Veterans Affairs Committee on March 12th, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

MP Casey, please, for six minutes.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Thanks to the witnesses for being here.

To the union folks, I guess I have the privileged position of personally knowing and representing many of your members, so thank you for coming here and advocating on their behalf. Thanks for the work that you do. I have nothing but the highest regard for the folks you represent and whom I also have the privilege of representing.

I'm going to ask my first question to the Legion and then come to you.

Mr. McInnis, in your opening statement, you referred to a quiet policy change that was made in 2018 around new and partial entitlement. I'd like to hear more about that. Based on what I think I understood from your testimony, this is something that would have been favourably received by veterans. Am I right?

[Raymond McInnis]

That's correct.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

It was favourably received because those who had a smaller entitlement now have had an opportunity to have that revised upwards.

[Raymond McInnis]

I'll give you an example. I have many veterans across the country who took benefit of the Nelson policy change in 2007 on hearing loss. Previous to that, they didn't have any entitlements for hearing loss. What that change did was provide them with one-fifth to up to four-fifths of entitlement. Many got in under the one-fifth. After February 2018, we could move them to full entitlement. In many cases across the country, I have doubled and in some cases tripled their pensions. For people in their 70s, that's a huge amount of money.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

This positive policy change would result in an increased number of applications that would contribute to the backlog. Would I be right there?

[Raymond McInnis]

Absolutely.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Thank you.

Ms. Vaillancourt, the bulk of your presentation focused on case managers—and fair enough. I understand that the ratio grew to the point where, in 2015-16, it became necessary to make a commitment to change that. I hear you saying that that commitment hasn't been fulfilled, but the fact is the problem grew in 2015-16 to the point where it was necessary.

If we focus on the backlog, it is in the adjudication and determination of the entitlement of the veteran. Once that adjudication is determined, then it goes to the case manager to guide the veteran along. My question for you is this. I appreciate your focus on the case managers and I appreciate that there's a problem there, but what about the disability adjudicators? What about the people who have the pile of paper that's sitting there longer than 16 weeks? Can you give me some sense of what challenges they're facing? What are the staffing levels there, and what has been the change there? My sense—and please correct me if I'm wrong—is that the bottleneck is there; it's not the case managers.

[Virginia Vaillancourt]

Absolutely, a majority of the backlog is with the adjudicators who are trying to get veterans into the department and onto benefits. There is not enough staff in the adjudicating section. A lot of times staff in the department will do overtime and the employees who are already overworked have to stay away from their families even longer to try to push these claims through. They also need more staff. It's something we've been hitting the department with for a long time, saying that we need more front-line staff, and all over the place. Their morale is also low in the adjudication section because they're working with so many files, but there's not enough of them to push them through. They're feeling that they can't provide that service to veterans, and they go home disappointed that they weren't able to get to those other five claims on their desk.

If you look at the department's overtime budgets and the overtime spent, especially in and around adjudication, you see that it's a substantial amount, especially in and around the Christmas season, because they're trying to get those numbers down before the new year hits.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

What would be your advice on getting a more appropriate complement of disability adjudicators? We received your advice with respect to case managers, but what would be your advice with respect to disability adjudicators?

[Virginia Vaillancourt]

That's a good question. Plain and simple, they need more staff on the ground. Unfortunately, a lot of the adjudicators are based in Charlottetown. There is nothing wrong with Charlottetown, but the pool of employment is limiting there. I think that some of those adjudication positions could be moved to Ottawa or other locations across the country that have a larger pool of employable people to be able to bring more staff in.

Bilingualism is a huge issue. Trying to get enough bilingual employees in Charlottetown to be able to adjudicate French files is a huge concern. If we're able to pull those adjudicating positions into other regions, we might be able to assist in getting some of those French files passed through more quickly than what we're doing presently.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

I would be most interested in seeing any statistical backup you have for that position, given where I sit. The unemployment rate in Charlottetown and the level of bilingualism is certainly something that, in my experience, doesn't match up with what you've just put forward.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

I'm sorry, sir, I have to cut you off there.

We move over to MP Desilets for six minutes, please.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Thank you.

My first question is for you, Ms. Vaillancourt. You've been in your position for a little over a year. Do you see a small improvement in certain sectors?

[Virginia Vaillancourt]

Sorry, I just missed that last part.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

You've been in your position for a year. Have you seen an improvement in any sectors?

I understand the backlog of cases, which bothers us all. However, can you talk a bit about the sectors where things are moving forward and improving?

[Virginia Vaillancourt]

Based on our membership across the country, we haven't seen a large improvement in many sectors. The morale is still a huge issue, and the work-life balance is still a major concern, so no.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

You spoke earlier of cases that may be two years behind schedule. Can you provide a specific example?

[Virginia Vaillancourt]

Within the adjudication sections specifically, there's hearing loss, PTSD, musculoskeletal.... There's a range of files sitting there waiting that, in our opinion, could be moved much more quickly.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

I believe that, in the past, there was a larger backlog of cases for francophones in Quebec. Is that still true?

[Virginia Vaillancourt]

There is still a backlog for the treatment aspect, absolutely, across the department, and I know that in Quebec—I forget the specific year—there were additional staff put in to try to deal specifically with the situation within the Quebec area.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

There's a labour shortage in all sectors in Canada. In your opinion, does this explain the lack of employees in the department? Is the labour shortage in your sector worse than the shortage across Canada? I don't know whether I'm making myself understood.

[Mike Martin]

Specialized tasks are more difficult to recruit for; they demand more. The level of confidence that you want for a pension disability advocate, a reviewer, would be higher. Those particular categories would be in wide demand in society and therefore harder to recruit.

The challenge is also that the department has a revolving door of recruitment now. That's one of the issues that's going on, in that you hire people, you bring them in, you train them and then they see the workload, and they don't want to stay. Almost every case manager we talked to talked about the fact that we need to fix that piece. If we don't fix that piece, then you have a continual problem that you can never really resolve.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Mr. McInnis, first, I want to thank you for your long military service. Your presence is always appreciated.

I have a quick question for you. Can you provide some concrete examples of the processes that must be simplified?

[Raymond McInnis]

I didn't get the whole part, but I believe you talked about how to be simplified.