Thank you, Mr. Chair and House of Commons Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs, for the study on third party contracting out of services.
My name is Master Corporal Kelly Carter, retired, and I am a 30-year veteran of the Canadian Armed Forces army logistics branch. I retired out of Garrison Edmonton in Alberta on August 14, 2013. I have six recognized operational and service-related physical injuries, all chronic, with varying degrees of mobility issues and with pain management that I deal with drug-free.
I left the military with all my weight-bearing joints suffering from osteoarthritis and was bone-on-bone for what has now been mandated for Veterans Affairs Canada to recognize as cumulative joint trauma. The Land Forces Command physical fitness standard, also called the battle fitness test, or BFT, and weekly training for the annual test of forced rucksack marches with a 25-kilogram load I directly blame for approximately 75% of my cumulative joint trauma, now legislated and mandated as a recognized pensionable condition by the veterans charter and Veterans Affairs Canada.
I served on two tours of duty in airborne special operations positions and self-identify approximately 15% of my cumulative joint trauma on airborne parachuting and operational missions.
I was a professional athlete for the Canadian Armed Forces triathlon and swimming teams. While the cycling and swimming were lower-impact, to the running training for the Olympic triathlon distance of 10 kilometres I attribute 10% of my cumulative joint trauma.
I would like to bring forth to this committee my dealings with VAC third party contractors that Veterans Affairs Canada has farmed out their federal public service duties to. I have had horrible experiences with third party contractors, including the organization doing business as “Canadian Veterans Vocational Rehabilitation Services”, or CVVRS, once in my home in Calgary, Alberta, in May 2017, and several times in B.C. in late 2020.
On May 9, 2017, a man who worked for CVVRS entered my home in Calgary and had me answer a series of questions pertaining to my personal life, income and expenses and do physical tests that I can best describe as “dog tricks”. While I was standing in my living room, he had me conduct a series of physical tests while he sat at my dining room table taking notes.
The tests had me pretending to pick up a box, simulating walking up and down stairs and going down and crouching like a tiger about to pounce. At one point, he asked me to go down on my hands and knees and crawl around my floor while he stood up and watched me crawl around. It was at this point that my Irish anger came out. I terminated the testing, asked him to leave my home and escorted him out of my home.
I then filed a formal written complaint to my VAC caseworker Brian Rees, and later initiated a ministerial inquiry to the VAC minister and Calgary member of Parliament Kent Hehr. My letter has been provided as documentary evidence for translation and the public record.
My other incident with CVVRS was in Victoria, B.C., in the fall of 2020, on the telephone with a woman by the name of Anita. When I asked her for a list of all the Canadian companies that want to hire veterans like me to be sent to my email address, she laughed at me, mocked me and thought it was funny. During an ATIP request, I found evidence of her mocking me on my VAC notes.
I was forthright with CVVRS that if they could not provide me with the list I had requested, they were a group of fake phony-baloney frauds who were not there to actually help veterans find a job but to administer to VAC proof that we were applying for five to seven jobs per week and not actually helping us find employment. My VAC caseworker, based out of Nanaimo, B.C., whom I have never met in my life—she was a work-from-home-in-pajamas employee—lied to me when she said that the CVVRS organization was not the same CVVRS organization that I dealt with in Calgary on May 9, 2017.
In 2019, while I was employed with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, I wanted to pursue a course held twice a year in B.C. I completed the Veterans Affairs Canada education and training benefit short-course forms required and, with a cover letter, asked VAC to contact me for other questions that I had. I missed the spring and fall 2019 courses, with no response from VAC.
We are threatened by the letter of authorization, which has been provided as documentary evidence for translation, that we cannot enrol in these programs until authority has been given by VAC or we will not be reimbursed.
During a 2020-21 formal investigation I ordered to be conducted by Veterans Affairs Canada, I was told by my caseworker, Ms. Danielle Roline-Dilbert, that VAC does not administer the education and training benefit, which is $80,000 for me. It is handled by a third party—
