Are they full time?
Evidence of meeting #3 for Veterans Affairs in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was folks.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #3 for Veterans Affairs in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was folks.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:05 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Service Delivery, Department of Veterans Affairs
Yes, my case managers are full time, those who want to work full time.
9:05 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Service Delivery, Department of Veterans Affairs
We do have people who prefer to work four days a week, but we look at it as full-time equivalent, FTEs.
9:05 a.m.
Conservative
9:05 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Service Delivery, Department of Veterans Affairs
It depends on the individual. We have a flexible workforce, but when I report the number of employees, it's full-time equivalent, so it's equivalent to five days. One full-time equivalent may be two warm bodies—I hate saying it that way; it sounds cold—but we work with full-time equivalents.
9:05 a.m.
Liberal
Sean Casey Liberal Charlottetown, PE
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Good morning folks and thanks for being here. I wish you in all sincerity great luck in getting back to Charlottetown for those of you who are travelling back. My reasons are partly selfish because I'm going to be trying to get there as well.
I want to start with a bit of history. Everyone acknowledges that having a backlog is not a desirable situation. We all acknowledge that you're working hard to resolve it. The ombudsman has shone quite a light on it.
I know what the morale of the department was, and I know what the situation was for the people who were serving veterans through the deficit reduction action plan. Can someone give me a bit of history on what the backlog looked like coming out of the deficit reduction action plan? What has been the progress, or lack of, since then?
I know that the ombudsman went back so far. I'm asking you to go back a little further.
9:10 a.m.
Gen (Ret'd) Walter Natynczyk
I'll start off and then I'll ask Rick Christopher, who commands, to use that term.... He is the director of our central operations division. He basically has a battalion's worth of adjudicators under his command moving this forward. There are a number of veterans as part of his organization.
I gave a speech about this in Toronto the other night at the Royal Canadian Military Institute. As I tell the story of where we were in 2014-15 when I arrived, we had a bit of a perfect storm. We had the troops coming home from Afghanistan. We still had troops releasing from Bosnia and Kosovo and from other missions like Rwanda, Somalia and so on. For the first time, we really saw the social understanding of mental health injuries. For the first time, people who had been reluctant to come forward because of stigma started to come forward. It was not only Afghan veterans, but World War II veterans coming in for the first time. At the same time, the department was reduced in the order of 35% to 40%, depending on where you were in budget and people. All of these young folks were coming out of the military and at the same time the shortcomings of the new veterans charter were recognized by the ombudsman and others. That's why we had kind of a perfect storm. The applications started coming in faster and faster.
I still remember when I started that we would get in the order of about 35,000 claims a year. We're north of 60,000 claims now. Back in 2015, Rick Christopher's folks would try to get at least 2,500 decisions a month. We're north of 5,000 decisions a month. We used to produce out the door about $5 million a day in disability claims. We're in the order of $10 million to $15 million a day in disability claims. I say that to give you an understanding of the volume we're dealing with.
9:10 a.m.
Gen (Ret'd) Walter Natynczyk
Also, from the moment we decide we're going to hire someone, we need to get cabinet and Treasury Board approvals. Then Michel and his team have to find these folks down east or across the country. Then for the first time there's a training program. Again, this didn't exist in 2015. We go through a training program so people have the tools to understand what we're dealing with and improve those tools.
I'll turn it over to Rick Christopher.
9:10 a.m.
Director Generral, Centralized Operations, Department of Veterans Affairs
As the deputy said, we've had an incredible increase in the number of applications. Hiring new people takes a long time, just as the hiring process in the public service can be lengthy at times. It take a long time to find the people in certain areas depending on the labour market. Some of these jobs require very specific skills, such as nursing. Then, as the deputy mentioned, we take time training them.
From the time the decision to hire is made through to the staffing and training can sometimes take most of a year to get people up and running and see an impact. I should underline that just throwing human resources at this is not the only answer. One of the things that having these resources has allowed us to do is deal with the influx. At the same time we will look at how we're going to change the way we do things.
Over the past few years we've been doing a number of things. Some of it changes the process, . Some of it is using technology. One of the things we noticed in the department is that a lot of time is spent in the hand-offs, so we've reduced the number of hand-offs, and got the people on the same team who have the expertise to make those decisions quickly.
Some of the other things we're doing are around technology, such as using artificial intelligence to identify the audiograms in some of these files. It's a very specific kind of document, and we can use technology to identify them, so staff don't have to search the files. We are at the very early stages of this.
We use links to get some of the information we need—links into the Canadian Forces health information system, where we have limited access—to take a look at the kind of medical information we need to make these decisions.
A number of these initiatives are under way. If we did not have these kinds of resources, the number of people waiting over the 16 weeks would be much higher.
9:15 a.m.
Bloc
Luc Desilets Bloc Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC
Good morning to all of you.
Thank you very much for being here today.
My question is about the 20,000 pending claims. Can you tell us what types of claims are pending and how long they've been pending?
If I understand correctly, the claimant is at fault, shall we say, because their application isn't complete. From the time a claim is made, how long, on average, does it take to satisfy your criteria? Does it take a year? A month?
I have a follow-up question. What can be done or what exactly is being done to prevent this? Is it a matter of providing clearer information or changing the website?
9:15 a.m.
Gen (Ret'd) Walter Natynczyk
Thank you for your question.
I'm going to let Mr. Doiron answer that.
9:15 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Service Delivery, Department of Veterans Affairs
Thank you for your question.
The time frame depends on the person. Sometimes, we are waiting on medical information. For instance, a person might submit their claim and then go to Florida for six months. If they don't have anyone checking their mail, the claim is held up for six months.
Another thing that can delay the processing of a claim is a veteran's medical or service records. In those cases, we are quite proactive about getting the issue resolved. The problem is usually out of the veteran's control. We also have people who forgot that they submitted a claim and never got back to us.
What's more, some people have brown envelope syndrome, meaning, they don't like to open mail from the Government of Canada. Oftentimes, that affects veterans struggling with mental health issues. It's about more than being worried about having to pay a bill; they have real fears. Our staff try to help those people.
We strongly encourage veterans to apply through My VAC Account. I'll use this opportunity to promote our online system. Approximately 60% of claims come in through the online system, which doesn't accept incomplete claims. Essentially, the purpose is to speed up service delivery. The more automated the system, the quicker the turnaround for services. The back-end application still needs a lot of work, though, but the front-end application works quite well, and it's really helping. I should point out that it's now much easier to apply, so of course, the number of claims has gone up. The easier it is to apply, the more people who do. That's good, because it's what we want. The system helps us reduce the number of incomplete claims.
We also have people who don't sign their claims. It may seem trivial, but if the claim isn't signed, we have to call the person. If they don't answer, it can become a vicious circle. Naturally, when they provide the missing information, their claim goes back into the system, in the same spot in the queue. The system is based on the first-in, first-out principle.
I can't give you an exact processing time frame, because each case is different. We have people who spend their winters in Florida or elsewhere—veterans have a good pension, after all. When they come back to Canada in May, they call us to inquire about their claim. Meanwhile, we've been waiting for additional information for the past six months.
9:15 a.m.
Bloc
Luc Desilets Bloc Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC
What more can be done?
Given how old some veterans are, could the online system be making things harder?
9:15 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Service Delivery, Department of Veterans Affairs
It's possible, but I must say the system is making things easier.
Mr. Christopher hasn't talked about everything we're doing, but we are reviewing each of our documents, given how complex they are. They aren't always that clear. My father is an older veteran, and when my brother called me to explain to him what information he was being asked to provide, I wasn't so sure, myself. It's not always obvious.
The idea behind the online system is to streamline the process, and we are trying to streamline the forms. Keep in mind these are disability benefit claims, so we need a medical diagnosis and specific information. I don't want to generalize, because we also have young veterans with mental health issues or other health problems who aren't comfortable with computers either. It's not about age. It depends on each person's situation.
What we are trying to do with My VAC Account is make the claims process easier. You may be familiar with a popular software that helps with income tax returns, so you'll appreciate the nickname people in the department have given the system, “turbo vet”. It's easy. Users are asked whether they have worked and whether they have a T4, for instance, and they click “yes”or “no”. They choose from drop-down menus as well. Clearly, veterans have to provide us with their history and medical records. Some information is necessary.
It works quite well for programs like the education and training benefit. The person is asked to confirm their service number, and if they confirm that it is indeed their number, the system already knows how long the person was in the Canadian Forces, and their claim can be approved within hours. The process isn't as quick or as straightforward for the disability benefit program.
9:20 a.m.
NDP
Rachel Blaney NDP North Island—Powell River, BC
Thank you for being here today.
I appreciate your talking to us about this really important issue of how many veterans are waiting. My first question goes back to human resources.
When the Conservatives were in power there was a decrease in the number of people working at Veterans Affairs. With the great number of people who are applying now, and with the backlogs, how close are you to getting back to the original numbers before the cuts that came at that time? Does anyone know that?
