Thank you for the opportunity to appear before the committee today. We're here this morning as representatives of the Union of Veterans' Affairs Employees, which is a component of the Public Service Alliance of Canada.
UVAE represents over 2,800 employees with Veterans Affairs Canada, including most of the front-life staff who deal with veterans and their families every day. We are here today to talk to you particularly about the work and challenges of case managers within Veterans Affairs Canada pertaining to their caseloads and the backlog of disability claims.
Veterans Affairs programs and services, like the needs of our veterans, are vast, complex and always evolving. Our case managers are one group of front-line staff who are subject matter experts in VAC services and benefits. They must understand applicable legislation and the various regulations, policies and acts that are used to determine eligibility for those services and benefits. They must know how to deal with mental health issues, crisis intervention, frustrated and sometimes angry clients and suicide prevention, and they must understand and use motivational interviewing techniques.
As you have heard from departmental officials and others, one of the major problems is that the backlogs and wait times for services continue to grow, and veterans are waiting longer for services. This is causing financial, physical, mental and emotional pain and hardships for veterans and their families. It is also having a direct impact on those on the front lines who are attempting to serve them. We wish we could tell you that this is a new development, but the backlog and increased caseloads for case managers at Veterans Affairs have been growing for years.
In 2015-16, the Minister of Veterans Affairs made a commitment to reduce case manager ratios to 25:1 in order to allow more time and focus on the needs of veterans and their families. This was also supported in a 2016 brief to the House of Commons by the veterans ombudsman.
Despite this promise and several attempts by the federal government since that time, VAC has failed to meet that target. By any metric, they have failed miserably, as you will see from the information we are about to provide.
This committee has already heard about the impact this has had on veterans and their families. This includes increased wait times and reduced services, fewer home visits, and fewer frequent physical and mental health interventions unique to the veteran population. This morning we will also tell you about the impact this is having on the front-line staff who work with veterans and their families every day.
When we learned that your committee was studying this issue, we started to gather information from case managers from across the country. In the last two weeks, we interviewed case managers from the regions about their caseloads, their working conditions and the impact this was having on their work and the veterans they serve.
My colleague Mike, who completed the interviews, is going to take over now and provide you with what he learned from those interviews.