Veterans Affairs Committee on Jan. 30th, 2023

[LCol (Ret'd) Chris Hutt]

Within the ecosystem in veterans employment, there are a number of governmental and non-governmental organizations and for-profit enterprises. One of the ones specific to entrepreneurship is a non-profit organization called the Prince's Charities. We maintain linkages and communication with that organization, which provides a number of education and awareness programs around entrepreneurship specifically targeting veterans.

That's one avenue the veterans have that we maintain linkages with. As we analyze this part of the problem for the strategy, the intent is that we don't want to replace what these third parties are doing. We want to reinforce and support them and create that alignment that I mentioned before, and then identify gaps.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Mr. Hutt.

Now I'd like to go back to MP Blake Richards for five minutes, please.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Thanks. We got cut off. Maybe I'll try this again by being a bit more succinct in terms of what I'm asking, and maybe we can explore it a little bit more.

When medically released veterans were surveyed, they were asked whether or not they agreed with this statement: I have increased access to programs and services to assist me with my transition from military to civilian life.

That's exactly what we're talking about here. Gaining meaningful employment is a huge part of the transition to civilian life. In 2021, 29% agreed with that statement. In 2022, there was a little bit of improvement at 42%. That still says that the vast majority of medically released veterans are saying they are not happy with the access they have to programs and services to assist them in that transition, which says there is something that needs to be done better and differently to help veterans in this area.

Can you give me some specific examples of what you're doing to make that transition better for those veterans?

[Steven Harris]

If I understand the data point he's coming from, there is the veteran family program and the military family resource centres, which are managed by our colleagues with the Canadian Armed Forces. We help fund the veteran family program, and clearly there's some work to do with respect to the veteran family program to make sure that awareness is higher amongst all of the participating MFRCs in that particular area. We'll continue to work with them as our partners in terms of that service delivery.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Can I interrupt you there?

[Steven Harris]

Sure.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

I'll be honest. I'm getting a little frustrated today, because I keep hearing, “We're going to work on this to try to get better.” This isn't a new problem. This committee has looked at this before, and the recommendations coming out of this committee before were saying that this has to be better. There were reports in 2018 and 2019. There were indications from things like this.

I wasn't here in 2018 or 2019 on this committee, but I imagine we would have heard the same thing back then, that you know you have to do better and you're going to do better. We have all these ideas. Can you give me some specific examples of things you're doing? Give me even one example of a specific thing you're doing right now to try to improve this. Also, how do you measure whether you were successful or not?

I'll be honest. I'm getting a little frustrated, because I keep hearing, “We're working on it. We're working on it.” What exactly are you doing?

[Steven Harris]

I appreciate that. I'd say we've introduced new programs since 2018 to help focus specifically on transition and improving the ability of Canadian Armed Forces members to transition.

We've spoken about the career transition services. That helps veterans—and even, in some cases, their spouses—look for employment, find employment and be prepared to actually go out and seek employment, from CVs, résumé preparation, interview preparation and others.

The education and training benefit, again, helps veterans transition where skills may not necessarily be fully there to allow them to do that. It helps them in that sense as well.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Those are two examples, and I appreciate some examples. That's good. I have questions on both of those examples. When were those things put in place, what do you do to measure the results and what have the results been?

[Steven Harris]

The two programs were launched in 2018, so they've been in place for a couple of years now—as Mr. Hutt indicated earlier.

We've also added a whole host of things. I mentioned in my earlier—

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

I'm sorry. On those programs, what do you do to measure the results and what have those results been?

[Steven Harris]

We actually survey veterans who participate in the career transition services, for example, to get their feedback on what's worked for them and what hasn't worked for them. That's for the number of folks who go that through that one.

We mentioned some numbers earlier around the participation in the education and training benefit program and people who go through and complete educational processes and ultimately end up going on to additional employment.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Can you give me those numbers in both cases?

[Steven Harris]

Yes.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

I absolutely do not question your commitment to try to be better. I hear that. I understand what you're saying, but I think it's really important that we measure what we're doing to make sure it is actually having an impact and to adjust it if needed. With both those programs you've just mentioned, what did we see in improvements in concrete terms?

[Jane Hicks]

Mr. Chair, as part of the—

[Darrell Samson, Liberal, Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, NS]

I have a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

I just want to underline that I believe Mr. Richards is going ahead of our task here. All the work is not done and completed—absolutely not. That's why we're consulting. We're in front of the committee to learn and to have some examples, but this is not an end product. This is a process.

We are consulting and working with our committee and hopefully our report will help with the steps being taken, but he seems to be looking for answers—

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Mr. Samson, thank you.

Let's go back to Mr. Richards, who would like to respond to that.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

If I can, Mr. Chair, I think the parliamentary secretary actually makes the very point I'm trying to make. We've had these conversations before in this committee. This committee did reports previously. It's always, “We're just kind of starting. We're going to see what we can do.”

The whole point I'm making here is this: How do we measure that what we're doing is having success? We can't keep having the conversation over and over again. I don't really think it's a point of order, so maybe we can go back to the witnesses—

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

I understand, Mr. Richards. I know members are allowed to ask questions.

Excuse me, Ms. Hicks. Go ahead, please. You have 30 seconds.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

If I can just remind you, what I'm looking for is what the concrete results are of those things. Do you feel comfortable that they've been successful based on the results?

[Jane Hicks]

Both the career transition services and the education and training benefit were evaluated in 2021-22. There was a departmental evaluation that was completed, with results. The report was published in 2022. As a result of those, recommendations and actions have been taken to improve communications awareness, so there is some measurement of the two programs.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

I know that my time is up, Mr. Chair, but I just wanted to ask if they could table the results, because then we could see the numbers.

Could you table that with the committee?

[Steven Harris]

It's actually public. It's published on the Veterans Affairs website. We can share it.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Could you share it so that we don't have to go looking for it?