Veterans Affairs Committee on May 4th, 2023

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Blake Richards]

Great, thank you very much. I appreciated your brevity at the end there as well.

For the second round of questioning, we will go to the Liberal party and Mr. Sean Casey for the next six minutes.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to come back to Dr. MacLean, but I'd like to start with the Atlas Institute.

I see that you came into being because of a mandate letter requirement of the minister, followed in 2017 by funding.

I want to understand your relationship with the department. Perhaps I'll start with how you were funded.

[MaryAnn Notarianni]

We were named in a 2015 mandate letter and in budget 2017. We had our contribution agreement with funding from Veterans Affairs Canada start in 2019.

We're still a very young organization, which is why we're excited about the path ahead and what we can do, hopefully, to make an impact in the area of better understanding the needs of women veterans.

In terms of our relationship, we are guided by a contribution agreement. The bulk of our funds are from Veterans Affairs Canada, and our mandate is laid out in that contribution agreement. The mandate includes conducting research, mobilizing knowledge, training and capacity building for service providers who care for military and RCMP veterans and their families. To expand on the mobilizing knowledge, it's putting information out there for the benefit of veterans, veteran families and service providers.

We also have a partnerships aim in our mandate. Part of our contribution agreement, and the expectation, is that we can use our national platform to connect stakeholders across the veteran mental health ecosystem and convene an umbrella network of partners. We put a large emphasis on that engagement as well.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

You did a piece of research last year on intimate partner violence in military and veteran populations. There is also some work being done within the department in connection with McMaster University and It's Not Just 20K to assess the impact on military sexual trauma survivors and institutions.

Are they connected? Are Atlas and McMaster working together on this issue? Two organizations associated with Veterans Affairs are working on something that appears to be comparable.

Maybe you can enlighten me on that.

[MaryAnn Notarianni]

I'd love to know the specifics, because there are a few things that we have going on.

We are indeed doing research on intimate partner violence. We've done a couple of research projects in that area, starting with a systematic review that was done in partnership with Phoenix Australia, and another literature review.

We have a couple of them under way, including one that we are leading, again in partnership with Phoenix, which is a qualitative study, to look at the experiences of Canadian veterans and their families with respect to intimate partner violence. That's an area we don't know a lot about. The literature shows that we don't know much about the situation in Canada, so that's something we're leading.

We have another project under way on intimate partner violence with folks at McMaster University, and that's more to evaluate a training intervention. It's taking an existing made-in-Canada, evidence-based intervention for domestic violence, family violence, and evaluating and assessing how that would work and fit for providers who are interacting with veterans and families.

You mentioned McMaster and INJ20K and MST. These are partners we engage with. We have different partnerships and relationships under way with folks at McMaster. We sit around the table with some of these stakeholders.

I need to understand the specifics before I can confirm which is which, but for sure there's work that we have under way collaboratively with some of these stakeholders.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Thank you.

Dr. Courchesne, you mentioned changes that have been made at Veterans Affairs, in which you were involved, around the table of disabilities. We've had witnesses come before this committee and plead for changes to be made to the table of disabilities to be more sensitive to the needs of women.

Could you explain what those changes were and whether there is an ongoing process for further changes to answer these pleas?

[Dr. Cyd Courchesne]

If you would allow it, Mr. Chair, I will defer to my colleague, Trudie, because this is work that is being done in her division.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

I would be happy to hear from someone from Prince Edward Island.

[Trudie MacKinnon, Acting Director General, Centralized Operations Division, Department of Veterans Affairs]

Thank you, Mr. Casey.

Good evening, everyone.

You're correct—we are conducting a multi-year, multi-jurisdictional review of the table of disabilities. We started that a couple of years ago, and we anticipate having it completed at the end of this fiscal year, so by March 2024. Part of that review involves consulting with our Five Eyes partners and other jurisdictions across the world to see how their similar types of instruments and decision-making instruments compare to what we're doing.

Perhaps most importantly as it relates to women, we are also applying a GBA+ lens to the table of disabilities to ensure that equity-seeking groups are not facing any barriers when they come forward to look for benefits and we use that table of disabilities in adjudicating their claims for disability benefits.

I should say that the table of disabilities also goes hand in hand with our entitlement eligibility guidelines. We use those two instruments to determine entitlement, and we use the table of disabilities to determine the level of disability. Both of those instruments are being updated, and they are also both being looked at under the GBA+ lens to ensure, again, that there are no barriers to access, for example, for women veterans and equity-seeking veterans when they come forward.

That work is ongoing, and we anticipate that we will have that work completed by the end of March. I would also note, in regard to the entitlement eligibility guidelines, that we continue to work on and to update those. There are 43 that we use in terms of decision-making, here in the centralized operations division.

In January 2022 we implemented new entitlement eligibility guidelines for sexual dysfunction, which is a condition that affects both male and female veterans coming forward, but in very different ways. That's a good example of how we will be updating those. As veterans come forward and are presenting with the same condition, the impacts can be very different depending on whether a veteran is male or female. We are going through our entitlement eligibility guidelines and the table of disabilities at the same time.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Blake Richards]

Thank you, Mr. Casey.

Next, we go to the Bloc Québécois.

Mr. Desilets, you have six minutes. Go ahead.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. You're doing a great job as chair, by the way.

Good evening to my fellow members and to the witnesses.

Mr. Chair, I have a motion to put on notice. It's pretty straightforward. I believe the clerk has a copy as well as the translation.

Since I haven't provided 48 hours' notice, I'm just putting the motion on notice, unless I have unanimous consent from the committee to move it.

May I read it, Mr. Chair?

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Blake Richards]

Yes. It's probably a good idea for you to read it, and then we can see whether there is unanimous consent for you to move it.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

The motion reads as follows:

That the committee invite for one hour the Minister of National Defence to one meeting as part of the study on the experience of women veterans.

That's it.

I think everyone got the translation.

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

There is a hard copy being distributed. As Mr. Desilets has indicated, he has not provided 48 hours' notice, but he would like to see if there is unanimous consent for him to move the motion at the present time.

I'll let the members have a second or two. Before I take any hands on it—

There is a point of order. Okay.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

It is my understanding that he does not require 48 hours' notice when the subject matter of the motion touches on the business at hand.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Blake Richards]

That is correct. Without considering that, you are correct, Mr. Casey. He does not require notice. He is able to move it.

Mr. Desilets, did you want to move the motion at the present time?

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Yes, definitely.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Blake Richards]

You have moved it.

As the mover, are there any other remarks you would like to provide?

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

I don't think there's a lot more to say. We would like, I would like, for the committee to have a meeting with Minister Anand. The experience of women veterans concerns her directly, especially when women in the Canadian Armed Forces transition to the veteran world.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Blake Richards]

Thank you.

Just for the information of our witnesses, in particular, if you haven't been at a parliamentary committee before, I will note that there is an opportunity for members to move motions. Sometimes, unfortunately, it is required that we interrupt proceedings with our witnesses.

Hopefully, this can be dealt with fairly quickly and we can move back to you. Please be patient with us.

I see that I have Mr. Samson looking to comment on it. I will turn the floor over to him.

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

Thank you, Chair.

In the spirit of passing this very quickly, we support that motion.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Blake Richards]

Thank you for that. That brevity is appreciated, I'm sure, by our witnesses.

Mr. Tolmie, did you have a comment?

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

Yes. I'll be brief. I concur with this motion. We're good with this.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Blake Richards]

Ms. Blaney, being from the only party that hasn't had an opportunity to do so, do you have anything you want to add? It sounds as if you're in agreement. We may even have unanimous consent and not need to have a vote.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Absolutely. I'm in agreement.