Veterans Affairs Committee on Oct. 27th, 2020

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Do you agree with Virginia Vaillancourt that it's unfortunate that a lot of the adjudicators are based in Charlottetown?

[Gen (Ret'd) Walter Natynczyk]

No, sir. I am so thrilled with our employees, wherever they are across the country, doing amazing work.

From a P.E.I. standpoint, a Maritimes standpoint, a Canadian standpoint, for us to launch the Pension for Life and the innovation and the learning and the dedication.... I have to tell you, sir, that we have an extraordinarily committed workforce. When I have them in the atrium in Charlottetown, I ask them how many folks are connected to the military by some nature—married into it, son or daughter, granddaughter, whatever—the hands go up in the entire place. Folks are dedicated and committed to their mission—I'm getting all excited here now—to support our veterans and their families. We have an extraordinary workforce.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you, sir. That's your time, Sean.

We are going over to MP Desilets.

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

Good afternoon to my fellow committee members.

General Natynczyk, welcome to the committee.

My first question is both straightforward and extremely complex. For months, media reports have highlighted the significant difference in processing times for claims made by francophone veterans versus those made by anglophone veterans. I'd like you to comment on that, please.

[Gen (Ret'd) Walter Natynczyk]

Thank you for your question, Mr. Desilets.

I'm sorry; because of this translation function, I have to remain on the English channel here for the time being.

We appreciate that the work of the ombudsperson found this situation and we have worked diligently to correct it so that we don't just have bilingual staff who can adjudicate; we have also found, especially in the medical profession, that we need staff who have studied medicine in French so they totally understand the diagnoses in all the French medical terminology, which is so important in understanding the ramifications.

As a result of that finding, we have made efforts to hire additional people who have the right skills. I'll ask Mr. Harris just to amplify that point.

[Steven Harris]

Thank you for your question.

It is true that the processing of claims submitted by French speakers has been delayed for a while now. We've taken steps to increase our French-speaking staff to ensure decisions are rendered in the same amount of time for all the claims we receive.

As we speak, nearly 28% of our decision-making staff are either native French speakers or bilingual. That includes recent hires, and we are still hiring. I'll certainly be talking about that later. We want to make sure we have more decision-makers whose mother tongue is French. We are working hard to build as large of a francophone team as possible.

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

I'm going to stay on the topic.

Good afternoon, Mr. Harris. It's a real pleasure to see you again. We had some good times in Italy, in another world, in another time, last fall.

I heard what you said loud and clear, but I'm still concerned. In light of what you're putting in place now, when can we expect claims from French-speaking and English-speaking veterans to be on equal footing when it comes to processing time?

[Steven Harris]

Thank you for your question. It's a pleasure to see you as well.

The changes we've made have started paying off. We are on the road towards equal processing times for claims from French-speaking and English-speaking veterans. The people we've hired still need training, so it's going to take a bit more time. The processing delays affecting claims from French-speaking veterans are minor, but we are trying to fix the problem. I think we could achieve equal processing times by the end of next year.

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

I heard what you said and I thank you for your efforts.

As I understand it, the discrepancy between processing times for claims from French-speaking and English-speaking veterans isn't a financial problem. The government actually injected another $192 million in funding for this year and next to hire 300 people. Instead, the problem is the shortage of workers. I fear the problem won't go away with time given the labour shortage all sectors are experiencing.

Could you comment on that?

[Steven Harris]

I completely understand your concern. That's why we've taken tangible steps to hire and train francophone decision-makers. We focus on looking for people, first, whose mother tongue is French and, second, who are bilingual so they can process both English-language and French-language claims. We've tried to attract new employees whose mother tongue is French to significantly improve the situation, and I think I can say we've been successful on that front.

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

Let's hope it works.

General Natynczyk, I'd like to hear your comments on the recommendation we made to reduce, or virtually eliminate, the backlog in the short term. It's a simple suggestion, almost silly.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Monsieur Desilets, you're at six minutes. If you have a question, please make it very brief.

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

The idea is to eliminate the backlog by simply pre-approving all the claims, so doing things backwards. Veterans are not criminals; if they submit a claim, it's probably warranted.

I'd like to hear your take on our recommendation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Give a very brief answer, please.

[Gen (Ret'd) Walter Natynczyk]

Sir, again, at this point in time, what we've been able to do is operationalize the plan that we've handed out to the committee members, and perhaps in the next go-round, Steven can answer how we have been able to make some progress, even before the additional staff are trained.

I'll leave it there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much.

MP Blaney is next, please.

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

Thank you, Chair.

It's very nice to see you, General. It's always wonderful to see you.

Thank you so much, Mr. Harris, for participating today.

Of course, I have said a lot in the public sphere about my desperate concern over the disability backlog that we have in this country. I think the reality is that when my office is getting phone calls and emails from veterans across Canada who have applied for the CERB program because they cannot access the program that they fought so hard to earn, we know we're in a situation that is extremely urgent. We're continuing to work with those folks to make sure they get their resources, but so that they're also protected and not given any sort of trouble because of their applications. I certainly hope that's something you guys are working on as well.

I've been on this committee, as you well know, for a couple of years now. We're still waiting to see this disability benefit application process backlog get caught up. Of course we want to make sure that service standards are maintained, but unfortunately, we're seeing the reverse happen.

We've talked about increasing public service capacity. I'm very happy that there were a significant number of hires, but we know from the PBO report and what we heard from the union that we need to hire so many more people.

I'm also wondering what's happening with the integration, the process innovation and the digital solutions. We keep being told there are going to be processes in place that are going to shorten the timeline, but we're still not seeing the impacts on the other end. I'm just wondering if you could give us an update on when those will be done.

As a forewarning, I only get six minutes. I'm going to give you a little while, but I do need to get to the next question. Thank you.

[Gen (Ret'd) Walter Natynczyk]

Thanks very much.

We had a meeting with the Royal Canadian Legion yesterday and did hear of a case in which Steven's team put out a decision in 10 weeks. It's great. I just have to make sure that we try to get everybody to 16 weeks.

I would like to reassure you that over this seven and a half months since we last spoke—and before that time—we have moved diligently to operationalize the plan that we handed to you. In addition—and again we're very appreciative of the additional resources—we moved out swiftly to try to hire.

I will ask Steven to address these points and to provide the sufficient fidelity that you're looking for.

[Steven Harris]

Thanks, Deputy. I'll try to keep it brief, as I know you have limited time.

It is really a two-track system. One is our being able to get additional human resources in a short-term period of time while we do the work on the back end to make sure we can improve and sustain the front-level productivity that we need going forward to address the volume of pending applications.

In a number of ways, we're doing a variety of things. I mentioned earlier, in response to one of the questions, that we want to limit the number of applications that are required to go for medical adjudication. In other words, we need to build tools that allow our front-line disability adjudication staff to make decisions the very first time it's being reviewed, and not refer it on to medical review. We're building those tools that will assist us in making more quick decisions on more front-end folks, and limit the number of files with which we're taxing our medical staff.

We're also changing the way in which we organize ourselves, in terms of the veterans benefit teams, by bringing in all the people who are required to make a decision on a file together, working together in an integrated team to ensure that the file never leaves and never gets referred anywhere else. Essentially, it stays within the group—that is, that team—to ensure it gets a decision as quickly as possible in going through that stage.

We're looking at innovative approaches as well, in terms of using technology and tools, to be able to review thousands of pages of health records—

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

I'm sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Harris, but is there a way to get a report on the timeline for this? I hear what you're saying. I respect very much the work of the staff at Veterans Affairs. I do think they're understaffed, and that is a challenge, but we just keep hearing about this and the backlog is growing. We know, from the article that came out just a couple of days ago, that the applications are now slowing down dramatically for various reasons. I assume that this backlog that we already have is only going to increase.

Are there actual timelines for when these things are going to be implemented? I don't need to be assured. I appreciate your assuring me, but I think who needs to be assured are veterans in Canada.

[Steven Harris]

Yes, there are a variety of timelines, depending on the initiative.

What I would say in terms of the volume of pending applications is that it includes applications we may have received yesterday or last week that are within our service standard now. The backlog, as you've indicated, those files that are beyond our established service standard of 16 weeks, has in fact gone down over the course of the last number of months. We've been able to reduce that by about 15% or so, down to under 19,000 over the course of the last number of months, by focusing our efforts and our resources on being able to do this. That's good for a start—

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

I'm going to interrupt you again, because the PBO report was very clear that if we continue the way we are right now—and because I'm not getting specific timelines, that seems to be what we're going to be doing—it's going to be two and half years before we even finish the backlog we have today, let alone the one that's going to be growing on the other side of this.

The timelines really matter. Is there any way you can tell us when these programs are going to be in place?

[Steven Harris]

Well, for example, the veteran benefit teams were implemented as of June 1. On June 1 of this year, we made the transition, even in the COVID environment, to working from this point of view. The work we're doing in trying to resolve medical issues at the earliest possible stage will be an ongoing effort, and some of the information technology approaches and the improvements we're making are ongoing as well.

That's why it's a two-pronged approach: to have that surge of additional resources to be able to make the decisions and get the volume of pending applications down, while we make those changes in the background to allow us to have that long-term sustainability in terms of decision-making.

[Gen (Ret'd) Walter Natynczyk]

I will also add that, again, based upon the support we received from government, we have started to hire additional staff who are now in training. Steven's team across the department has expedited and improved the quality of the training so that we can turn these folks into decision-makers.

Hopefully—what was the time?—right after Christmas is what we're talking about right now, but we're talking about hiring in excess of 300 folks and training them up so they can make the right quality decisions right away. While that's happening, because of all the other concurrent activity, Steven's folks—and again, across the department—have been able to take a significant chunk out of those files that have been waiting beyond the 16 weeks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you, General.

Now we're going into our second round.

First up for five minutes is MP Carrie.