Mr. Chair, ladies and gentlemen of the committee, thank you for the invitation to appear before you today. I'm happy to provide you with some insight into the impact that COVID-19 has had on the financial well-being of VETS Canada. For those of you who are not aware of who VETS Canada is, I will provide a brief introduction to our organization first.
VETS Canada is a federally registered charity whose mission is to provide assistance to veterans of the Canadian Armed Forces and RCMP who are homeless, at risk of becoming homeless or otherwise in crisis.
We were founded in 2010 and have hundreds of dedicated volunteers across the country who provide immediate support to veterans. We also operate three drop-in and support centres across the country, one in Ottawa, one that is co-located with our headquarters here in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, and one in Edmonton that is operated by VETS Canada on behalf of the Government of Alberta.
To date, we have responded to almost 12,000 requests for assistance from veterans and their families from coast to coast, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, including holidays. Requests for assistance come to us in a variety of ways, through our 1-888 phone line, our website or our social media platforms. Some are self-referrals from veterans themselves, and some come from other organizations or agencies. Over the past year, an average of 77% of all of our referrals came from Veterans Affairs Canada case managers.
I was once told that support is a big word with many meanings, so I will elaborate on what I mean when I say that we provide support to the veterans.
In the event that we encounter a veteran who is homeless, we immediately move the veteran from the streets by providing temporary accommodations, usually in a motel or a hotel. We provide food and clothing, and we assist that veteran in finding permanent housing, at which time we will cover the first month's rent and a deposit, and we will provide furniture to help the veteran become established in their new home.
We prevent homelessness for those veterans who are at risk of losing their housing by helping with arrears rent to avoid evictions. We pay hydro and other utilities bills to prevent disconnection.
These are just a few examples of the support we provide, but being a small organization without strict regulations, we often have the luxury to provide many other outside-of-the-box supports as well. I would say that food insecurity is the most prevalent need we have seen. However, as a result of the pandemic, housing issues have certainly risen.
Since 2014, we have received funding from the Government of Canada. From 2014 to 2018, we were under contract with Veterans Affairs Canada, and from 2018 until the end of March of this year, we were funded through its family well-being fund. Until two weeks ago, we hadn't received any federal funding since the end of March. As you know, at that time, COVID-19 had begun to seriously affect the lives of all Canadians, including veterans.
By the end of March, we closed our three drop-in support centres and our headquarters to the public, and our staff worked from home, responding to requests for assistance from veterans. Fortunately, there were many things we were able to do remotely to support veterans with no physical contact, and in the event that in-person support was required, many of our dedicated volunteers were willing to meet with veterans while taking all necessary precautions.
In spite of the drop-in centres and headquarters being closed, we still had to pay rent and utilities, and veterans still required assistance.
Over the past eight months, we have seen an increase in the number of veterans who have required assistance, but, sadly and yet understandably, we have seen a decrease in donations from kind, caring Canadians. Specifically, the requests for assistance increased by 36% compared to the same time period last year, and our donations decreased by 41%.
Keeping up with the overhead and the requests for assistance with an all but non-existent revenue stream was extremely difficult, and there were times over the past few months that we thought we would have to shut down. As the only veteran-serving organization aside from Veterans Affairs that was fully operational and open to provide support during this difficult time, we couldn't allow that to happen.
We are an organization with a very small staff of only six paid employees across the country, five who provide direct support to veterans and one administrative staff person. We are fortunate that I fill the role of executive director without taking a paycheque. In spite of that, we did have to make the difficult decision to lay off our administrator in October, and I took on that role as well. Had we not recently received funds from the veterans organizations emergency support fund we would have had to lay off more people.
VETS Canada began 10 years ago because we identified a gap. We discovered that many veterans had not successfully transitioned to civilian life and were slipping through the cracks. Our aim was to fill that gap and to provide a safety net for veterans. We know that we have saved lives and have helped hundreds of families to stay together. Therefore, we know that, had we been forced to close due to our financial insecurity directly related to COVID-19, it would have had a deep impact on the lives of our most vulnerable veterans. This, in turn, would have had an impact on the case load at Veterans Affairs.
As Canada moves into the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, with many veterans barely surviving the first wave, we know that we will continue to receive more and more requests for assistance, but we will continue to do everything we can with what we have to respond to those requests.
In closing, with regard to the impact that COVID-19 has had on the financial health of VETS Canada, in the past 10 years, we never felt the threat of closure until we had to deal with the effect the pandemic has had on the lives of veterans in need.
Mr. Chair, thank you. I'm happy to answer questions from the committee.