Veterans Affairs Committee on May 1st, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 49 of the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted on Monday, October 3, 2022, the committee is resuming its study on the experience of women veterans.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of Thursday, June 23, 2022. Thank you all for joining us today. Members can participate in person or through the Zoom application.

I would like to welcome Sherry Romanado, who is replacing Sean Casey. Thank you for being with us, Mrs. Romanado.

To ensure an orderly meeting, I invite witnesses and members to address their questions to the chair. Also, in accordance with our routine motion regarding connectivity tests, the committee informs you that the witnesses completed the required testing before the meeting and that everything is in compliance.

Trauma warning: Before we welcome our witnesses, I would like to provide this trigger warning. We will be discussing experiences related to mental health. This can be a trigger for the people in the room, the viewers, the members and their staff who have had similar experiences. If you are upset by the testimony or if you need help, please let the clerk know.

Please go ahead, Mr. Richards.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Very quickly, before you introduce our witnesses, we received a response from VAC today—at least, it was sent around to us today. I noted that the comparison was not an equivalent comparison. It wasn't apples to apples. The comparison was service providers who are available in one case—the case of the new contract—and service providers actively engaged on files, in the other case.

I wonder whether we could reply back to VAC as quickly as possible and indicate that we would like to have the proper comparison so that it's apples to apples, and so we can assess it properly.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Thank you. Let me ask the analyst.

You saw the letter. Do you understand?

[Jean-Rodrigue Paré, Committee Researcher]

Do I agree the numbers don't compare apples to apples?

I agree.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Are there any other interventions? I'd like to know whether I have to reply to VAC, as Mr. Richards just said.

Ms. Blaney agrees with that.

I will do it as soon as possible in order to conclude our report.

Before I go to the witnesses, I know Ms. Blaney sent a letter to the clerk. The request was to have, from DND, Lise Bourgon, Helen Wright, Marc Bilodeau and Andrea Tuka.

Let's welcome our witnesses.

From the Canadian Armed Forces, transition services and policies, Canadian Armed Forces transition group, we have Captain Iain Beck, director, and Colonel Lisa Noonan, director, by video conference. From the Canadian Forces health group, we have Colonel Helen Wright, director, force health protection, by video conference. Welcome.

The only witness who is going to have a statement is Colonel Helen Wright.

You have the floor for five minutes.

[Colonel Helen Wright, Director of Force Health Protection, Canadian Forces Health Group, Canadian Armed Forces, Department of National Defence]

Good afternoon. I'm Colonel Helen Wright, the director of force health protection within Canadian Forces health services and the lead on health services' women and diversity health capability.

I would like to start by acknowledging that we are gathered on the traditional unceded territory of the Anishinabe people.

I am joined today by two colleagues—Captain Iain Beck, director of mental health, and Colonel Lisa Noonan, director of transition services and policies within the CAF transition group.

We would like to thank the committee for their interest in women veterans. We are happy to be here today to outline some of the work the CAF is undertaking to ensure that we provide quality health care and career transition support to our members. The Canadian Armed Forces recognizes the sacrifices that military personnel make in the service of their country. We are committed to ensuring that all military personnel receive a high standard of health care and support.

We know that women in the CAF have unique health needs and that tailored resources and services must be available to support their health and well-being. That is why we have committed to identifying and addressing systemic health barriers in the Canadian Armed Forces that disproportionately affect women and others with diverse identity factors.

I have the privilege of leading an initiative to augment health and wellness services for women and diverse members throughout the entirety of their career. The activities will span four lines of effort.

The first area is prevention. We know that illness and injury prevention play a critical role in health and wellness. This package will include standardized cancer screening processes and relevant, targeted and evidence-based physical wellness and fitness programs

The second focus is care. We intend to sustain a world-class, evidence-based medical system for women by continuing to adopt best-practice clinical care and integrating tailored policies and programs specific to military settings. This includes adding clinical staff to our care delivery units in CAF health clinics, with a focus on supplementing such areas as support before and after pregnancy.

Our third focus is quality and performance assessment in which we will examine, objectively, how well the CAF health clinical and preventive services are meeting the spectrum of women's needs.

Underpinning these three domains is research and engagement. Understanding the health status and relevant risk factors for CAF women and diverse members, and how these are influenced by military occupations and demands, will guide our policy, program and service development. Our goal is to drive long-term, sustained improvement of women and diverse members' health, well-being and occupational performance in the Canadian military environment and contribute to a culture in which each and every member of the Canadian Armed Forces is fully enabled in their chosen career.

As mentioned, I am joined by Captain Iain Beck, who is responsible for leading a team of mental health experts who provide professional technical advice to the surgeon general, CAF leadership and clinicians. Over the last decade, we have made significant advances to ensure that CAF has the education and awareness programs to help identify people at risk for mental health issues and provide them with assistance.

We also continue to work on reducing the stigma associated with mental health through the education of CAF members, leaders, and military families. This is achieved through the delivery of the road to mental readiness program and other awareness efforts, such as Canadian Mental Health Week, which happens to be this week.

Colonel Noonan, who also joins us today, is responsible for overseeing the implementation of a modernized transition process in 27 CAF transition centres across the country that serve both medically and non-medically releasing CAF members.

Together, CAF and VAC developed the new military-civilian transition process to ensure a seamless, personalized and standardized process across all transition centres. At its foundation there are seven domains of well-being shown through research to be critical enablers of a successful transition, including health, family, housing, finance, social environment, life skills and a sense of purpose. We ensure that each transitioning CAF member is assigned an integrated support team that helps them develop a transition plan that is tailored to their unique needs and based on these domains of well-being. The transition centre offers a variety of resources and programs to address each member’s needs.

These are just some of the initiatives and programs we have been and are developing to better support our women members.

Once again, we would like to thank the committee for the opportunity to appear before you today. We look forward to answering your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Thank you so much, Colonel.

We will now move to question and answers.

I invite Mr. Tolmie to take the floor for six minutes.

[Fraser Tolmie, Conservative, Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK]

Thank you very much for your presentation and your testimony. I also want to say thank you very much for your service to everybody here today.

There are a couple of things that cross my mind when I think about people leaving the military and transitioning into civilian life. We have covered a lot of this in previous questions in different studies. I apologize if some of it may seem like we're repeating ourselves, but we want to make sure it's in the record for this particular study.

When I was released from the military in 2009, over a decade ago, we had a day-long transition meeting. We sat in front of a group and were told what it was going to be like getting into civilian life and to look at a website on this. I have spoken with other people who have gotten out of the military. Accessing Veterans Affairs to get funding and programs is very easy, but the medical side seems to be a little bit less clear. Could I get your comments on that?

[Col Helen Wright]

You're asking about the transition from military medical services into civilian medical services?

[Fraser Tolmie, Conservative, Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK]

When you are a serving vet getting out of the military, you get a day-long seminar. I would like to hear your comments on how we can make that better. What do people go through right now when they're exiting and transitioning?

[Col Helen Wright]

I'll hand that one to Colonel Noonan, she's our expert on transition.

[Colonel Lisa Noonan, Director Transition Services and Policies, Canadian Armed Forces Transition Group, Canadian Armed Forces, Department of National Defence]

As Colonel Wright mentioned, we are standing up 27 transition centres across the country. We're doing this in a phased approach. Right now, we have about 50% of those transition centres established, and by the summer it will be 75% across all provinces in the country. They're established on a regional basis, taking care of all the different bases and wings under their purview.

As part of that process, everyone will go see a transition adviser, TA, who will provide very personalized assistance to the individual depending on their needs, and those needs are based on the seven domains of well-being Colonel Wright outlined initially. It will be a very in-depth counselling process; they'll take them through the seven domains to ensure all of the different needs they may have or may not have even thought about before are covered off as part of that counselling session.

At the same time, they are paired up with a release administrator and a veteran service agent, VSA, from VAC, if required, to assist them in understanding all their benefits, and ensuring that they've applied for everything before they hit their date of release and know what kinds of services and programs exist.

In addition to this, a year ago we established the military transition and engagement partnership, MTEP, directorate. It provides a variety of services, including access to third party organizations that can provide programs, outreach and all kinds of different assistance to all the unique members of our CAF population. Of course, we have not just female veterans, but also people from varying cultural backgrounds and indigenous members. These third party organizations are going to work with us to establish programs for all the different unique members.

Once they meet with a transition adviser they set up a transition plan, shared between the member and the TA. It's basically an agreement between the two of them to work through the different elements of the transition plan so they can meet their goals and objectives by the date of release. However, we also do a bit of a handover. Because the VAC reps are now integrated with the transition centres, we do a handover with the VAC reps before the members get out so that, especially for those who are facing complex situations, we can agree on what kinds of things need to be made known to them.

[Fraser Tolmie, Conservative, Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK]

Okay. I have two things, then.

What's a transition adviser? Is that civilian or military?

[Col Lisa Noonan]

The transition advisers are part of DND, and they are civilian members.

[Fraser Tolmie, Conservative, Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK]

How is that different from what it was before, when you were releasing from the military?

[Col Lisa Noonan]

Previously, there were no centres that actually offered this kind of one-on-one assistance. There were individuals on the base who could provide access to seminars or workshops—the one-day piece that you probably participated in, which we called “second career assistance network seminars”—but that was the extent, basically, of the assistance that was provided. There may have been help with a resumé or something like that, but there was not this intense one-on-one assistance.

[Fraser Tolmie, Conservative, Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK]

One of the challenges we've faced and that we've heard about is that when people get into civilian life, their military history and their qualifications don't line up with civilian qualifications. How are we going to be able to help them with these transition centres? Can you explain that a little?

[Col Lisa Noonan]

For about the last two years, we've been working with some digital folks to develop a database in collaboration with various educational institutes that actually equate with civilian education programs, both the common and the occupation-specific training that individuals in the military have. Or, if they're in a certain trade in the military and want to work in that same trade when they get out, they could get their apprenticeship hours written off, they could challenge a Red Seal exam, etc.

We have established a database in our program that allows members to equate their experience and their qualifications in the military, so that when they get out they can get a bit of a head start, whether it's educational upgrading they're doing or working afterwards.

[Fraser Tolmie, Conservative, Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Now I'd like to go to Mr. Churence Rogers for six minutes, please.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

Thank you, Chair.

Welcome to our guests today and, of course, thank you for your service.

It's good to see all of you and to hear the benefits of your experience as we undertake this study. It's great to be hearing from people with your knowledge and experience around many of these issues that we want to talk about and identify.

This is for Captain Beck, first of all.

As the chair of the NATO military mental health panel, could you discuss the mental health challenges that women veterans face?

[Captain, N) Iain Beck (Director of Mental Health, Canadian Forces Health Services Group, Canadian Armed Forces]

I'm fortunate to be the chair of that military mental health panel through NATO. I can tell you that a lot of our countries face similar problems, of course, and not surprisingly. In fact, I think we're fairly far ahead of most of those countries, and so a lot of times we do some education and listening rather than following their lead.

We're speaking of women veterans, of course, and our focus is on the Canadian Armed Forces veterans upstream from the time they leave for post-military life. It's incumbent on us to provide the best care.

One of the things we've recently started to look at is suicides in our female population. Suicide obviously is a tragic final event for some with mental health and other issues. That's certainly something we're focusing on. It's a bit difficult in the Canadian Armed Forces, because the number of suicides is quite small, fortunately, and especially in our female population.

That said, we're trying to aggregate data from the last two decades to see if there are any patterns or any differences in our population versus the general Canadian population. With that, hopefully, we'll possibly be able to identify any unique factors or risks within the military that might put our population of women at higher risk.

That's just one example of what we do upstream from when a female member becomes a veteran. I know that we talked a bit about that transition, but it's critical that we also look at having that seamless transition for those suffering from medical issues, and for mental health in particular. Prior to release, we make sure they're taken care of in the civilian community.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

Thank you very much.

In the interests of time, because we have very little time, Colonel Noonan and then maybe Colonel Wright, could you give us the benefit of your knowledge and experience and provide for us—I know that some of you have in your presentations already—any recommendations towards the women veterans study that we're doing and what kinds of recommendations specifically you would like to see in that kind of report?

We'll start with Colonel Noonan.

[Col Lisa Noonan]

One of the things that we're currently working on with VAC and with our own research unit is trying to identify the needs of female veterans to see if there are any gaps in the services that we're providing at the transition centres. We currently have a transition support and well-being survey that we've developed internal to the CAF with our research unit, which we're merging with an exit survey that we had previously given.

There's a large demographic portion and specific questions for women that will now be part of this survey. That will allow us, as we collect data and as these transition centres start administering it to all the releasing members, to see exactly what the needs of our female veterans are.

We already know from previous research that's been done that there are unique needs starting to emerge, so it will be building upon some of those initial studies that have been done in order to enhance our services and provide more tailored services to female veterans.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

Colonel Wright, would you like to comment?