Evidence of meeting #21 for Veterans Affairs in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was report.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
Frank Caputo Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
Yes, and that's a sacrosanct promise. To me, that's as basic a promise as we can get. Not only does your report say that the government failed to meet that promise, but it's been an ongoing issue.
What I take from your report is that there's really not a tangible end in sight to that promise being met. Would you agree with that?
4:15 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
I think there was a lot of activity that was meant to try to improve it and meet that promise, but they weren't able to do it in the period of our audit, no.
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
Frank Caputo Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
We have a situation where I believe that $138 million was spent to address the backlog, the service standard not being met in seven years.
Is that correct? Does that accord with your understanding, approximately?
4:15 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
I'm sorry, I'm not sure where the $138 million came from.
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
Frank Caputo Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
It was recently. The government has recently supported that.
4:15 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
If that was a recent announcement, I'll defer to your knowledge on the amount.
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
Frank Caputo Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
Okay. The bottom line is this: The backlog is being addressed by employees, and those employees are temporary. Is that generally right?
4:15 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
About half the employees who are in the unit that services the demand are temporary, yes.
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
Frank Caputo Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
Right. Certainly, when you're a temporary employee, you want to have permanent employment. That's pretty obvious. Is that right?
4:15 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
I would think that most people would prefer permanent employment. Some people might like to be temporary.
However, in this case, I think we saw that there were individuals who left for more permanent positions within the federal public service.
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
Frank Caputo Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
Right, so the cycle essentially repeats itself, because we have a situation in which the department trains people who, after a short time, are leaving to go elsewhere The backlog can't really be addressed because of the fact that a permanent employment contract is much more alluring than a temporary contract. Do you see what I'm saying?
4:15 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
Yes, absolutely. You raise a great point.
Onboarding any new employee takes time, effort and money. In training them, they need to get to a place where they become really efficient at doing their job. That's a costly turn if you're losing people because they're not in permanent positions.
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
Frank Caputo Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
That's right.
Now, based on what you saw, would it have been more prudent to hire these people permanently rather than temporarily, just in noting that attrition happens in the federal public service and things like that?
4:15 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
One of our recommendations was to find a long-term, sustainable staffing solution and a staffing plan. I think a lot of the permanent funding was provided in order to address the backlog. To me, that was just one part of the issue.
The issue is really that the organization has not been able to meet its service standard in seven years, so it's not just about addressing the backlog. That maybe needs permanent staffing, but there's a long-term, more sustainable solution needed to meet the level of demand in general, in addition, then, to addressing the backlog.
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
Frank Caputo Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
Well, certainly when we talk about a long-term, sustainable demand, it's obvious the needs are really there when it comes to the RCMP, women and francophones as well. Is that correct?
4:15 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
I think all of the veterans are waiting 39 weeks, which is far longer than the service standard. Then there are subgroups waiting even longer. I think the demand would be for all veterans, but yes, there's a unique need to address women, francophone and RCMP veterans.
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
Frank Caputo Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
Okay.
Is there anything positive that you can point to? The only thing I could see was at paragraph 2.39, and even then it said the data was too “poor”. When I read this report, I see nothing positive that we can point to, and that's discouraging.
I'll leave it at that.
4:20 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
Well, I think we saw some improvements here and there. I don't believe the department knows why those improvements occurred, but I think that, overall, veterans waiting for 39 weeks is far too long.
4:20 p.m.
Conservative
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Emmanuel Dubourg
Thank you, Ms. Hogan, and thank you, Mr. Caputo.
Now I have Mr. Churence Rogers for five minutes, please.
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
Churence Rogers Liberal Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL
Thank you, Chair.
Welcome to our witnesses. I appreciate having you here today. Thank you for your report.
I realize, of course, that your report goes back a ways, from April 1 to September 30, 2020. I look at some of the numbers we've heard in this committee, from the minister and others, when some of these questions were posed to them.
You keep referencing seven years. Is that the last time an audit was done? What happened beyond that? Were there problems before the seven years? Is this something that's been systemic for a longer period of time?
4:20 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
Mr. Chair, I just want to point out a clarification. Our audit period ended on September 30, 2021. That's just so we know that we actually went to 2021, not 2020, as the member mentioned.
We did an audit back in 2014. The ombud did an audit in 2018. When we looked back to see when the last time was that the service standard was being met—which is 16 weeks in 80% of the cases—it had been seven years since the department was able to demonstrate that it was meeting its published service standard.
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
Churence Rogers Liberal Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL
Thank you for that.
I asked that question because I wonder if you know what's happening today at Veterans Affairs, since your report was submitted, because since 2020 there has been an investment of $340 million and the $140 million referenced earlier by my colleague. Have you seen, as a result of that, or are you aware of that investment and if there have been any improvements in Veterans Affairs because of it? Should it make a big difference, that kind of investment?
4:20 p.m.
Assistant Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General
To refer to the report, at paragraph 2.38 we are talking about 16 initiatives that were launched by VAC in order to improve processing times and to improve the quality of the data it had. On the number of initiatives that it's presenting or has presented or is at least going forward on, it has not yet achieved the end of that process of implementing those results. According to the department, this will all come to a finalization in 2024.
We've seen some initiatives in order to improve, but as we were doing our audit we were not able to look specifically at outcomes around those specific initiatives.