Evidence of meeting #50 for Veterans Affairs in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was research.
A video is available from Parliament.
Consulting Research Associate, As an Individual
I had a career of more than 20 years there.
Liberal
Sean Casey Liberal Charlottetown, PE
Oh, okay. My notes were 15 plus.
That means the research would be at least a year and a half old. Is that right?
Consulting Research Associate, As an Individual
Yes. It would be a few years old, but it would be based on the life after service studies that are conducted every three years. That finding has been consistent every three years.
Liberal
Sean Casey Liberal Charlottetown, PE
The data that you would have been relying on would have been more than a year and a half old, though. Is that right?
Liberal
Sean Casey Liberal Charlottetown, PE
As you know, there has been a transformational investment in accessible, low-cost day care in this country in the last couple of years. What impact would it have on the labour force participation factor that you identified if all of a sudden there were a lot more child care spaces at a much lower cost?
Consulting Research Associate, As an Individual
It likely would have an impact, because for 8% of the women veterans, their main activity was caregiving post release. That was quite a bit higher than for male veterans, which I think was 1% or 2%, so it could have a significant impact on their participation in the labour market. I'm sure caregiving can be quite a barrier to labour force participation among women veterans.
Liberal
Sean Casey Liberal Charlottetown, PE
The investment is too new for it to be reflected in the research thus far. Is that right?
Liberal
Sean Casey Liberal Charlottetown, PE
Dr. Courchesne, you indicated earlier in your testimony that you're not a researcher, so I'll ask you this from your perspective as someone who's served for 30 years and is in the medical field. Feel free to rely on anecdotes.
My question is around your experience and the most common reason for challenges with transition from service to civilian life. Can you talk about your experience in that regard, personal and professional, based on your service to our country and your work at Veterans Affairs?
Chief Medical Officer, Department of Veterans Affairs
I would say that my anecdote would not be illustrative of transition, because I had one week between leaving the military and joining Veterans Affairs Canada as a public servant. I experienced practically no transition. There was no time. I jumped from one job to the next. My journey would not be typical.
Liberal
Sean Casey Liberal Charlottetown, PE
In the course of your work, you would have interacted with hundreds of people. What has been your experience in your circle? I didn't mean it to be as direct and as personal as you answered.
Chief Medical Officer, Department of Veterans Affairs
What we hear from veterans around transition, especially for those who leave not for voluntary reasons but for medical reasons, is the loss of identity. It's the loss of leaving the family and not having the regimental brothers and sisters there to support them. That is the number one reason we hear for the difficulty in transition.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Blake Richards
Thank you. That's a good way to conclude, and it will be where we conclude.
First, I want to thank all of our witnesses. It was quite clear that a lot of expertise and experience, in this room and online, were provided to this committee tonight in terms of the information we were given. Thank you very much for the quality of your testimony and your responses.
I know there is some information that you're going to follow up on and provide to us. Thank you in advance for that.
Thank you to the members. We dealt with a couple of motions, and we were able to do that quite quickly. I'm sure that was all because I was here in the chair, rather than over there. Either way, thank you very much to everyone for being quite expeditious in how we handled those.
With that, we'll close the meeting. We'll see you all next week.
The meeting is adjourned.