Veterans Affairs Committee on Oct. 6th, 2022

[Karen Hogan]

I...

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

Would you prefer another question?

[Karen Hogan]

No. I would just like to say that for seven years, Veterans Affairs Canada has not met its service standards objectives for veterans.

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

Are you talking about backlogs?

[Karen Hogan]

No, I'm simply talking about the department's service standards. One of them says that the department must process an application within 16 weeks, but that target has not been reached for seven years. I think it is important to mention it. It is not that it achieved the target one year and missed it the next year, and so on. It did not achieve it for seven consecutive years. That long a period without improvement cannot be justified.

You mentioned francophones. Contrary to what we had stated in our report, we have observed an improvement as a result of the measures taken in response to the veterans ombudsman's report. The situation has improved for francophones, but it has got worse for anglophones. We might say that resources have gone from one pocket to another. A more long-term solution should be applied for managing benefits applications, which are increasing significantly. That is why we have to find a solution that is not temporary, in my opinion.

You asked me whether I would consider the possibility of doing a supplementary audit to determine whether the situation has improved for francophones. If I did a new audit to determine whether the situation has improved, the audit would relate to all veterans, be they anglophones, francophones, women, or men. The audit would include everybody. I think we have to give Veterans Affairs Canada time so the department can try to implement its plan for making improvements.

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

You are more patient than I, ma'am.

I have been seeing the same recommendations for six years, and you have seen the department fail to reach its targets for seven years.

I think 25 francophone adjudicators have been hired.

Did you have an opportunity to meet them or talk to them during your audit?

[Karen Hogan]

No, we did not talk with the francophones who processed applications.

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

You are nonetheless satisfied that 25 people are operational and are working on francophones' cases in Montreal.

Is that correct?

[Isabelle Marsolais, Director, Office of the Auditor General]

If I may, I am going to answer that question.

There is no reference to these 25 people in the report. I don't know what the source of that information is. We do know that a francophone unit has been established in Montreal to process francophone applications only.

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

Right.

Do you know what work those adjudicators are supposed to do?

Are they processing only francophone applications?

Are they francophones or supposedly bilingual employees?

[Isabelle Marsolais]

I do not think we have all those details.

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

Right.

[Karen Hogan]

We did not look at the staff in particular. We know there is a francophone unit in Montreal and a bilingual unit here in Ottawa, and that their priority is processing francophone applications, but I do not have more details about their staffing and about exactly what they do on a day‑to‑day basis.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Thank you, Mr. Desilets.

Ms. Blaney, the floor is yours for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair. Just before I start, I also want to wish all the best to our previous clerk. I really appreciate his service to our committee. I'm sad to see him go.

I want to thank everybody from the Auditor General's office for their incredible work. I found this report very enlightening. I really appreciate it.

My office was just recently contacted by one of the veterans who's a regular with us. He told us that he sent an application in March for a mouthguard, because he's grinding his teeth when he sleeps. He had a request for additional paperwork in June. He uploaded all of that to his My VAC account in July, and then was told he had to wait 33 weeks to get a response to that. I think that's a pretty clear example of what's continuing to happen.

One recommendation you brought forward was to provide useful waiting-time information for veterans. I'm just wondering what that means. Because I don't know all of their systems, what things do they need to do to improve that so that veterans get the information and we can see those wait times get shorter? It seems crazy that for something that simple they're waiting that long.

[Karen Hogan]

I hear you about the wait times. On the useful information, I guess it's about making it clear to veterans that the website might say the service standard is 16 weeks, but they have to read into what that means—16 weeks from a completed application in 18% of the cases. There are lots of caveats to that.

An application is complete only once all that back and forth has happened with the veteran. I can appreciate that a veteran thinks that they sent in their application in March, so it's complete, but it's not if they're still going back and forth looking for additional information. The clock starts ticking once it's a completed application. I think part of that is making it clearer to veterans when that starts, and when the expectation starts.

Then it's about ending it at the same time. You might land on a decision that this is an eligible injury, but then the whole assessment of the severity needs to happen, which establishes the amount that will happen. They stop counting when they've made a decision, but there's still a wait time to establish the severity, then to process the payment to a veteran.

I think some transparency about that helps level the set expectations for veterans.

Then it's about finding out where all of those bottlenecks are and tackling them in a concrete way. That's what we saw. They don't have that information. They can't tell you where something sits in the process longer and why, so they're unable to really target measures to improve the processing time.

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

Well, I appreciate your bringing up that idea of data and its importance. I found that really interesting. I've heard this in other ways, that we've tried to figure out issues and it often comes back to the fact that the data and the way it's collected does not provide for an opportunity for us as MPs, or our constituents, to understand. That's incredibly frustrating.

You have recommendations on the data. I'm just trying to understand the process. I understand that you said earlier that we have to let them have a bit of time to try to figure that out and implement it, but what is the process? Is there any sort of accountability, so that we can call on the government to address these issues in a more timely fashion as opposed to waiting, perhaps, another seven years?

[Karen Hogan]

Well, we did a report back in 2014 that looked at mental health applications for veterans. In that report, we recommended that the department look at what is causing the delays and then implement measures to address them. I'm not sure they have tackled that first part, which is identifying what is causing the delays. Some of it is having a better case management system. There are so many out there; there are so many ways of managing this data to be able to track how long a file sits in a certain area.

We have one exhibit in which we talk about how they've started to track it now, which is new. They didn't track it in the past. They can now track how long a file sits once it's been decided that it's complete, before it gets assigned to an adjudicator. That's important to know. If that's a bottleneck or there's a delay there, then you can implement measures to fix that.

It's about tracking a file in a consistent way, but also about tracking it in a quality way. Some of the data quality issues we saw were that a file was put in there and the date of entry looked like it was 10 years ago. When we challenged, they said, oh no, that was a typo that has to be fixed. Some of it is human quality, but some of it is having the right system to track an application through the steps.

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

This is so interesting. One thing I'm hearing really clearly is that they may not have that double oversight, where somebody goes through and does quality control and looks at making sure the date wasn't entered as 10 years ago.

[Karen Hogan]

Yes.

I think that's why we ended up with medians instead of averages, right? There were some outliers, so that if we used an average, it would have really skewed the results. We had to do a median calculation, even though it's a harder concept to get across. However, there were some data quality issues that caused us to have to go that route.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Thank you. Now let's go for a second round.

We will start this round of five minutes with Mr. Frank Caputo.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Madam Auditor General and staff, thank you for being here.

I reviewed this report with interest. I used to teach, and when I was looking at this performance, I think we can all agree that this report discloses what is essentially a failing grade. It seems as though we're not getting to where we need to be, and the last seven years, since 2015, haven't really got us there.

I tried to find something positive in this report, and I take it you would agree that there's not much positive that we can really glean from this. Is that accurate to the situation?

[Karen Hogan]

The way I would describe it is that the government has failed to meet a promise that it made to its veterans, that it would take care of them if they were injured while they protected and served our country.