Veterans Affairs Committee on June 14th, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

MP Wagantall, go ahead.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

I'm sorry. We're missing our fearless leader today, so we're kind of jumping around here. Thank you.

I want to bring up an individual I just met in my province who is a veteran and has a responsibility within government. He got a service dog from this organization that has not been mentioned much today, but he didn't realize what he had. He was told he had a service dog, but once he met with a good friend of mine who's involved in the research in Saskatchewan, he realized that he had an obedience dog, which is not a service dog.

Marc, hi. It's good to see you.

I'm going to ask both Marc and Ms. Moss, very briefly, to each talk about the dynamics of what we need to do here when I hear about concerns such as that and the importance of realizing, even for our veterans, the difference between an obedience dog and a service dog and what that is.

Then, of course, Dr. Dell and Dr. Chalmers have done extensive research at our university in regard to the importance of having to have the individual working with the dog from as early on as possible, because veterans understand teams.

Another critical component is that they have to have continued follow-up. This individual was given this dog and they said farewell. He has asked them to come back, and two years later there's still no response.

I'd like your perspective, because these are the key values and key things that we need when we're talking about standards.

Marc, do you want to go first, and then Ms. Moss?

[Marc Lapointe]

Absolutely.

The key foundation of our program is peer support; it's not the service dog. The peer support in itself is between veterans. It's a community. We're all helping ourselves. We're coaching ourselves. We're there for each other in bad times.

Also, you're absolutely right. We need to get that dog together with the veteran as soon as possible and train them as a team to develop this super bond that cannot be attained if I just train a full service dog and give it to someone. When I do that, I still have to train that person and show them.

I'll give you an example in my answer.

We're dancing together and we know the moves, but now I'm changing partners. The other partner doesn't know the moves yet, right? The service dog is going to a new dancing partner. The support needs to be there to frame that up in making sure that this person knows all the moves.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

That's very good.

Ms. Moss, would you comment?

[Joanne Moss]

I'll speak to the standards component.

I'm actually involved with the SUAP project as well. I'm very familiar with Colleen and the rest of the team, just FYI.

Because I'm preparing for the information session for the technical committee members, organizations have been encouraged to submit their publicly available documents. We're not receiving any documents that aren't published because we don't want to get into copyright issues. We're definitely looking at all kinds of requirements, guidelines and standards. It's essentially a major inventory of the current practices.

This process of standards development is also informed through existing policy and regulations, etc., and any kind of documentation looking at what the landscape looks like at this point in time. Then that's where we start with the first standard. As a committee, we will look at the vocabulary being used throughout this sector, including service dog vocabulary, as well as the definitions and a code of ethics, nationally. We will start drilling down from there.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Perfect. Thank you.

Very briefly, what are your views on multiple organizations having a recognized governmental program to provide service dogs to injured individuals?

It's interesting. I'm in a small business world. There are a variety of individuals or organizations that want to provide service dogs, but if those standards are there, we don't have to pick which ones would be the providers: They have to meet the standards. Is that correct?

[Marc Lapointe]

Yes, but we need someone to make sure they do that.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Exactly. Yes, I understand that.

Mrs. Moss, would you comment?

[Joanne Moss]

Yes, you're right, Marc.

What happens there is that once a national standard is published, we start to look at the conformity assessment options for those who wish to use the standard. At that point, again the stakeholders will be brought together, and they will decide. Some folks may want to still stick with their current situation; others may want to look at third party or second party accreditation of their program, and so forth. That will depend on a lot of variables once the standard is actually published.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

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

Up next we have MP Casey for five minutes.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'm actually going to pick up where Mrs. Wagantall left off with you, Ms. Moss, please.

Were you or was your organization involved in any way in the CGSB process—which was aborted—in connection with trying to develop a standard for service dogs for veterans?

[Joanne Moss]

Yes. I'll keep it as short as I can.

As I mentioned—

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

No, you have five minutes. You can use it all. I'm quite interested in this. You go right ahead.

[Joanne Moss]

I'm going to backtrack a little bit again.

Our organization was receiving a horrendous number of calls from veterans and their families concerning the situation. At that time, back in 2012, a lot of people were committing suicide or attempting it.

That's when our organization developed the Major-General Lew MacKenzie Fund, and donations started coming in for that. We used up the fund and have been trying to replenish it ever since.

We very happily held two national military service dog summits and brought together a lot of stakeholders. The Canadian General Standards Board was one of the organizations that wanted to present at those events to talk about standards, and they did.

As I mentioned earlier, after the second event took place, at the very end one of the veterans stood up and asked me ask if it was okay if all of of them voted on whether or not our organization could represent everyone. She said we were the only impartial organization that exists in this sector. She said that they'd like me to see if they can have a new proposal to CGSB to see if it's feasible to develop this standard. It was a unanimous decision, so I wrote the new work item proposal and submitted it to the Canadian General Standards Board.

The process did start out fully with the intention of doing the study itself prior to developing the standard. Internal conversations between Veterans Affairs, the CGSB and others we weren't aware of were happening behind the scenes, and a decision was made that they were going to proceed with the development of the standard.

Back in 2019-2020, since the previous process had failed, we went to ground zero and conducted a year-long service dog feasibility study. We actually did an industry and marketplace study. That is available on our website and in my briefing as well.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

The first process failed, and you have now embarked on a process that holds some promise. What is the status of your discussions with Veterans Affairs Canada or with the Government of Canada with respect to giving them an update, or any involvement that government might have? I mean, I would hope they're interested in your work.

[Joanne Moss]

Veterans Affairs has been involved, as I said, with organizations like ADI and Wounded Warriors. That's certainly their prerogative. We certainly have done our best to keep them informed. The staff keeps changing, though, so that's very difficult.

However, they are aware of the national standard that we are about to develop, and they have reneged. They have said, no, they're not able to participate. For an organization that is so interested in developing national standards, I found it quite curious that, as Bill was saying, they would not want to at least support it if not necessarily get involved in it. It is a very specialized area. We understand that the government doesn't necessarily want to participate, but the government, the public sector, is very much a stakeholder in this work.

I am pretty sure that we can do this together, because we're going to have zero tolerance for adversarial behaviour. That's absolutely not acceptable. We will get nowhere fast again. There will be zero tolerance for that kind of behaviour. At this point in time, we will move forward regardless of which organizations want to participate or not. It's time. We will work together with stakeholders who wish to proceed and help our veterans and their families.

The other things that people need are support, information and resources—incredible support, resources and information. The standards are one of many tools in a tool kit, if you will. They are part of the bigger picture. They will not fix everything, but what they will do is provide an opportunity down the road so that if any level of government wants to reference standards in their legislation, they won't reference a brand; they will now reference a national standard of Canada that was developed in a fair and transparent process through basically regulated requirements. The Standards Council of Canada Act also guards this work and its integrity.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Do I have any time left, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

I'm afraid not, Mr. Casey.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Thank you very much, Ms. Moss.

[Joanne Moss]

You're welcome.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Up next is MP Doherty, for five minutes.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Give me the word, Todd.

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

Mr. Chair, I believe we were giving this time to Cathay.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Committee colleagues, you're going to get really tired of listening to me, aren't you? I am just so passionate about this issue. What we're hearing through this whole process, quite honestly, has been very educational. I am very grateful for that.

I want to take a moment to talk to Carl, who's sitting here and obviously has a role to play.

Carl, I want you to talk a little bit about your organization and what you guys are doing. Out of what you're hearing today, clearly we as members of the committee need to understand what it is we've actually been tasked with here. I feel that's getting a lot clearer today.

First of all, what do the names Audeamus and Meliora mean? I'm showing my ignorance here.

[Carl Fleury, Meliora Service Dogs]

I will speak in French, because it is my first language.