Veterans Affairs Committee on Feb. 27th, 2020

[Gen (Ret'd) Walter Natynczyk]

It's the department's number one challenge. I've met with the Minister of Veterans Affairs and department officials many times, and every time, the backlog is the priority.

I want to reiterate how much I appreciate Mr. Doiron's and Mr. Christopher's hard work. When a claim involves an injury, everything goes smoothly. When the injury occurs in the theatre of operations, there are no issues. All the documentation is fine.

We have cases where a decision is issued within a month. My driver injured his knee in Bosnia, and he got a decision within a month. That's great, but it's a specific case. We want the system to work like that for all our veterans.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you for the brief question. We haven't had very many of those today.

MP Blaney, please.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

I want to confirm from my last question that you will undertake to get the committee some information specifically on the complexity of women's cases.

The backlog is the biggest issue for us as well, and to veterans more importantly than any of us. I appreciate that everyone in this room really cares about the people who serve this country and their families. We continue to want to work together to see that support provided.

The veterans ombudsman did suggest a checklist for all documents so when they are sent in there is a checklist you can review and if anything's missing, it's automatically given back.

Has that step been taken? If it was taken, how quickly did it support the change of the backlog?

[Rick Christopher]

There is a checklist, but it's more for the applicant at this point. We took to heart what the ombudsman said. I discussed it with the service excellence advisory group yesterday. It's about looking at those applications right away. That's the trouble. We have such an influx, such a volume of applications that by the time we get to review them and make sure that everything is available, sometimes we're well into the time period.

We haven't done it yet, but we're going to dedicate some clerical staff to go through the checklist, similar to what the Royal Canadian Legion does, make sure and then, in a very compassionate way, reach out to those individuals and say we can't proceed with their application until we have additional information or that they forgot to sign it.

A lot of our resources are used chasing people down. As Michel mentioned earlier, they're on vacation, or they're not answering their phone for whatever reason and we can't get that information. I would much rather be able to send the applications back to them, send them a letter, or communicate with them electronically if that's how they've chosen to be contacted, and then say the clock is not ticking until we have that information from them.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

That brings us to the end of our first meeting for this study.

I can't thank you enough. This has been very educational, very informative. There were a lot of good questions and a lot of very good answers to help us in our work.

I hope all of you have safe travels getting back to where you came from. It may be a little harder than it was coming here.

I have a housekeeping note for my colleagues. We had a lot of time today. We did not have two panels. I was very generous with the clock. When we have two panels and we have to tighten things up, I will be slightly less generous. I will try to be polite. Try to keep the preambles short so we can hear as much from the witnesses as possible.

As always, thank you to the folks on my left and right, and those behind me.

The meeting is adjourned.