Veterans Affairs Committee on Dec. 12th, 2024

[Terry Dowdall, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Maybe you could ask them that or have them follow up, just to see whether a letter or something else has come back outlining the feasibility study exactly and any possible timeline. That would be greatly appreciated.

My next questions will now go to you, MaryAnn. Can you share with our committee how many homeless veterans live in Canada and how those numbers are reached?

[MaryAnn Notarianni]

That is a great question because we know that's a concern.

I don't have that number top of mind. I don't know whether Meriem would either. We recognize that homelessness and housing issues for veterans is an area of significant concern, but I don't have that data personally.

[Terry Dowdall, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Have you ever done a study to see exactly how many homeless veterans we have?

[MaryAnn Notarianni]

We've done a number of research studies. We haven't done any specific research on veteran homelessness.

[Terry Dowdall, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Okay, so it has never been asked.

The government numbers are all over the place. Some people are saying 2,000; some say 10,000. It just seems like there's such a wide variety, but it's one of those issues for which you would want to know the number. I think that would be an important study.

[MaryAnn Notarianni]

I don't have that top of mind. I don't want to speak for my team, which is more closely connected with some of the work that intersects those issues.

[Terry Dowdall, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Over the course of this study, the committee has heard that indigenous veterans are at a higher risk of homelessness than other groups of veterans. Have you conducted any research on this, and why do you think this is the case?

[MaryAnn Notarianni]

We at Atlas have not yet conducted a study on indigenous veterans and their risk for homelessness. Our focus so far on work related to first nations, Inuit, Métis and indigenous veterans has been what Meriem outlined. We're working collaboratively to respond to knowledge needs and support mental health and wellness.

Based on what we know about some of the social determinants of health and what might contribute to people experiencing housing issues like homelessness, a lot of the issues we understand as social determinants of health might be factors there. We're hearing a lot about issues related to the housing crisis in Canada, and you're exacerbating that with things like systemic racism and so on, which I think has come through in testimony at this committee. I would venture to say those factors would all be at play.

[Terry Dowdall, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Has no one reached out to you to study some of these issues, or give you a heads-up that this is what we should be looking into?

[MaryAnn Notarianni]

We do work to identify what research to undertake, and there are a lot of needs, actually. I think an important overarching message here is that when it comes to veteran family mental health, there are a lot of needs to look at, including in specific subpopulations of veterans. We address that. Indigenous and Black veterans are among the groups where more needs to be researched.

Is that time? I'm sorry.

[Terry Dowdall, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

He's shutting us down.

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

I'm sorry, Mr. Dowdall. Even though I'm pleased to give you the floor, your time is over. Thank you.

I'd like to invite Ms. Lisa Hepfner to the floor for five minutes.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I would like to go back to Madam Maria Trujillo. I lived in Honduras for a year, and there's a major city by the name of Trujillo there. Please let me know if I'm pronouncing your name incorrectly.

Your work seems really important for our efforts toward reconciliation. I'm wondering if you would comment on that. Do you agree?

[Maria Trujillo]

Yes, definitely.

Through our work, a secondary effect has been more recognition that so many indigenous veterans served in the world wars and continue to serve. We place tombstones in indigenous communities, non-indigenous communities and municipal cemeteries. A secondary effect of having a tombstone with an indigenous symbol and name in a municipal cemetery is it's a chance for non-indigenous Canadians to see how many indigenous veterans served. When someone walks by a tombstone that has a cultural symbol or an indigenous name and they aren't aware that so many indigenous veterans served in the Canadian Armed Forces, it's an educational moment for them. I think it serves to educate non-indigenous Canadians on the huge contribution indigenous veterans have made and continue to make to the Canadian Armed Forces. It builds a bridge in that sense. Reconciliation can also be an educative moment for non-indigenous Canadians.

Adding a traditional name is a very important component. We know traditional names and indigenous languages were banned in residential schools. Adding a traditional name to the grave marker is a way to hopefully reclaim history for the families who lost their traditional names and languages in residential schools. I think it's a small step. We know an important component of reconciliation is bringing back indigenous languages.

In summary, it creates visibility for the cultures that served.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

It's very important work. Thank you so much for that.

I understand there's a documentary or film under way. Would you tell us more about that?

[Maria Trujillo]

It's a short documentary. It was released in 2022 thanks to generous funding from the Bank of Montreal. It covers the work we did with three communities: Kitigan Zibi in Quebec, Kawacatoose First Nation in Saskatchewan and a third one in the Northwest Territories, which was our collaboration with retired master warrant officer Floyd Powder.

The documentary serves to document the work we've done in those three corners of Canada. It captures, to an extent, how finding unmarked grave is tricky work, but it also captures the impact this has on communities. What I like about it is that we see the generational impact as well. We see that it brings communities together, including younger members of them. It gives them pride to see that their grandfather or grandmother served.

It's on our website. It's free and open to the public. If you want to see it, just google “the Last Post Fund”. It's under the indigenous veterans initiative. It's available for everyone to see.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

I will make a point of doing that. Thank you very much.

I would like to turn now to Indspire and Mr. Shead.

I'm hoping you can talk to us a bit more about the challenges that many indigenous veterans face in the transition from military service, particularly in education and employment. Perhaps you have some suggestions or ideas on how the government can better support those veterans in their transition.

[William Shead]

I'll start with a suggestion. Governments, particularly the federal government, have tremendous bureaucracies that can identify problems, but I think they have difficulty delivering. The organizations that I find can deliver some of the needed services to indigenous people, including veterans...can largely be achieved better by volunteer organizations. For example, the Canadian Corps of Commissionaires has for decades been involved in helping veterans find employment and other needed benefits. There is the Legion as well, and all of the veterans' organizations.

They're close to the ground. Veterans are not concentrated in one particular locality. They're all over the place, so you need a volunteer organization to do the service.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Thank you, Mr. Shead. Maybe you will get other questions.

I will now pass the floor to Mr. Champoux for a short two and a half minutes.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

I am going to try to be concise, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Trujillo, yours is a very important mission. I respect it and I admire it a lot. At the Remembrance Day celebrations back home in Drummond few years ago, I had a conversation with the widow of a soldier who died in combat, who was indigenous. She looked at the names on the cenotaph and said, "That's not his name. He didn't call himself that." It startled me a bit, because that definitely wasn't on the agenda at that time, but I thought it was a very important question.

You are doing very important work on the question of tombstones, in particular. You want to give indigenous members of the armed forces back the respect they are owed.

Do you intend to extend this mission? I gave the example of cenotaphs, but we also kind of need to respect and celebrate the indigenous origins of these people during their lives, during their years of service.

[Maria Trujillo]

Thank you for the question.

So far, we really just focus on providing grave markers. The question of cenotaphs does come up. What we usually do is redirect the community to the funds that are available through Veterans Affairs, such as the commemorative partnership fund, as I think it's called. Some communities have been able to get new cenotaphs or repair existing cenotaphs precisely for adding new names or new members, so we usually refer them to VAC for that.

At the Last Post Fund, our mission is focused on providing grave markers and our funeral burial program as well, but we do try to create a link between ourselves and our main funder, which is Veterans Affairs Canada, and the programs that Veterans Affairs offers in veteran communities for that.

I think that will be our focus for now, but we try to create links to see which other organizations are doing programs that we can maybe refer people to.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

What you are doing is very important, and I congratulate you. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Thank you, Mr. Champoux.

Ms. Blaney, the floor is yours for two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair.

I have a question or two for Atlas. I will let either one of you decide who the right person is to answer.

I've heard how broadly you try to get veterans to participate. One thing I would like to hear a little information about is how you address mental health issues. We know that some veterans have mental health challenges. I'm really curious about how the space is made safe for those veterans to express what they need to, while having the support and maybe the aftercare they may require.

The other question is about diversity. We've seen in this study that the voices of Black veterans are not coming out. I've talked to several people from that community, and there's a very clear resistance to coming out, which I found really concerning. I'm wondering how to make sure that when you're doing a study on veterans, the voices of indigenous people, Black people and people of colour are actually heard. How do you address that nuance? I'm just curious if you could talk about that from a research perspective.

[MaryAnn Notarianni]

Both are very important questions. Thank you for that.

To the second question, in the research we do, for the most part we are actively trying to ensure we have diversity across all our studies, and there are ways to do that. I recognize, too, that there may be populations where there could be mistrust with research. It is so important that we build visibility and relationships by doing outreach, getting out there and growing our network, trying our best to ensure that there's diversity among our network so that, again, we can build on relationships and get the word out. Then people can participate and we have that diversity reflected in our studies.

With respect to how we do our work, our mandate is around mental health and working with veterans with the lived experience of PTSD and related mental health conditions and with their families. That's something we absolutely take very seriously in our work. We're bringing people to the table to inform knowledge products, as Meriem has spoken about, and to codevelop with us on often sensitive topics, such as intimate partner violence and military sexual trauma.

Perhaps Meriem can speak to some recent examples of what we've put in place, because there are trauma-informed strategies that allow individuals to provide feedback, though it is done in such a way that we're minimizing the risk of harm. When we engage these volunteers in that capacity, we often have opportunities to connect with a mental health resource so that when we bring people together for events, for example, we have that.

Perhaps Meriem wants to share more practical strategies.