Thank you, Chair, ladies and gentlemen.
I feel sincere gratitude to be here. Your study, the accompanying report and the hope for changes will not reverse the tragedies and neglect of the past, but your work can change the future. We as a nation can make up for years of neglect of the most vital, the most critical pillar to veterans' well-being, their families.
I would like to first put on the record that I have gathered evidence regarding the retaliation against our son's carer following articles I authored critiquing Pension for Life. This evidence provides a much-needed insight into the culture of senior managers and their hindering of frontline workers' ability to be compassionate. The evidence is not political but cultural. Unacceptable behaviour by senior bureaucrats has endured through various governments.
Senior officials will likely petition you not to invite me back. That very reason should justify why I humbly request that you would. I recommend that Alan Hunter, my advocate, as well as Tina Fitzpatrick join me to speak to these cultural issues.
Veterans and families are treated as both separate and unequal entities for policy purposes in spite of clear, guiding statements to the contrary. Families are relegated not to the backseat but often to running behind the last car of a meandering train of dizzyingly complex policies for veterans, with an opaque bureaucracy as conductor.
Our families and veterans cannot be separated or diminished in this manner. The veteran is embedded, integral and vital to the family, just as each and every other family member is critical to the family and its well-being. A bridge cannot function if even one support is damaged. The family will only function when everyone is healthy.
Research has told us this for decades. Quite simply, chronic illness not only causes emotional distress in the entire family but impairs the family's ability to support the patient. Families with one member suffering mental health issues suffer the greatest. The negative impacts on the psychological health of the family members are sometimes greater than the direct psychological impacts on the patient.
Canada has more than 35,000 veterans and RCMP members suffering a psychiatric disability resulting from their service, 25,000 with a PTSD diagnosis. Each household member should be given access to VAC-funded mental health care in their own right and of their own accord. How many tragedies could be avoided? It is cruel for families, and veterans for that matter, to be put on a waiting list for a case manager— suffering while a rehabilitation plan is developed in the hope that they might receive mental health care.
Families also need a unique VAC identification to access services of their own accord. The most disabled veterans already have their earning potential paralyzed at a lower rate than when they served. The inability of spouses to pursue their career to the fullest while they care for veterans and children further impacts their earning potential.
Why then are only 1,200 spouses receiving the caregiver recognition benefit when there are approximately 9,000 spouses caring for veterans who are permanently incapacitated and 14,000 spouses caring for veterans with mental illness? Parsimonious programs that discriminate against families have been perennial. Why are non-family members entitled to compensation for escorting a veteran to medical appointments, but families are not?
The lack of support for families of veterans with psychological injuries could explain why only 56% of veterans with a mental disability are married or living common law, as opposed to 71% of Canadians. Veterans Affairs Canada restricts access to programs for the most vulnerable members of the family, our children. Sixteen months after spontaneously cancelling dependent care for our six-year-old son, VAC fabricated new criteria to justify cancelling that care. The program will only pay for basic needs, refusing to recognize the special needs of children. In a glaring omission, the purpose clause of the Veterans Well-being Act has no stated obligation to children or dependants while the veteran is alive.
The wording of the dependant care policy for veterans on medical rehabilitation is generous and compassionate. Decisions need to be broad, flexible and holistic, addressing the unique needs and circumstances of the veteran. One would assume that having a dependant with special needs would be a unique circumstance. However, when veterans' illnesses create the inevitable emotional and psychological burdens upon children, VAC has circled the wagons against these children. VAC will not support any care between the hours of 8:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. on school days even when the public system cannot—as if a child's suffering somehow follows a schedule.
Internal emails show a callous insensitivity: “...how realistic would it be for Rehab to swoop in with care when a child when a child is unexpectedly sick? Not Likely—it would need to be predictable....” “Part of the intent here is to avoid fostering dependency on a short-term program.” Perhaps it escaped the observations of policy-makers isolated in Charlottetown away from the daily struggles of veterans and their families. Dependants are dependent.
No attempt to save the Crown money can force a three-year-old to grow up, the missing parts of a brain injury to grow back or PTSD to spontaneously heal, but there is a bigger perceptual barrier deeply infecting VAC. They interpret programs in a manner that sees disabled veterans—and especially their families—as being liabilities, annoyingly dependent on VAC.
Children are haphazardly added to incidental expenses along with mileage and parking. Perhaps this explains why no veterans were granted dependant care for the families in the first four years of the program, or why, of almost 20,000 veterans on medical rehabilitation, only 106 were able to receive dependant care from 2014 to 2019, for a total cost of less than one year's salary of a cabinet or deputy minister.
I have provided you with a list of recommendations in consideration of your report.
I sincerely thank you for all your time, energy and caring for families.