Veterans Affairs Committee on Oct. 27th, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you, General.

We now go for five minutes to MP Seeback, please.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Thanks, everyone. I'm new to this committee as well.

General, I love your positive attitude and the desire to get things done. I have some real questions. I think if it's not measurable and deliverable, it's really not a plan that's going to work. I have some very specific questions, and I'd like you to answer them as succinctly as possible.

You talked about a number of reforms...limit the number of applications that go to medical. What's the goal on how many applications will be reduced? How will it be measured? What's the anticipated effect on the numbers or the percentage reduction in the backlog?

[Gen (Ret'd) Walter Natynczyk]

Thank you very much for the question, and welcome to the committee, sir.

The one thing we do not control is the applications coming in the front door: neither the volume nor the nature of the injuries or illnesses being claimed.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

You must have an estimate on these reforms. There has to be a best practice. Do you know what impact that particular reform will have on the current backlog, which you say is somewhere south of 20,000?

[Gen (Ret'd) Walter Natynczyk]

Absolutely. I'll ask Steven to get into a little more fidelity here. We are benchmarking with our American and Australian counterparts in terms of those best practices in order to have measurable results across the board.

Steven, go ahead.

[Steven Harris]

I'll give you the example that we used, the veteran benefit teams. We piloted the veteran benefit teams approach. Again, that's bringing everybody together to make sure we have a full team to make a decision on a file without actually leaving.... Based on our pilot, we think that's about a 10% improvement in productivity in terms of output and decision-making.

With respect to your question on the element of medical referrals, that one is a bit trickier to measure. It will be in stages as we are able to build the models that need to be used for a variety of claims. As we build each one of them, we expect there's a benefit to that. We'll be able to measure that benefit as we build each of those models, but it's a process for that part.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Is there a document that you have prepared internally to show what effects you anticipate of the reforms that you've been outlining, and to show your anticipated reductions in the backlog or improvements? If so, is that a document that could be shared with the committee?

[Steven Harris]

We have a number of documents, including the public plan, which doesn't specifically reference individual numbers from that perspective. What we have looked at is expecting to make about 80,000 additional decisions over the course of the next year and a half. We can certainly share anything we've produced that indicates any kind of output from some of the initiatives we've identified here and in the plan.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

That would be great.

Here's the challenge I'm having. I like that you're talking about these reductions and you believe that your reforms are going to take effect, but the PBO seems to disagree. The PBO seems to say that their projections show that if the total number of full-time employees for 2021-22 are retained for an additional 12 months, the number of pending applications could reach zero in the first quarter of 2023.

They're saying that you'd have to have further extensions of these people's employment to get the backlog down to zero in 2023. You seem to be saying that what you have right now is going to reduce the backlog. Where do you get that from? When I ask a question about how much you believe your reforms are going to take effect, you don't seem to know what those numbers are. How do you get there? It seems to me like a bit of pie in the sky.

[Steven Harris]

I'm happy to answer that. We expect that the additional resources we've put in place and the action plan we have will get us under 5,000—those files that have been in the system longer than the service standard of 16 weeks—by the end of March 2022. The differences between the PBO report and our forecasts are some of the improvements and gains we're making in terms of our processes, something like a veteran benefit team, which is not incorporated into what the PBO estimated going forward.

As well, in terms of some of the decision-making, the PBO included folks who don't make decisions, resulting in a lower per-person output, if you will, of what the estimate might look like. Our estimate for internal decision-making would have us making more decisions than what the PBO estimated. I think they took a broader look at the number of people involved in the actual decision-making, including some folks who do administrative and clerical work.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

I'm almost out of time, so I'm going to ask a couple of questions quickly that maybe you can undertake to answer if I run out of time. I got the one-minute signal about 40 seconds ago.

How are you doing on the hiring of the number of employees—the LTEs—that you've been projected to hire? Are you meeting that number? If so, great. If not, why not? Are you retaining them as well? Are there people who are leaving through attrition, and is that going to affect your ability to meet the targets you are setting out with the volume of employees you have to hire?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

That's time, but offer a very quick answer, please.

[Gen (Ret'd) Walter Natynczyk]

We've been really fortunate that for the numbers we're trying to hire, we've had about 1,600 applications for just over 300 roles in the department. We're trying to keep our team as happy as possible to reduce attrition. Steven and his team have been extraordinary in now engaging just over 300. They're into the training pipe. We're tracking pretty well.

Steven—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Again, I have to cut you off, sir. I'm sorry about that.

We can now go to MP Amos, please.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to our two witnesses. As always, it's a privilege to hear from you.

I'm going to continue along the same lines, in terms of the challenge.

I'm sorry. I'm jumping between languages. I recognize that's not a good thing to do. I'll just speak in English to keep it simple.

You were addressing the theme of minimizing attrition, which goes to maintaining the workforce, which goes to maintaining the ability to deal as quickly as possible with as much of the backlog as possible. I wonder how challenging it has been in the context of the COVID pandemic to maintain your workforce and enable effective training. It strikes me that it would be a huge challenge to onboard hundreds of new staff and train them up while maintaining the morale of existing staff, who have significant workloads. How have you succeeded in that incredibly important and very large task?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

General, you're on mute, sir.

[Gen (Ret'd) Walter Natynczyk]

Whatever I said was brilliant, and I can never repeat it again.

Anyway, sir, it's great to see you again.

I think that folks would be very proud to see what the public servants have done amidst this pandemic. The Monday after I spoke to all of you, we had 973 employees who were able to connect as we went to our remote workstations, and very quickly we've reacted to bring folks on, as I mentioned in my opening remarks. We're firing at over 95% effectiveness on these remote means in order to support our folks.

At the same time, Steven and his team are hiring literally hundreds more employees and training them virtually. The ability to learn and to adapt to this virtual and remote environment has been extraordinary, and so has the outreach to veterans. We've literally been calling thousands of veterans each day, and in some areas of the department productivity is actually better than when we were back in the office. I'll just say that our call centre is answering their calls within two minutes, well above the 90th percentile, which is over the service standard.

What we're trying to do is enable the employees to feel safe and healthy while they are reaching out and supporting veterans, and enable productivity to the best of our ability.

Steven.

[Steven Harris]

It has also been an opportunity for us to revamp our training approach, particularly the disability adjudication piece. Normally, if hiring this many people, we'd have people come in and do classroom training. We've been able to make that transfer over to a digital environment where we have online training. We've quickly built online training to be able to target that and give people the essentials of what they need to get them into a decision-making mode as quickly as possible. The staff has worked very diligently to both onboard and now train those over 300 individuals we brought on, and maintain the others we have in a decision-making mode, and change the training.

It's been a bit of a forced opportunity for us, but it's a good-news story for the longer term of our being able to onboard people regularly and train them at a distance.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you for that response.

I'm going to shift into French as I ask the chair to advise how much time I have left.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

You have a minute and a half.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Would you mind commenting briefly on the morale of Veterans Affairs Canada staff? How are they feeling?

I can only imagine how difficult it can be for them to do their jobs in the circumstances. You've probably spent more time on the issue to make sure the mental health of your colleagues is in hand.

[Gen (Ret'd) Walter Natynczyk]

I'll just say that in addition to the outreach to the numerous veteran stakeholders, my associate and I had 25 town halls with our employees, and communicating with them directly, again in a crisis, kind of feels like an operational deployment. You cannot communicate enough, so we reach out to them. I've been sending them either weekly or biweekly messages. I just sent another one out this morning to reassure them, because I need them focused on their mission while they're balancing all the pressures on them at home.

We did a survey in the middle of the summer, and I was very pleased. Two-thirds of our employees answered that survey. What's interesting is that they feel supported. The 80th percentile say that they have the equipment they need and they have the information they need in order to make the right kinds of decisions at home.

Interestingly enough, 10% want to go back into the office tomorrow. For some, sanctuary may not be at home. Sanctuary might be in an office space, or they want the social interaction with others in order to maintain their mental well-being.

We have reinforced resilience through this whole period of time by maintaining contact and social connections, and that's why the town halls are so important, not only to the veteran but also to the employees, in order to maintain the wherewithal to get through what I would call and refer to as a very long deployment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you, sir.

Go ahead, MP Brassard.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

There's no question that Veterans Affairs has been going through a significant hiring process. One of the things that I hear regularly across the country about staff at Veterans Affairs is that there aren't enough veterans themselves working there. Of this significant uptake, whether it's part-time employees or full-time employees, how many veterans have you hired to work as case managers or to adjudicate these type of claims? Oftentimes those veterans feel that there's an empathetic ear on the other end of the line when it's somebody who's walked the walk and who has transitioned out of the military. I'm just wondering how many of those have been veterans.

[Gen (Ret'd) Walter Natynczyk]

Again, we are making every effort in trying to bring veterans into our ranks in the right job, because you can't take an infantryman and make him a social worker right away. It's “I'm a tanker” kind of thing.

As my kids who were all in the military will remind me, “Dad, you've got to have someone with the right kind of culture. It can't be the old-school culture. You need to have someone who will exercise care, compassion and respect.”

What is terrific is to see that we're being able to hire veterans in these additional ranks, and I'll ask Steven to mention that. At the same time, we're leveraging the education and training benefit and the career transition service in order to bring in more.

Steven, how are we doing on our hiring?