Veterans Affairs Committee on March 12th, 2020

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

For the last five minutes, we have MP Lalonde.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As the member for Orléans and having a few military and veterans, I want to say thank you for being here. Thank you also to all of the people who serve. It's always an honour for me to meet with you.

A lot of questions were asked, but I wanted to leave a little more of an open floor to you. We are talking about backlog. We're hearing some, I would say, fairly positive stories about the work you are doing. Are there any recommendations or things you would like to share with us—both of you, from both organizations—in terms of how we can help the Government of Canada and Veterans Affairs, particularly on the issues of backlog?

I heard that there was an influx of military being discharged in a very short time and then we have all these new programs. We have a new direction from all of you. I want to leave the floor open actually. Tell us what we can do. What would you recommend?

[Christopher McNeil]

My own disclosure is that I come from a municipal environment. If there's one thing I've learned about the federal bureaucracy, in a problem like this it's like squeezing a stress ball. Even in our own organization we do this—it's like squeezing. You put this pressure on and something pops out where you didn't quite expect it. That's the impact of these positive changes that are being done and with getting more information.

We go out and tell veterans not to wait if they have a bad knee. We tell them to apply now because 10 years from now they don't know where their colleagues are going to be. This is an evidentiary process.

All we can offer is.... We have a very small piece of the pie. We think there's an opportunity for us to help with those departmental reviews if we can convince veterans of two things: We will give them the same result and outcome they can consistently get from Veterans Affairs, and we can do it faster.

If we can take those 4,000 and do something to move those off the pile, I'll leave it to those more deeply involved in it to tell me how to deal with the other 40,000. We think we have a small piece of the pie and we think if we can continue to get better at what we do, we can help with that problem.

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

Thank you.

[MGen A.M.T. Downes]

Thank you for the question. I'm not accustomed to having open-ended types of responses.

I don't know if I have a really smart answer to that, but I would say a couple of things. Firstly, I really thank you all for your interest in the health and well-being of Canadian Forces members and veterans. I would ask that this interest continue. I would not like to see the day that the Government of Canada loses interest in this important group of people.

The second thing I would say is that we're always trying to be better. We're bringing in lots of new things and sometimes I feel there may be pressure to bring in a lot more than we can handle, and I find we're still implementing something when the new thing is coming. So I would ask that people be understanding of that, realize that it takes time to implement new programs and services. I would rather implement something right, get it in place, before we start having the next thing and perhaps don't fully implement the first initiative.

Do you have anything you'd like to add?

[BGen Mark Misener]

Yes. Thanks again for the opportunity.

I guess I would say I think it's ongoing, but it's that continuous collaboration.

When it comes to transition, we have a fairly robust governance structure set up with Veterans Affairs called the joint steering committee. In that, we have the seamless transition task force that has implementation teams below it. These are joint teams where we sit together, work together very closely, whether we're trying to improve something or introduce something, and I think that's key. It's back to what General Downes said: Avoid the unintended consequences. Make sure that, because there are two departments doing different things, when one side is envisioning doing something, the other side is well aware and mitigates those unintended consequences, and vice versa.

I guess the last thing is that close collaboration continuously improves. There's a lot of work going on in Veterans Affairs and with us in the digitization realm. It's trying to be smart, smart in how we bring this to bear; and again it's what General Downes says, getting something right before we move on to the next thing.

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

Do I have a little more time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

I'm sorry, no.

First of all, thank you all very much for being here to help contribute to this study. I certainly learned a great deal about the work that you're doing, and I thank you for this. I'm very excited to hear some of the results.

There was an exchange about sharing a report. Do you have a sense of when that would be available, or is there a reporting time?

[BGen Mark Misener]

I'll get back to you on that when it will be available.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

That's great. Thank you very much.

Thank you to all of my colleagues for making today possible and, of course, always to the folks in the booth and the people behind who make sure that these meetings run smoothly. Otherwise, we'd be in a lot of trouble.

We are adjourned, folks.