Veterans Affairs Committee on April 14th, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 19 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs. Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format pursuant to the House order of January 25, 2021. The proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on March 24, 2021, the committee is undertaking a study of mental health care programs at Veterans Affairs Canada.

Welcome to all the witnesses who have taken the time to join us today. I will introduce all of you before you have the opportunity to give opening remarks.

Today we have Captain Sean Bruyea, retired, who is a columnist and advocate. As an individual, we have Tina Fitzpatrick. From the Army, Navy and Air Force Veterans in Canada and the Veterans Association Food Bank, we have Allan Hunter, national service officer at ANAVETS and director of the food bank.

Each witness will have five minutes for opening remarks, and after that we will proceed with rounds of questions. I will signal when there is one minute left in your time, so please keep an eye on me on your screen. Don't panic. A minute is quite a long time, and I may allow you to go slightly over. When you see the one-minute signal, try to wrap up.

First up is Mr. Bruyea.

You have five minutes.

[Sean Bruyea, Captain (Retired), Columnist and Advocate, As an Individual]

Good afternoon, Chair and ladies and gentlemen. I sincerely thank you for inviting me back.

It is well documented that Minister Seamus O'Regan spread falsehoods about me in retaliation for my writing about the government's flagship election promise for veterans, the pension for life. The day after the minister published his defamatory words, VAC, without warning, consultation, client notes or justification, sent a letter cancelling care for our six-year-old son.

The toll upon my body and mind from my military injuries meant that having my family was nearly impossible. I was 47 when we were blessed with our son. Living with a chronically ill father, he is profoundly sensitive to my physical and mental health. He isn't just worried about his father—he is terrified. Each symptom is an inevitable path to my death. He agonizes that I will be ordered to war again soon.

There was no public program to adequately address his safety and health needs. We plan on home-schooling him once I complete my rehabilitation. Meanwhile, we found a caring school that accommodates his empathic burdens. Also, I was allowed to be with him in his classroom, walk him through the hallways and carry out a morning ritual of anywhere from 10 to 30 hugs until he felt safe leaving his father.

When my heart went into a dangerous arrhythmia and I collapsed, my normally clear-thinking wife became paralyzed. My endless barrage of symptoms is too much for her. It was my son who saved me. He found my medicine and brought it to me. He tried to open the childproof container. He kept his cool and handed it to me. He sat by me, eyes watering. The contents spilled out. He looked at my chest, covered in pills, heaving up and down at 240 beats per minute. After I had taken my medication, he spoke in a shaky voice and said, “Dada, can I please clean up the pills for you?”

When Veterans Affairs cancelled our son's care, which had been in place for five years, I sought help from assistant deputy minister Bernard Butler. He was appointed as my VAC contact following the 2010 privacy scandal. I am my case manager's only client, and she dealt directly with him. Mr. Butler went to director general Faith McIntyre, whose division spearheaded the pension for life program. Without substantiation, both Bernard Butler and Faith McIntyre decided that my son's care did not meet the intent of the program. Bernard Butler never revealed to me that he was also representing VAC in my defamation lawsuit against Seamus O'Regan.

I proposed solutions to reinstate our son's care. Even though my case manager and others agreed to appoint an inquiries resolution officer, Bernard Butler and, later, assistant deputy minister Michel Doiron both intervened to stop the appointment.

I regularly asked deputy minister Walter Natynczyk, as well as Mr. Doiron and Mr. Butler, to provide evidence that school-aged children should be denied private care not provided by the public system. They ignored my questions. Instead, they repeatedly sent me to my case manager, deflecting VAC's failures and portraying them as pathological manifestations of my mental health.

My health deteriorated. Allan Hunter offered to be my advocate. Allan, Perry Gray and I wrote more than 50 emails and letters to Bernard Butler, Michel Doiron, Steven Harris and Walter Natynczyk. We proposed solutions, reported my deteriorating condition and asked for evidence supporting VAC's inexplicable interpretation of policy. Meanwhile, I was forced into emergency wards once per month. My five to eight weekly medical appointments focused on addressing VAC's harm.

Not once did these senior officials answer any questions. Neither did they or my case manager acknowledge my health spiralling downwards, let alone express concern. The minister and the department also ignored an ombudsman's investigation and recommendations in terms of our son's care.

To date, it has cost VAC more than $75,000 to treat the consequences of denying less than $75 a day for our son's care. The provincial health care system has paid a similar bill.

Why would VAC seek retaliation? The culture is embedded with an animus towards any veteran who dares criticize the department. When the minister published his article, VAC official Tim Brown wrote, “a minister who will counter and go on the offensive, I've been waiting for this for years”.

Meanwhile, in response to the more than 50 emails and letters requiring decisions to be made by Walter Natynczyk, Bernard Butler, Michel Doiron and Steven Harris, access to information disclosures reveal there was no document trail. These individuals snub their noses at Canada's requirement to have an accountable government with transparent decisions. They carry out their work in the murky and highly unethical world of recordless or verbal government.

There are others who see nothing wrong with intruding upon my privacy. Christian Lachance, an official in no way connected with VAC's appeals division, was notified before me of the appeal outcome. He immediately informed director general of field operations Maryse Savoie as well as Graham Williams, writing that the appeal decision would be unfavourable, and as a result of the decision, “this may escalate”. Maryse Savoie responded quickly that she would inform Michel Doiron's office. The Privacy Commissioner has an open investigation into this matter.

VAC has a long history of enmity towards me. The 2010 privacy scandal demonstrated that 20,000 pages about me, including falsified portrayals of my finances, character and mental health, circulated among more than 850 bureaucrats.

However, a subsequent request of 230 bureaucrats, who monitored my media activities, took seven years to resolve. The result was 2.1 million pages.

I'm also a veteran who struggles on a daily basis with psychological and physical adversity resulting from my military service. I'm a husband to a wonderful woman who gave up much in her country of origin to be with me. Our son's keen awareness to the suffering of others weighs heavily on him.

When will public servants see the difference between my personal life and my volunteer work? When will they debate facts rather than obsess, scrutinize and attack me? When will they stop hiding behind secretive government practices, showing scorn for oversight agencies, while targeting a six-year-old child? We must wonder whether retaliation against other veterans and their families is standard procedure—or are we the unfortunate ones?

What is clear is that VAC senior managers show the hallmarks of cultivating a toxic culture. While they have little concern for frontline workers, they show disdain for veterans. Senior VAC officials hide behind inflexible rules with groundless interpretations divorced from the lives of veterans and their families. They prioritize evasive communication, fear, condescension, neglect, secrecy, bullying, gaslighting and shaming.

Should veterans question the culture and its policies, these toxic tools are coordinated in a comprehensive attack upon the messenger, and sometimes the messenger's children. These are not the government actions worthy of the hundreds of thousands of sacrifices made in Canada's name.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much, sir.

Up next we have Ms. Fitzpatrick for five minutes.

[Tina Fitzpatrick, As an Individual]

Hi, my name is Tina Fitzpatrick. My husband is Rod, and he's an 18-year combat veteran with two tours overseas. We've been together for 30 years, and we'll be married for 25 years in July.

Rod was always a very hands-on daddy to our girls. We have two wonderful daughters, 23 and 19. Our 23-year-old daughter was a competitive swimmer all over Newfoundland for seven years, and our 19-year-old daughter is a second-degree black belt in tae kwon do and has competed at the national level. However, their dad has never seen them compete. He was suicidal in our basement for the majority of their very young lives.

In 1992, Rod deployed to Croatia, where I believe he was exposed to the worst trauma. At the time, I did not know my husband would return a different man. Flash forward to 2002, and now my husband's mental state is slowly degrading to the point where he's having suicidal thoughts daily. Canadian Forces were no help in his ongoing mental health crisis. Their answer was to go to a civilian hospital. Canadian Forces sent my husband home with nothing, not even his own personal things from the locker on base. In his words, “Such service no longer requires”.

After a year of being home with zero guidance, they medically discharged him. Then we returned to Newfoundland so we could be close to family. The next 17 years would be an absolute battle with Veterans Affairs, starting with the complete lack of professional help through psychologists and psychiatrists. We had no idea about mental illness on a personal or cultural level. Medical intervention was critical at this point, as his downward spiral continued in front of my eyes.

Here's just a glimpse into my daily battle for 10 years. I call Veterans Affairs almost daily, always speaking to someone different, each time having to start my story from scratch. These calls were for prescriptions, doctors' visits, assessment after assessment and being summoned to Veterans Affairs to sit around a large table full of doctors in white coats asking the most absurd questions. Each of these appointments ended, and this was extremely tough on Rod.... Each time the psychologist said he needed in-hospital treatment, this would result in a several-month-long approval process, and he was hospitalized three times for up to six months at a time, always out-of-province, away from our family.

In trying to navigate programs and benefits, first of all, you had to figure out yourself what was available and what he qualified for. It was like pulling teeth, There was no access to what was available, and we had to rely on rumour mills to figure out any programs that could help. This reality was extremely frustrating to deal with, everything was a fight. “No” was the final answer, even though I was crying and pleading for help while my husband was suicidal in our basement and our two little ones were running around my feet. I'm begging and pleading with them to help, but no, they don't.

Now, it's July 2018. I made a call to Veterans Affairs to see if there were any bursaries available, as our daughter was heading to nationals. The girl who answered the phone asked me why Rod had not applied for his ELB—earnings loss benefit—and I told her he did not qualify because Rod had already done rehab. Then she informed me that was not how it works, so she helped me apply. I really didn't think much about it, but about six weeks later, I get a letter saying that Rod did qualify and it was an extra $1,000 a month. What? This benefit came out in 2006. We could have used that money in 2006.

Next, I'm on Signal Hill, it's September 2018 and it's an event where the then minister of veterans affairs, Seamus O'Regan, and the head of Veterans Affairs danced across the stage stating that retroactivity was back on the table. This is a “yes” Veterans Affairs. Then I met with Seamus O'Regan in his office, where I proceeded to tell him about my treatment by Veterans Affairs, and he said someone would be on Rod's file right away.

That was in 2018, I just heard back from his office February 2021 after hundreds of phone calls. They informed me the ELB is not retroactive, but they wanted to try to get some kind of compensation. In April 2021, they are now saying that it's a he said, she said, so my best option is to sue the government, the very government Rod served and protected.

The bureaucracy that has been put in place by the empire builders within the Canadian government has created an atmosphere where Veterans Affairs might as well speak a foreign language. The ability to navigate the multiple levels within the bureaucracy has made it almost impossible to avail of services and benefits.

All of these battles to get my husband, who was medically released, from 30% of his pension to 100% of his pension took six years. In my humble opinion, the very institution put in place to take care of our veterans is eating them alive.

Thank you for your time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

Up next we have Mr. Hunter for five minutes, please.

[Allan Hunter, National Service Officer, Army, Navy and Air Force Veterans in Canada, and Director, Veterans Association Food Bank]

Good afternoon to all the participants and all Canadians who will be able to watch these proceedings across our nation.

Welcome to my brothers and sisters who have decided to dial in as best they can across this country—because this is about you. You have served our nation.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

We remember Andrew, Corporal Cathy; Carr, Sergeant Brian; Chan, Kenneth; Desmond, Lionel; Gunn, Robbie; Hutchison, Kenneth; Mogus, Mike; Oliver, Jason; Ouellet, Jérémie; Tabor, Richard. These 10 Canadians have fallen, not in distant battles in faraway lands, save one, but here at home with family, friends and loved ones, who perhaps could not have seen the invisible wounds, or if they did, were not equipped with the mental health first aid skill sets to deal with the most tragic of outcomes—suicide.

As a service officer, I am dealing with our veterans and families on a regular basis, and as a director of the Veterans Association Food Bank in the Calgary region, I'm dealing with yet another mental health issue that results in our veterans losing families and friends as they spiral into homelessness. Perhaps the feelings of hopelessness have led to substance abuse and attempts in vain to shut off the video and audio images of war, combat, conflict and the loss of battle buddies, brothers and sisters who have paid the ultimate price for their service to our nation.

My mission today is to speak to the actions, abilities, programs and services, and perhaps shortcomings of Veterans Affairs and the Canadian Armed Forces, and to help offer constructive suggestions to save the lives of our veterans and families. Being an advocate for one of the participants today, Captain Sean Bruyea, retired, I would also like to share some of the journeys I've been part of with him and his family, and the mental health challenges and battles they've had to endure from a system that is supposed to be compassionate, caring and servant-hearted. In many cases, it becomes the biggest detriment to the mental and physical well-being of our veterans.

Lionel Desmond was the tragic consequence of a magnitude of failures on many fronts, as evidenced in the Desmond inquiry. Jérémie Ouellet took his own life in Afghanistan. I'm currently working with a battle buddy of his who has been severely impacted by his death.

Jason Oliver was perhaps the one who most personally impacted me in my more than 10 years of advocacy, as I attended the funeral and watched six of his seven children carry his casket out to the waiting hearse as his widow held the hand of the youngest with unrelenting sobs and tears.... My apologies, Mr. Chairman. That, in January of this year, stopped me in my tracks. I can tell you I was an emotional wreckage for quite some time. We are, with the veterans association in Calgary, supporting the widow and her kids as they try to move on without a husband, father and hero.

It is my duty to share and answer any questions as the committee deems pertinent to the hearings.

In a recent development from today, women veterans who have served our nation from coast to coast have reached out to me regarding the recent decision to shut down the committee on sexual assault. These women believed that #MeToo had finally come to Canada, but now they've seen, by the actions of the government, that the #MeToo movement is dead. I'm absolutely flabbergasted by the outreach I've had across the country from women. I've been told that 99% of women who serve in the military have faced some form of sexual harassment, and this piece is going to set us back substantially in treating mental health.

I challenge all of us. Put your parties aside, and let's look after the people, the men and women, who've put their lives on the line. Let's quit losing them to suicide.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you, Mr. Hunter. No apologies are necessary.

Up first for questions is MP Brassard for six minutes.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for coming forward today.

There is no way over the course of the hour and 10 minutes or more that we're going to be able to get through all the questions that any member of this committee might have, so I encourage all of you to submit to the committee any afterthoughts you may have in improving the system. That's really why we're here.

Sean, you provided us with testimony as we were discussing the caregiver benefit. You talked about some of the many challenges that exist in dealing with veterans. At that time you also offered to provide solutions. That's why the committee invited you back. I know what you've gone through is well documented in your CBC article that highlighted that. It was written by Murray Brewster, so I don't want to focus on that. I want to focus on how the situation can be fixed.

As a member of this committee I can tell you we're all interested in resolving this issue. I've often started any discussions I've had with veterans, their families, advocates like you, Sean, suggesting that this has existed as a generational problem. It was a problem for the Conservative government when we were in power as well, and I'll acknowledge that. It's not just the current Liberal government. The whole intent of what we're trying to do is to fix this.

Sean, Tina and Allan as well, give us some suggestions on what you think is a solution to resolving many of the issues you've highlighted.

[Sean Bruyea]

Thank you very much, Mr. Brassard.

To that end, I submitted a 40-page report with 53 very substantive recommendations. Why? We've been looking at this problem.... For me as an advocate, not much has changed in 20 years in the way the department deals with veterans with psychological injuries. Yes, they've advanced vocational rehabilitation. Yes, they've helped veterans with minor injuries and minor disabilities, but they still cannot bend their heads around the lifelong commitment of care that is necessary for veterans with psychological disabilities who inherently have complex needs.

A perfect example of that is what's called the POC 12 mental health care policy. It says all veterans with complex needs, with mental health problems, will receive case management. Only a quarter of veterans with mental health disabilities are actually receiving case management.

It goes beyond that. Veterans Affairs starts with a paradigm. The veteran comes to them and the veteran's asking, “How can we as a family deal with this?” Veterans Affairs' answer to that is “How can we as a department deal with this?” That is a fundamental paradigm distance that is miles wide that Veterans Affairs doesn't know how to meet. We have to start from the top down and the bottom up, and we have to have a fundamental rethink about how this department works.

Right now the department is structured so that the organizational tools of the department are co-opted by selfish career progressions of the most senior managers. They may be well meaning, but they are 20 degrees removed from the actual reality of what veterans and their families live. We really need to completely rethink this department.

First of all, it has to be taken out of Charlottetown. It's the only federal department that exists outside of Ottawa. It is far from oversight agencies, far from the culture of veterans and their families, and it's been allowed to have a 40-year culture of basically disconnecting itself from not just veterans and their families but Canadians in general. This department is hypersensitive to criticism.

We have to start. I would suggest some number one things that can be done. We have to have an oversight agency that can check in on the department, an ombudsman who is legislated, who has the power to decide their own agenda of investigation.

On top of that, we have to have appointment bodies of advisory groups that are completely independent, not stacked with Veterans Affairs bureaucrats. The board of directors could report to committee, to Parliament, and that board of directors would be a wide swath of Canadians who would independently review the actions of senior leadership.

At the level of working with veterans, we need a collaborative care management program that has independent practitioners, so that every veteran who has a mental health injury is assigned an independent, contracted primary care doctor. The team would consist of a doctor, independent case manager and an occupational therapist.

Veterans Affairs would exist to merely implement all the care and treatment that is recommended by this team. Veterans Affairs would not exist to scrutinize these requests, but would exist to train the senior bureaucrats to learn what veterans need.

To that end, senior bureaucrats should be manning the front lines at least one week a year. They did this with Service Canada back in 2000, and it worked amazingly. Unfortunately the rest of the bureaucracy didn't like the idea of directly serving Canadians as senior bureaucrats at the front line, but we can reinstate that with Veterans Affairs.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Sean, the chair put up the one-minute hand about 30 seconds ago.

[Sean Bruyea]

I'm sorry, John.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

That's okay. No worries. I really want to hear what you have to say.

There are some very good people who work for Veterans Affairs Canada as well. I hear your side of it, but I also hear of some good case work that's being done as well.

[Sean Bruyea]

Let me emphasize that the culture at VAC has nothing to do with the people themselves. The people are all well intentioned. They're all working very hard, but they're working hard on the wrong paradigm.

At Veterans Affairs, we have a frontline staff that is completely ignored by the senior leadership. Continuous improvements or what they call improvements, policy changes, are inundating the frontline workers. They don't have the time. We know that. More than 50% of the case managers' time is taken up. They want to care for veterans, but they don't have the tools. The senior leadership is not supporting the front line in providing that care.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you, sir.

Next we have MP Samson for six minutes.

Go ahead, please.

[Darrell Samson, Liberal, Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, NS]

Thank you very much, Chair.

I want to thank all three of you for your presentations. It's very difficult to listen to some particulars, and I thank you for helping us to better understand some of the situations that you have faced and that others have faced. I very much appreciate the focus, as Mr. Brassard said, on finding solutions that can help us improve the lives of and the support for veterans and their families.

I'd like to look at some of the programs that exist today and get some feedback from you on those programs to see how we can improve those more.

I will start off with the VAC assistance program, which is a 24-hour line that allows you to connect with professionals and gives you access to these professionals. My question is for any one of the three of you. When you call these people, what kinds of questions are being asked? Are they asking you questions? Are they asking you what some of the challenges are before they assess you?

Also, are you talking to the same individuals every time you call? Can you tell us a little bit about your experience with that system?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Who is the question to?

[Darrell Samson, Liberal, Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, NS]

It was to any of the three. If they use that service, can they give us feedback on the service?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Mr. Hunter had his hand up there.

[Allan Hunter]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Part of the challenge for the people who answer the phones and get the questions is having a lack of understanding of who's on the other end. Typically the advocates end up making those calls and answering some of those questions.

One of the biggest challenges facing veterans across the country that I have seen is that, if the veteran is in crisis and is having mental and physical impairment difficulties, and they are trying to navigate the myriad questions and check boxes, if you will, that have to be filled out in order to get to the next level—“Are you entitled to it? What have you been given so far? Did it work?”, all of those different questions—in many, many cases, veterans just hang up the phone because they decide in their own minds that VAC is not going to help them. It's been said across the country that the system is set up to delay and deny until you die.

I want to pay homage to all of the people in VAC departments across this nation who have helped me personally save the lives of veterans from coast to coast. We can't deny that fact, but these people are faced with a system that is as complex to them as it is to the end-users, who are the veterans who are on the other end of it.

If the veteran's family is stepping in, as Tina alluded to, trying to get help, when they have to sue the government, quite obviously the program is designed for the bureaucracy to succeed and not the end-users. That's the challenge. The mental health piece of that is that we are losing veterans all the time to suicide because they give up. We're a nation that doesn't give up on our people. We are not a nation that should be giving up on our soldiers and our veterans, and whether they're in service or they're out of service, these are the challenges.

The first question is on where the veteran served, and all those different pieces, and someone's opinion might be “I'm sorry, but you don't qualify.” Then they call the next worker, who says, “You qualify, but we're going to need a telephone book-sized amount of paperwork filled out before we can get you to the next stage.” If you're living in your car, that's not going to get you to a very good place.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[Darrell Samson, Liberal, Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, NS]

Do we have anyone else who would like to answer? If not, I'll go on to another question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Ms. Fitzpatrick has her hand up as well.

[Darrell Samson, Liberal, Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, NS]

Thank you.

[Tina Fitzpatrick]

I've called VAC's number, the 1-866 number, thousands of times starting in 2003, right to my last phone call, which was in 2018. I'm going to tell you, it's such a flawed system from beginning to end.

You get on there. You have to give your husband's number, which is not a big deal, but you have to go over your story every single time. There are no case managers. There's never been a case manager. My husband has been out now 18 years, and he's never had a case manager. When people talk about case managers, I don't know anything about that. Every time I've ever called, I've had to start from scratch and tell my whole story, depending on what the fight was that time.

There have been multiple, different things from prescriptions to appointments to everything, even like.... This is one example. Veterans, if they go to their psychologist or their psychiatrist, every couple of months they'd put in and get money for fuel, that type of thing. My husband hasn't done that in probably 12 years because they made it so difficult. They keep changing it, and the last time I checked, which has been a long time now, they had to bring the paper with them. They had to make sure that the psychiatrist filled it out, and then the front desk had to sign it. Then my husband had to fill it out. He wasn't going at it, so we haven't availed of that in probably 12 years, for sure.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you.

Mr. Bruyea, you have your hand up. Unfortunately, we're out of time for this particular question.

Up next we have MP Desilets for six minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I am still shaken by the heart-wrenching and troubling testimony I have heard.

Mr. Hunter, you said that the system was sort of becoming an enemy of veterans. I have written that sentence down and will keep it in mind, as I think it is a good reflection of what we have been hearing.

I want all the witnesses to know that we are seeking solutions and ways to improve this system, which has many flaws.

In this committee, we have had an opportunity to discuss issues related to the homelessness many veterans are experiencing. We have talked about it a lot, but not enough in my opinion. Based on the assumption that the primary cause of homelessness among veterans is often related to a mental health issue, it seems to me that we can rightly wonder whether the government is addressing the root of this problem.

Do you think the various mental health programs the government provides are effective in preventing homelessness?