got lost. I guess someone quit. My file went through the cracks, even though I called every couple of months to see where it was. The person who finally got track of it sent it along, missing the psychiatric report and the medical report. So what I got two months later was a denial saying, “We don't see any reason why there should be any change to your disability.” Well, no wonder? If you're missing a quality of life assessment and any medical assessment, of course you're not going to have any meat to go with those potatoes, right?
Then, I actually got the minister's office involved because I was ready to go to the papers. Just to give you an idea, this was over a year later and they were denying me, telling me that my release from the military wasn't more than 10%, because they were missing very valid paperwork.
Yes, it is important that your frontline people know what they're talking about and have access to the information, so that when they are dealing with someone who's already pre-targeted or triggered, they can get the information they need and they know where to go next.
That's the problem with your VAC online system. I think that for some people, it might just be an easy way to deal with it. They can go through the motions and all their information is there. But when it starts getting more complex, I would not focus my time on an online version. I think there has to be a connection with a case manager, somebody who can sit down and tell you if you're on the right path or the wrong path, and provide that information.
11:50 a.m.
Liberal
Colin Fraser Liberal West Nova, NS
In your experience so far, based on your judgment, would you say having more case workers would be helpful?
May 3rd, 2016 / 11:50 a.m.
As an Individual
Absolutely.
If you look at these guys here, they're used to being looked after. There was a medical system in place, there was a CDU system. They had their medical technicians, their physician assistants, their nurses, and their doctors. They had an entire treatment team, and now they're left out. Hopefully, some of them have family doctors, but there are a lot who don't. If you don't have that treatment, you don't have someone to help guide you.
As a medic, I knew what the job of infantry entailed, but if you go to someone on the civilian side and you say, “I was an infanteer”, they'll say, “What was that? I don't know.”
11:50 a.m.
Liberal
Colin Fraser Liberal West Nova, NS
Can you describe some of the services that are available to your family?
Also, you mentioned a top-up—that you shouldn't be considered together, that you should be considered separately. Can you explain what you meant by the top-up?
