Veterans Affairs Committee on March 20th, 2023

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

This is your chance to respond. He didn't give you a chance to respond. I'm giving it to you.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

Thank you so much, Mr. Casey.

The fact is that we provided a contract for 14,000 veterans to access expert professional people in 600-plus areas. There will be more veterans and more sites for them to go to. The 600 can increase, and the veterans can increase. What we want to do with this contract is to make sure we provide veterans with what they need, where they need it. You know very well, yourself, that veterans, in certain parts of the country, might have to travel 200 miles. We want to stop that. We want to provide what's right for veterans.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Okay.

I want to come back to the staffing complement, for a minute. In the departmental plan for 2023-24, there's an indication that staffing numbers at Veterans Affairs Canada have gone up, but are scheduled, over the next two years, to go down by 20%.

Why is that?

[Paul Ledwell, Deputy Minister, Department of Veterans Affairs]

Mr. Chair, I'll indicate that those are the additional surge resources, which are there for the backlog. There's a commitment, through to fiscal year 2023-24, for those who are working on service excellence. There's a commitment, through 2024-25, with respect to case management. Beyond that, there's no further commitment.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Okay.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

It's important to note that this is the case at the moment. Things change.

As you know, we invested $340 million to hire people to deal with this backlog, and we are succeeding.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Thank you.

Regarding veterans who go to an appeal board, there's an indication, in the estimates, that there's a 40% increase in the appropriation for VRAB.

Are these the 39 extra people who have been hired? Can you speak a bit to that, please?

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

Of course, the Veterans Review and Appeal Board deals with applications too. When they have a backlog, that's a backlog too. We have to deal with both of those issues, and that's what we're doing.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Is the increase in workload at the Veterans Review and Appeal Board directly tied to cleaning up the backlog?

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

Yes. That will be a backlog if it's not dealt with too. As you know, the 40-some per cent increase in applications means there are a lot more applications that we deal with on the front end. Then, if things have to go to the Veterans Review and Appeal Board, more applications will end up there. We make sure we deal with that. That's why.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

I want to take one more shot at this lapsed-funding business. It's my understanding that you never really know in any given year how much you're going to need at Veterans Affairs because everything is demand-based. The more demand there is, if every single viable claim gets paid, the more money you need to pay.

Is that what's behind the whole idea of lapsed funding: the inability to always pinpoint what the demand will be?

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

You have five seconds.

[Lawrence MacAulay, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

Yes, we always have to have the money to make sure our veterans receive—

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Thank you so much, Mr. Casey.

I'd like to thank the minister for coming.

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

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

The minister indicated that he was hoping for a few more questions from me. I have some more questions for him if he'd like to stay five more minutes.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Mr. Richards, we have work to do.

Minister, I thank you so much for your appearance today.

I'll suspend for two minutes, and we'll come back with the public servants.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Let us resume the meeting.

I would first like to remind committee members that, aside from the four witnesses in the room, we have the Associate Deputy Minister, Mr. Ken MacKillop, and the Assistant Deputy Minister, Commemoration and Public Affairs Branch, Ms. Amy Meunier, appearing via video conference.

Since there are no opening statements, we will go directly to questions.

I would ask committee members to please indicate who their question is directed to.

Let us begin with the first round of questions with six minutes for each member.

I would ask Mr. Blake Richards to begin.

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

Thank you.

I think what I'll do is I'll start, at least, by going back to where we were with my round of questioning with the minister and with regard to the MAID investigation.

I'm still a little unclear as to what was done, other than asking employees to self-disclose if they inappropriately brought something up with a veteran, or doing a keyword search of files. I'm particularly concerned about the point I tried to raise with the minister a few times, which is the idea that, as you indicated, up to 19 additional veterans have come forward with some kind of allegation of inappropriate discussions related to MAID happening with them, but that, in all of the other cases, you determined that nothing was able to validate those allegations.

I'm still left very unclear on what was done to try to validate those allegations. Did anyone at the department actually speak to each of these veterans to determine...? It seems like you've decided that you don't believe them. That's the only assumption one can make when they've brought forward an allegation and you've decided it was not valid.

Did anyone speak to them in detail to find out what their side of the story was? What was then done that led to it being determined that their story was not, in fact, accurate?

[Paul Ledwell]

Thanks very much to honourable member for the question and the opportunity to be clear about this.

Let me say that, from the Veterans Affairs Canada perspective, there was no questioning of the validity of the issues as they're coming forward from the veterans. There was a desire to hear the details and to seek validation for what was being stated and what was being alleged in terms of the counsel they received.

In every case that was brought forward through suggestion or allegation, we sought to get that validation directly from the veteran or from those who might have come forward, suggesting that they knew veterans. We asked them to encourage those veterans to come forward. As the minister has indicated and as we indicated the last time here at committee, if they're not comfortable coming forward to the department—we understand that some might feel some trepidation, if they had a bad experience, to come back to the place where they had that bad experience—they can come forward to the ombud, raise that issue directly with the ombud and indicate it.

It's very important to get to the bottom of the issue and the specificity of what was raised.

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

Can I then ask...? Are you saying that none of these veterans actually...? You heard about them third-hand in all cases. None of these veterans actually came to Veterans Affairs, because otherwise, I assume you would have spoken with them.

Is that what they're you telling me?

[Paul Ledwell]

None of these veterans have come forward directly to Veterans Affairs Canada nor to the ombud with any information.

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

Okay. You're saying what you would encourage.... I appreciate and I indicated myself that many veterans I heard from and whom I'd heard about from others indicated they're afraid to come forward to Veterans Affairs. I appreciate your suggestion that they come to the veterans ombudsman. Certainly, I would make that suggestion to anyone who feels that way, and I hope that some will take you up on that.

Can I ask, as well, did you look through...? It's one thing to ask someone, “Did you do something inappropriate?” I would think, in most cases, most people are going to be pretty reluctant to disclose that they have done something inappropriate. In fact, of the four cases you have, that you're aware of, one of them was almost stumbled upon accidentally by another employee. That's how it seems.

I'm left wondering what was done to try to dig up that information, and one of the things that occurred to me was that employees through Assystnet can request deletions from the files.

Did you do a search to determine whether there were any deletion requests for Assystnet about medical assistance in dying?

[Paul Ledwell]

Mr. Chair, if I could, first of all, it wasn't just a keyword search. It was an analysis of greater than 400,000 files. All of those files are maintained by our professional staff for a reason, which is that it's important to keep a record of the interaction with the veterans they're serving. They can go back and refer to that and see what the progress has been and what kinds of issues were raised. These are detailed case files that are maintained in the department.

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

Specifically to the Assystnet part of it, did you...?