Veterans Affairs Committee on April 14th, 2021

[Allan Hunter]

Let me first say that the Veterans Affairs staff across the country are doing miracles with the system that is designed, which is very complex but really doesn't get to the heart of the matter. Do I think the government's programs are effective? I think from a percentage standpoint, the percentage is very low that it is effective, because we're starting to.... Now with COVID being thrown in the mix, the homelessness of veterans is increasing dramatically.

What's very hard to do is to find female homeless veterans, because they face a number of battles. We talked just briefly about the sexual assault traumas that a lot of female veterans went through, but to go out there and expose yourself once again to a system that was supposed to protect you.... We're ending up with women living in cars and homeless shelters. When we ask them, “Are you a veteran?”, a lot of them don't want to tell us because our veterans are supposed to be our heroes who don't have weaknesses, who can leap tall buildings in a single bound and all the things that go with it.

The reality is that these are people who we need.... When we go out looking for veterans on the streets out here in western Canada, they're not easy to find like your typical—and it's a sad thing to say—homeless person because we train them to not be seen. Unless you have a military background, unless you have the ability to see where someone is going to conceal themselves.... We've had veterans freezing to death in the winter because they concealed themselves and nobody knew they were there.

If we were doing a good job, that would mean the suicide statistics would be getting down to a point where we could trumpet it across the nation. That is not happening, and there are lots of ways we can fix it, but the ways we're doing it, are, once again, designed so that the bureaucracy succeeds but not so much the end-users.

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

I get the impression that it is easier for our bureaucratic system to spend money to try to alleviate hardships than to spend it to prevent those same hardships.

Am I right in saying that, Mr. Hunter?

[Allan Hunter]

Yes, sir. We spend vast amounts of money. We send it out, and then what I see as an advocate and a service officer is that the money, those sums of money, are put out there to the public across Canada to say, “See, we're addressing and fixing the problem. Look how much money we spent.” If you don't look at the end use of how that money was spent....

Again, the Veterans Association Food Bank in Calgary applied to the veteran and family well-being fund for a housing project, because Homes for Heroes can get them off the street and stabilized, but now the rents are so high that, when they move out of there, they end up in a system they can't afford. They end up back on the streets again because they cannot move to the next level.

We say, “Here's how much money we've spent”, but we don't track the results. We don't look at the successes. The 10 people who I talked about who took their lives, to me, 10 are just the ones I could put out there with a few days' notice. I can tell you there are hundreds of them. Remember, when each veteran takes their life, they're leaving a family behind to deal with the aftermath. How do we track that? Do we look at the family and what's happened to that family?

I have my own family, generations of family, serving our nation. I have friends who have gotten out and who are struggling with their own PTSD and mental health, whose kids are now in the service. They're all saying, “What's going to happen to me when I get out?”

In answer to your question, we spend a lot of money, but we're not accomplishing what we should be accomplishing, which is making sure that we put them back on track and give them the right to a good, solid life.

Mr. Bruyea was a good example. Why would anybody think it was okay to take away funding from a six-year-old boy? It's absolutely unheard of, when they gave money to a convicted police killer because his father was a veteran. It's absolutely absurd that we would allow that in a nation like ours.

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

Thank you, Mr. Hunter.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

I'm afraid that's time, sir. Thank you.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Up next we have MP Blaney for six minutes.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

I want to thank all of you for your testimony today. It's hard to listen to, so I can only imagine the reality of living it day in and day out. I just want to express my appreciation for your coming here and sharing that with us. I imagine that is also exhausting.

I'll go to you first, Mr. Bruyea. I really appreciated your testimony. I've briefly seen the recommendations, and I'm going through them. I'm just wondering if you could talk a little bit about how the minister and the department handled the other ombudsman's investigation sent to the minister. I think it's really important that we capture that on the record today.

[Sean Bruyea]

Thank you very much, Ms. Blaney.

What happened was that Craig Dalton—unlike the previous ombudsman, Guy Parent—thought it would be, and I agree, an excellent plan to have a more expeditious process of having recommendations acted upon.

What was happening under Guy Parent previously was that they were permitting the department to delay for years addressing recommendations from the ombudsman's office. He submitted recommendations to the minister on four files in April and May 2020. Previous to that, he gave the department three months to address those concerns. In all four files the department completely dismissed the ombudsman's concern. This really speaks to a fundamental problem in the culture of the senior leadership who think they can snub their noses at an oversight body like the ombudsman.

The ombudsman then decided, after three months, that he would send those four files off to the minister. If the department won't deal with it, then it's the minister's job to deal with it. Those four files went to the minister. They sat on the minister's desk until Allan Hunter wrote to the minister and to Walter Natynczyk and said that Sean Bruyea was going in for a heart procedure in the beginning of December 2020. Then, all of a sudden, all panic occurred in the minister's office, and three files were quickly addressed over the next four weeks. All three files ignored almost completely the ombudsman's recommendations. The fourth file was just released, almost a year after the minister had it, and it was a favourable decision.

It also begs the question. We have a department that is just burdened by these delays because of overbureaucratic processes, and the minister sat on those files when he could have personally had those addressed with the signing of a pen within a few weeks. He didn't do that. That's very disappointing and disillusioning for veterans in general and their families.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you for that. That's very helpful.

I agree, and I appreciate that so many of you are talking about how hard the workers are doing their work in VAC. I've heard again and again that it's not that they don't care; the bigger problem is the system they're put into.

What I've heard from multiple veterans is that it's starting to feel like they're going to an insurance place where they have to prove everything, instead of going to a place that's supposed to be there to support them.

One of the things that both you and Ms. Fitzpatrick talked about was the culture and how preventative it was for you to actually get your needs met. I know there are many recommendations, but I'm just wondering if you could talk a little about one specific thing you think would be pivotal in making a change for the services and the supports that should be there for veterans.

[Sean Bruyea]

I think fundamentally that we have to take away this interdisciplinary care team they have at Veterans Affairs. It is a policy interdisciplinary committee that rules on files of veterans they've never treated. It provides a sort of fake front that Veterans Affairs really is using a collaborative interdisciplinary care model. What we have to do is take that out of Veterans Affairs' hands and put it into those of actual practitioners who treat veterans.

This interdisciplinary team within Veterans Affairs is truly an insurance model. It is a group of policy experts who sit around and decide how to deny care. We need a care team that knows the veterans, that sits outside of the department and that asks how they can provide care for this veteran.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you for that.

I'm going to come to you, Ms. Fitzpatrick, with this. You talked about never having a case manager. I've heard of lot of veterans talk about how good it would be to make that call and have somebody on the other end who knows you, knows your family and knows the file so that when you're sharing what's happening in your family there is somebody there who has actually built up that relationship with you over time.

You articulated really well what it felt like to continually have to retell your story, but could you maybe talk about the impact that it had, both on you and your family?

[Tina Fitzpatrick]

It was huge, actually. My husband was very, very.... His percentage for PTSD was very high, and he was suicidal for six years in our basement. Every time I reached out for anything, I never got any support. It was a fight. I had to fight for everything, and there was never a case manager. I would call and talk to whoever it was. I would be sent to somebody else, or I would be put on hold for hours at a time. I would just sit there waiting.

I'm talking about all of his prescriptions and all of his different assessments, because there was assessment after assessment—all of that. There was no person I could call at one time. If we had one, it would have been awesome, because then she would know our story and she could have helped us more clearly, and helped my husband when he needed it, not to be passing the buck to this one or that one.

My husband's file was also on the minister's desk. It's been a roller coaster ride. I have two daughters, and guess what. “Veterans Affairs” are bad words to them. They think those are bad words in our house. That's how bad it's been.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Next, for five minutes, we have MP Doherty.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

I want to thank Mr. Bruyea, Ms. Fitzpatrick and Mr. Hunter for your testimony today. I also want to thank you for your strength, your commitment and your fight.

As you know, since being elected, I have been a passionate champion for our veterans and first responders. I have sat with many families left behind to pick up the pieces. I have sat with many veterans who are shattered, who feel they served their country and that our country has forgotten them. I truly appreciate your testimony today.

Mr. Hunter, you mentioned the committee shutting down the investigation into military sexual trauma. What message does that send to our female veterans and military?

[Allan Hunter]

Let me read to you the response I got from an organization that is specifically designed to deal with women in the military: “I can honestly say that 99% of women who have served have been sexually harassed or assaulted. We have proven ourselves in service and do not deserve to be treated as second-class citizens. If what happened to us happened in the civilian world, many high-ranking enlisted and officers would be discharged with a less-than-honourable discharge. The good old boys' club is not tolerated in civilian life, nor should it be in the military. Shutting down the committee is giving the message that what happens to females in the service is not important and that we are second-class civilians. The committee has not even gotten around to dealing with males being raped while serving.”

This woman was in tears when she sent this to me. That is the message coming from women who have served our nation—not from Allan Hunter. This is from the women who have faced this and can't come forward, because guess what will happen to them with their spouses and careers.

Thank you for the question. I appreciate it.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

In your opinion, has this put females in our military further at risk?

[Allan Hunter]

I can say that, since that happened, I have been getting contacted by females who have been assaulted, raped and abused in the military. Some are still serving. They're absolutely terrified to come forward. In their words, this has said that women are second-class citizens in the military, and we're shutting down this committee because there's much worse there than we're prepared to allow Canadians to hear. That's unacceptable in any nation.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

This next question is for the three of you.

When our Prime Minister and our ministers stand before microphones and say they'll always stand with our veterans and our military, how does that make you feel?

[Sean Bruyea]

Mr. Doherty, I've long written about the huge gap between the rhetoric and the actions.

What happens, especially with veterans with mental health illnesses, is that when they hear government say these words but the actions show something different.... When they show up at Veterans Affairs and they meet this debilitating bureaucracy, when the letters come in those brown envelopes that say no, when they have to wait on the phones, these are all messages that say, “Hey, wait a minute, the Prime Minister said something very meaningful. I believe in that. I was willing to die for that. If the government is not going to treat me the way the government promises, then the fault's with me. I must be at fault. I must be the one.” The shaming is so intense.

I have spoken with countless veterans and I can tell you, including for me, the suicidal reaction is immediate. The shame is immediate. There needs to be widespread sensitivity training in mental health illness, especially for veterans, throughout Veterans Affairs, and I would say, in Parliament.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

I agree.

Ms. Fitzpatrick, how are you, and how is your family?

[Tina Fitzpatrick]

We're good. It's been a long road, but it's okay.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

I want to thank you for your strength—

[Tina Fitzpatrick]

Thank you.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

—and thank you for what you're doing for your family.

I have sat with countless veterans and families who are just shattered. Listening to your testimony absolutely heaps it on there. For me, it seems like we're not going forward. We're going three steps backward.