Veterans Affairs Committee on Oct. 6th, 2022

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

I would like to correct the statement I made a little earlier, that unanimous consent of committee members is required. That is not the case. We started the meeting 12 minutes late. The committee is therefore entitled to continue for another 12 minutes.

Mr. Desilets, the floor is yours for two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I am a former school principal. If I had had to keep a school running where 50% of the employees were temporary, it would have been impossible. I see an important potential solution here that we have in fact proposed at the committee in the past.

Employees are the most important resource in an organization. This has to be remembered. After listening to what has been said at this meeting, I realize that veterans are not being respected and employees' needs are not being taken seriously.

It makes no sense that half of the employees are temporary.

Ms. Hogan, you said that 43 employees had quit their job during the period covered by your audit. That does not make sense, and that is not counting all the time it took to train them. It is illogical.

How can you explain this situation?

Why does an organization like that agree to resort to temporary employees in such large numbers?

[Karen Hogan]

You are right to say that public service employees are exceptional, and I believe Veterans Affairs Canada employees are as well. They work very hard, and they genuinely want to improve the lives of Canadians.

I do not know whether it is the department's decision to have temporary employees. I can only say that the budget gave it temporary funds. You cannot hire full-time employees without long-term funding.

It is indeed difficult to manage an organization when employees may leave their position...

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

... when they may leave it at any time.

I do not see where the logic is in having employees who will still be temporary after several years. They will always need staff to process applications. Ultimately, this does not save any money, and it seems to me, most importantly, it cannot perform its mission.

I have no other questions.

Ms. Hogan, do you have a final comment to make?

[Karen Hogan]

I will just add that hiring temporary employees leads to staff turnover, and that is expensive.

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

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Thank you, Mr. Desilets.

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

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

You said five, and I'm going to take it.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

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

You mentioned the challenges for women, and you talked about the name change. For my first question, was that the only issue you could find, or was there any idea that there might be other challenges for women and other reasons they were waiting longer?

[Karen Hogan]

Again, it was difficult for us to identify. It was clearly one of the issues that had been identified through the gender-based analysis plus, which the department had done. We saw it materialize in the length of time, and they're trying to fix it.

I think there might also be a challenge on the medical side of treatment. There are not a lot of women in service, so all the impacts of post-traumatic stress syndrome and other issues on female service members are really not that well known or understood, so there is some of that information missing that might cause other delays.

Again, we couldn't really pinpoint them all, but I think those were two areas I would point to that would cause delays for women.

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

In your time there, do you know how many of the files that were processed were denied? Do you have that number at all?

[Karen Hogan]

No. I'm sorry. I don't have that number.

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

That's fine. I just wanted to check.

One of the things we keep hearing is.... A lot of veterans organizations have been very clear that they would like to see automatic approval, with a review process after and then a fixing up of the system. This way, veterans get the services immediately, even if it's a baseline and additions may then be added.

Do you have any thoughts on that sort of idea—of the process being one of automatic approval and then a review—to make sure veterans get their needs met?

[Karen Hogan]

I think that process has some merit when it's founded with some information. As I mentioned earlier, if you know there are certain conditions that, for the majority, are always approved, there is a base level, and then it's adjusted based on the severity of the injury. That is a likely solution.

I caution against no upfront vetting and payment controls. There is some due diligence that needs to happen. No upfront vetting comes with a cost, a need to make sure you look at it in a fulsome manner post payment.

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

Chair, I'm sorry to bother you, but it has come to my attention that the documents from StatsCan that we received for the survivor pensions benefit study that we did are not published on the website. The testimony is, but those documents are not.

I wonder if we could get that fixed, so that we have that information publicly. I'll leave it to you. Maybe next time, you guys can let me know.

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Thank you so much. I'll get back to you on that.

Now, for five minutes, I'd like to invite Mrs. Cathay Wagantall. The floor is yours.

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

Thank you so much, Chair.

I'd like to comment and get your feedback on your final recommendation, which says:

Veterans Affairs Canada should work with central government agencies to establish a sustainable long‑term resourcing plan for processing disability benefit applications in a timely manner. This plan should consider the number of applications the department expects to receive and the efficiency it expects to gain from its process improvement initiatives.

You do a lot of studies, I assume, of different departments. In this case, I thought the response from VAC was very telling. The comment is that between 2015–16 and 2019–20, it “experienced a significant increase in disability benefits applications”. There were 40% more overall, and 75% more first-time applications. It talked about bringing in temporary funding on a number of occasions to hire staff to try to address the issue.

However, I thought this next sentence was important, and I'd like your feedback on it:

[T]he Department was not able to fully assess the impact that would result from the introduction of new programs and other commitments.

That to me, as someone in business, says they're making decisions without fully looking at the potential negatives and the potential positives, the highest cost to them and possibly the lowest. This to me says that as they brought these programs in, there wasn't enough consideration given to what they were going to cost. Clearly, what they have cost is a significant backlog in veterans receiving their reports.

[Karen Hogan]

I encourage you to invite Veterans Canada to explain its response in more fulsome detail. What I believe it's pointing to is that some of the funding that was received was used to put in place those 16 strategies that we talked about, which it hoped would improve processing times. I don't think it was able to know whether that would help or not and how to assess it all. That's why I think it needs to work with the central agencies.

Getting temporary funding is a solution for certain issues, absolutely. However, this is a really long-standing one, so I think you need some foundational information to know what the right level of resources is that you need to treat the applications, and there's been a sizable increase in applications.

What do you need to deal with the backlog and what do you need to implement improvements? Some of that can and should be temporary funding if you're just trying to implement measures that will then have a long-term, enduring effect.

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

Thank you.

Do I have some time left? I do.

In the process that you went through over that time frame, it was the COVID time frame. Is that correct?

[Karen Hogan]

Do you mean the audit period?

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

Right.

[Karen Hogan]

It did include part of COVID, yes. We started April 1, 2020.

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

Did you have any sense of the dynamic around all of these files and the public servants' not being in their place of work, having to transition to home? I've had situations where a file was needed, and unfortunately they had missed getting it. They had to wait their turn in the queue to come back and get what they had missed—that type of thing. Are they back in their offices, do you know? Do you think that plays a role in giving good service to our veterans: having the public servants and all of that paperwork and whatnot in the same place at the same time?