Veterans Affairs Committee on Feb. 27th, 2020

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Where are most of the hires coming from? Is it within the province of Prince Edward Island? A lot of people are cascading out of work in western Canada in the social services area and in all kinds of areas. How aggressively are you reaching out to other areas of the country to get people involved?

[Gen (Ret'd) Walter Natynczyk]

One of the most difficult areas for us to hire is Alberta. We are trying to scoop, to poach; we're trying to do everything to get enough case managers and other staff in Alberta, as we are in other parts of the country.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Part of the problem there is they're probably needed more than ever in that province right now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

If it's less than 10 seconds, go ahead.

[Michel Doiron]

In the past, the province would steal from us. Right now, we're stealing from Alberta. The reason is the salary difference in Alberta. A social worker makes more than the federals, probably the only province in the country, but with the economic situation in Alberta, some of these people are knocking on our doors now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Marie-France Lalonde.

[Marie-France Lalonde, Liberal, Orléans, ON]

I'd like to thank the witnesses for being here today.

I know this isn't entirely related to the backlog issue, but it could have an effect. The minister's mandate letter refers to a partnership

to help our homeless veterans.

I am from Orleans. I represent a stronghold of veterans and military personnel, and I'm very proud to be on this committee.

I wanted to give you an opportunity as we're looking at mental health and support for families and our veterans. Access to housing is very important. We worked very hard in Ottawa on one particular case for 40 units. What's the future plan for this?

[Gen (Ret'd) Walter Natynczyk]

Thank you so much for the question. When we think about supporting our veterans, we know that often veterans will leave the armed forces and things will go sideways.

I talked to one veteran who was in Vanier. The last thing a veteran gives up is the cellphone and, just before that, it's the pickup truck. This veteran called in. He had been part of the Royal Canadian Regiment. I called up the veteran, a corporal who did two tours of Afghanistan, and asked him how he had landed up on the streets of Vanier. He said, “Sir, I didn't want to tell anybody about my injuries because I didn't want the buds to know I was sick, so I didn't do anything.” He got out voluntarily. He went out to Fort McMoney—Fort McMurray—drove a big truck until the demons set in, then got fired and is on the streets of Vanier.

In order to be able to pick up this veteran and ask how we can provide a roof over that person's head, we now have a veteran emergency fund. For the first time, we can spend money on supporting a veteran even before we've proven eligibility. We can pick them up from the front doorstep, put a roof over their head, put groceries on the table and say, “Figure out who you are.”

Also, it's about working with the community. That's why I was thrilled with the multi-faith centre on the old Rockcliffe base. It's an investment of over $10 million to build 40 units where veterans want to come together within this community, within the identity. It puts a roof over their heads while they're going through addiction treatment, mental health treatment or vocational rehabilitation and moves them down that path.

Minister MacAulay and I were just in Calgary. Homes For Heroes is exactly the same, recognizing that at Homes For Heroes there is

an air force member from Saguenay

along with one veteran, a soldier, from Aurora, Ontario, and one from Calgary, but there they are in Homes For Heroes now, with, again, Veterans Affairs providing support through the well-being fund for them from a former military police sergeant who is an addiction counsellor. Our well-being fund is supporting that individual, who is mentoring 15 veterans going through all of this treatment.

It is a community effort, assisted by this veteran emergency fund, the well-being fund, but also, as I mentioned in my comments, by the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation's providing support to great initiatives like the multi-faith centre in order to give veterans an opportunity to get off the street.

I would also say that of the tranche of well-being initiatives last year, 12 went towards homelessness.

Over to you, Steven.

[Steven Harris]

It's actually 15, Deputy.

[Gen (Ret'd) Walter Natynczyk]

Fifteen. There you go.

[Steven Harris]

Those community organizations are working directly with front-line staff at Veterans Affairs and also with front-line staff in other community organizations to ensure a whole-of-government and a cross-federal-provincial-territorial approach to solving and ending veteran homelessness.

We've been able to sponsor things like VETS Canada. Many of you would be familiar with their work of going out and finding, identifying and helping homeless veterans. We've also done things like helping the Mustard Seed, which the deputy referenced and is helping the Homes For Heroes in Calgary by providing some wraparound services in terms of both mental health support and transitional support. It is helping them to get back on their feet in order for them to be able to, when they transition into some sort of stable housing, get other things arranged as well, whether those are additional benefits from a provincial or federal level or job training and other pieces along the way as well. The well-being fund has been instrumental in being able to do that.

To the deputy's point, community is really key. We talk frequently with Tim Richter. Community-based solutions are often the best ones for homelessness. We're engaged with our partners at the federal level of ESDC who have people in all of these areas. We have point people in all of our offices across the country who are specifically engaged on the issue of veteran homelessness as well and who work closely in those community-type settings.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you.

Briefly, please, sir.

[Gen (Ret'd) Walter Natynczyk]

Can I also highlight that some veterans don't want to be found yet? There's this notion that we're going to get everybody off the street. Some veterans aren't ready. Some veterans don't want to be connected to their families yet. We have to be respectful of that.

I remember the time that we did a foot patrol through the Ottawa Mission, the Shepherds of Good Hope and the Salvation Army. When we walked into the Shepherds of Good Hope, six veterans went out the back door because they didn't want to be found. We have to be very respectful.

A lot of veterans don't want to be in the snow in the winter. They don't want to be in Manitoba—I'm a Winnipegger. They migrate to Vancouver Island and camp out in the bush. We're looking for them, with the Royal Canadian Legion and VETS Canada, so that when they're ready they can come in. But when they come in, how can we quickly put a roof over their heads? Again, there are great places like the multi-faith centre or Cockrell House in Colwood on Vancouver Island to assist those veterans in moving forward.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you so much.

MP Ruff, please.

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

I'll give you an opportunity to answer a few of my first questions.

Specifically, you talked about the challenges with serving personnel, but just to clarify their process, once their file goes in, it's treated no differently from that of any other vet who puts their application in. Also, on the appeal process, so many are getting turned over once they get into the appeal process. What are you doing to fix that? Obviously something is being adjudicated incorrectly, you know, if it goes to the appeal and they're saying that it was judged incorrectly.

To go back to recruiting vets, can you explain at the tail end of this, if you have time, what your process is and how you are currently going out to try to recruit more veterans into the department itself?

[Gen (Ret'd) Walter Natynczyk]

If I can, I'll do that last one first. We have this guy we've hired. Brigadier-General (Retired) Mike Pearson—

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

He's RCR. Trust me, I know him very well.

[Gen (Ret'd) Walter Natynczyk]

He runs our veteran hiring unit. He is the conduit and is working with the Public Service Commission in basically mentoring and informing HR staff across all government departments, but he is also running a team in order to inform veterans how to apply to the public service.

Again, some folks don't want to go to Charlottetown. Some folks may want to stay out in places like Kelowna or wherever in working with all government departments. Maybe they want to work for Parks Canada or Corrections Canada or taxation across the country, facilitated or assisted by the career transition service, so we get the right fit. We also know that when a veteran accepts a civilian job, they'll often accept the first job for security, and it may not be the right fit. The research shows that an underemployed veteran is the same as an unemployed veteran. They will move around, and that's perfect. We're helping them through that staffing.

Going to your other questions, to my knowledge, we are not treating the Canadian Armed Forces files differently.

I wonder if you could talk to that, Michel, but also to our online transfer of medical files and service files, which is accelerating things, and also to VRAB.

[Michel Doiron]

I'll let Rick answer the one on the still serving personnel. We are looking. We need to remember, though, that while the person is still serving, although they are in the same process, they are getting some of the best medical help in the world, and they're getting their treatment. We have been talking with the Canadian Armed Forces about a strategy surrounding those still serving to ensure that for somebody who's not in the Canadian Armed Forces, that is, not receiving any treatment, what we should do with that. There are some conversations going on.

On the appeals, I will admit that I'm a little surprised, because in my discussions with VRAB and our BPA director general.... They're actually counselling probably 50% of the people out because they got the right answer. Often, they don't like the percentage. Now, that is based on what the doctor tells us, so if the doctor says there is a 15% derangement of the knee, we have the table of disabilities that says a 15% derangement of the knee equates to whatever it equates.

When they go in front of VRAB, VRAB has flexibilities that we do not have. I've been there for a bit more than six years. They were overturning a lot of our decisions, so what we started doing six years ago was to look at why they were overturning our decisions. We started bringing that into our decision-making. Where, at that point, our first app approval rate may have been in the.... The percentages varied, but generally speaking, they would have been around 60%. I'm generalizing. We are now, I think, at 79%, if I count absolutely everything, on first app approval. I usually say that it's over 80% because a lot of them are really higher. That is based on looking at what VRAB was rendering as decisions.

There are some that we will never be able to do. Okay, let's put those aside; I can't do anything about that. But on the other ones, why would they accept certain information and we would not? I'd go back to my policy colleagues and ask, “Okay, is this acceptable or not as evidence?” In many cases, it is and then we actually use that.

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

How often do you go back and forth to verify and do that lessons learned process?

[Rick Christopher]

We meet with the board formally quarterly, but there's also a lot of toing and froing when there are some particularly interesting types of cases that are coming forward.

I want to add to Michel's point that you can bring something before the board if you're not satisfied with our assessment of how bad your injury is or if we said no, that we didn't believe it was service-related. There are two things. You may have had an approval in terms of, “Yes, we agree that this is related to your service”, but you don't agree with the assessment.

The other thing that happens at the board is that you can bring verbal testimony. When Michel talked about BPA screening people out, sometimes it's a conversation that the Bureau of Pensions Advocates has with the applicant, with the veteran, who says, “You know what? If you just give the department this diagnosis, that's what they're looking for.” The veteran says that they don't have to go any further than that, that they can just give it to them and they believe that it'll be approved. Some of that screening out is what happens, and it comes back in through us as a reassessment or a reconsideration. I think that BPA did only a couple of thousand last year.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

MP Amos, go ahead, please.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

First off, thanks to all of our witnesses. I have many constituents who work with Veterans Affairs and I want to say to you and also to your colleagues through you, thank you for your service to Canada. We know how hard you work and we know what a challenge it is to speed up processes when you're dealing with challenges of shifting organizational culture.

I want to reference testimony from two years ago by you, Mr. Natynczyk, in which you said there was an organizational culture that needed to shift.

I want to invite you to connect the dots for me a bit. You testified previously that during the Harper mandate, the staff at Veterans Affairs was cut back to 2,300 overall. It is now back to 2,900. It takes time to build that cohort back, but there was also an organizational culture, as I understand it from testimony from the Senate subcommittee two years ago, that didn't necessarily give claimants the benefit of the doubt, and there needed to be a shift towards a presumption of benefits required.

I wonder if there's a connection between that organizational cultural shift that was required and the fact that the complement of Veterans Affairs officials was diminished so much that there wasn't the ability to treat all of the files that were being requested.

[Gen (Ret'd) Walter Natynczyk]

Coming into the department, especially an organization that had lost so many folks, and with a head office away from the national capital in a small community.... For a headquarters to go from 2,000 folks to 1,100 folks was a shock, and it kind of goes to this notion of a perfect storm. Mr. Casey is living right there in the community and he knows what it was like. People were scared to make a decision. As the chief of the defence staff, I was watching this from my side of the Rideau and saying, “Oh my goodness. What's going on?”

Coming into the job, I wanted to make sure that everybody in the department felt empowered to make the right decisions. I had the notion of delegating authority, empowering people to make a decision and then trusting them to do it right. I still remember back in November 2014 visiting our office here in Ottawa and confirming when I visited Halifax and confirming when I visited Ville de Québec the fact that our folks were almost shell-shocked because of this onslaught, this tsunami of mental health injured veterans, and yet at the same time, there seemed to be difficulty in getting the message back to head office that was going through the shock wave.

Having served in a number of operations, I came up with the line, “The further you are from the sound of the guns, the less you understand.” I came up with that one in Baghdad. The same holds true in our department. Our front-line workers who are social workers, occupational therapists and psychologists are meeting with veterans every day, looking them in the eye, looking the family in the eye, and they're trying to find a way to say yes. They are working in the grey zone, and they're seeing the reality, whereas the further you are from the veteran in this case the more things become binary. You're working in policy or you're working in finance. Not to disparage my colleagues, but that's the reality of it.

We had the notion of care, compassion and respect. Our mission was to care. If we have to default in decision-making, it's to compassion, and we will always respect the veterans. The reality is that if folks default to compassion, we will support them. Again, we have to follow legislation and regulation and so on, but it empowers people to make decisions.

We think about where we were in 2014, and we just found out recently that Veterans Affairs Canada is in the Forbes top 100 employers. What was the number? Was it 74? It was in the top 100, and so we've come a long way. We see again that our employees are feeling that additional folks have come on and assisted them.

We are dealing with the backlog. In the town halls that I have done recently and the town halls that the minister has done, we have heard about the backlog and we're pulling out the stops. But in terms of empowering employees to make the right decisions for veterans and to nudge them into well-being, this is tough. Some of these folks don't want to be nudged. We need to nudge them towards purpose. We need to nudge them towards their mental and physical well-being. We need to provide family support around them. That takes a lot of care and compassion.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you.