My recommendation is that there must be checks and balances. When you turn around and tell a veteran that they can do a priority hiring and stuff like that within the government.... I went through all of that. I went through the priority hiring. I lucked out—like I said, I'm a dog with a bone—but take the guys I mentioned in my opening statement: It didn't work for them. The civilian side is not looking at, yes, this is a veteran, and he's a priority hire.
After I got into the civil service side at Shared Services and stuff, I heard comments like, “Oh. You're a priority hire.” Yeah? “Well, I had a friend who put in for that job too.”
That wasn't my problem. I'd already done 30 years serving all over my country, and that was supposed to be my country giving back to me a little bit. They're not doing it the way they should be doing it. Nobody's watching the hiring practices that are going on.
When it came time for me to qualify to be a computer network analyst, I had all the courses but I never had that piece of paper that said I had a computer science degree. Luckily, the guy who hired me said, “I don't care. I want you to work for me because you have the training”, but that was one in probably 25 people who would go out on a limb. He actually had to fight for me to do that.
Then, when it came time for the security clearance, I didn't understand that the military security clearance and the civilian security clearance, although they're all done by most of the same people in the RCMP, don't roll over. I had already carried a “secret” security clearance within the military, but I had to wait another four months for them to do a security clearance check so that I could get another “secret” clearance.
Stuff like that is not helping a veteran when he's trying to get a job to put food on his table for him and his family.