Evidence of meeting #14 for Veterans Affairs in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was help.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:25 p.m.
Director of Community Education, Caregivers' Brigade
I will turn to my colleague.
Marie, I think this is a good area for you to touch on.
5:25 p.m.
Director for Veteran Families, Caregivers' Brigade
The kids know that daddy went to war and they know that he ran after bad guys, because we're in a superhero world here. They have had to become accustomed to the fact that daddy cannot be scared, that they cannot jump on daddy and that they cannot scream when daddy is around. The children have been accustomed to that. It's how they were brought up, but it's very difficult for them sometimes.
5:30 p.m.
Conservative
Cathay Wagantall Conservative Yorkton—Melville, SK
Paula, your work is around serving families. The term “serving families” means the veteran and the entire family. In terms of the impacts of DND policies, transition services and that type of thing, what kind of impact do you have there?
Are you involved with DND? Is this something where they come to you and ask questions about what works and what doesn't work? Are you part of the advisory council?
5:30 p.m.
Director for Serving Families, Caregivers' Brigade
I actually sit on a feedback team for military families that I meet with once a week. We discuss different things that affect military families.
Outside of that, within the Caregivers' Brigade, it's more about addressing, or at least bringing to military leadership, ideas about improving services and how to help members who are going to be releasing and get them connected with VAC services before they're released, so that they don't have that experience of a gap in their treatments. If they're injured in service, they're receiving every kind of treatment known to man while they're serving, but when they release, they are not guaranteed to get those treatments and medications covered until they're covered with VAC.
5:30 p.m.
Conservative
Cathay Wagantall Conservative Yorkton—Melville, SK
That's been on ongoing issue.
They call it a seamless transition that we're working towards, but this has been over a decade of not being able to transition from one to the next.
I see the chair is interrupting me.
5:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bryan May
I do apologize. I know we had talked earlier about extending the meeting.
I want to first apologize to Mr. Desilets. In the last 10 minutes, I've had more than a few of us on this call indicate to me that they cannot go beyond 5:30, so I'm going to have to stick to that.
Mr. Desilets, I recognize that you may have wanted to move your motions today. As an olive branch to you, what I would like to suggest to my colleagues is that we start Wednesday's meeting in public to give Mr. Desilets, or anybody for that matter, the opportunity to move their respective motions before we go in camera to do the report writing, which we are scheduled to do.
I apologize, but we have quite a few on this call right now who have to leave to go to other committee meetings. If it was just one person, we'd continue moving forward, but that, unfortunately, is not the case.
Mr. Desilets, are you okay with that?
5:30 p.m.
Bloc
Luc Desilets Bloc Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC
We will live with it, Mr. Chair.
You tried, it is very kind. Thank you.
5:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bryan May
Thank you. I appreciate that.
To the witnesses, I absolutely applaud your patience. We started a little late today, but I appreciate all of the contributions you've made here today. This is a very important topic, and your testimony will be very valuable for us moving forward. Thank you to all of you.
Thank you to my colleagues and to all of the folks back in Ottawa who are making it possible for all of us to be heard and seen.
Thank you very much. The meeting is adjourned.