Veterans Affairs Committee on May 18th, 2023

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Thank you very much.

Through you, Chair, I think it was Dr. Zacharias who talked a bit about resilience. If I don't have that right, it must have been Dr. MacDermid.

That being said, is there any way to teach resilience? Is that something we need to be looking at, perhaps in the recruitment of military members or teaching kids in school and things like that? Are you doing any work on that?

[Dr. Ramesh Zacharias]

You've touched on what is an extremely important aspect of transition.

In a Canadian Pain Society meeting last week, Hélène Le Scelleur, other veterans and I talked about resilience and transition. One of the things we've found out is that the similarity between professional athletes and veterans is incredibly unique. They are all “mission first”, and then their career ends. When it ends, the applause stops and they're left on their own.

We've been working on trying to increase awareness of the role of the Canadian Armed Forces veterans. I believe if we can somehow change the gestalt of the Canadian public to understand that whenever there's a crisis in this country—whether it's the ice storms in Quebec, the hurricanes on the east coast, the fires currently in Alberta, or COVID—the Canadian military members are the first ones who run in, and we need to respect their service. However, at some point in time, their careers are over, just like the athlete's career is over, so we're looking at creating an ability to be able to create resilience in both of these groups so that they can learn from each other.

Over the next few years, I think awareness will increase for the Canadian population. We'd like to get into the schools to make sure that people understand that they live in an incredibly amazing country due in part to the service, and we want to respect that.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

That's great.

Thank you very much, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ellis.

Now let's go to MP Churence Rogers. He's on Zoom.

You have five minutes, Mr. Rogers.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Welcome to all of our witnesses this evening.

I had many questions, but many have been answered by the witnesses in response to questions from our colleagues around the table.

I think one thing is clear, based on all of the testimony we've heard this evening. It is that when people leave the military, it's clear that the military doesn't always leave them. That's for sure.

Dr. Henson, I want to ask you this question. Why is it sometimes so difficult for veterans of 25 or 30 years, who had successful military careers in some cases, to transition to a civilian life and to maintain a strong family relationship with their spouse or children and so on? Is it because they miss the disciplined military lifestyle and maybe feel abandoned or all alone, to a certain extent?

Could you comment on that for me, please?

[Dr. Alisha Henson]

Thank you for the question.

I think it's multi-faceted, but I believe that a lot of individuals have missed a lot of family time with their service, so sometimes it's about how they fit back into this unit. Families at home have been doing things for a long time in one way, flexing and waxing and waning as this person comes in to support them and be present with them, but then at the end of it all, after years of service, how do you fully reintegrate and how do you become a full family person again, someone who's a part of that unit?

For some individuals, especially if you've had a very long career, your children have now grown up and moved on and are developing their own families. Not only are you trying to find your own personal identity, but you're also trying to figure out what your family identity is, what your community identity is and how you fit back into this overall system.

I don't know if you have anything to add, Alana.

[Alana Jaquemet]

I just want to add that suffering from trauma is a very isolating experience, and often there's a lot of disconnection from community, from social environments, from family and actually from themselves, so reintegrating and reconnecting can be really difficult.

There's that functional disconnection that happens, maybe, while serving, but reconnecting is often a really difficult thing. I just wanted to add that.

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

Ms. Jaquemet, this committee has been focused on the transition piece, and we're looking for some great advice, which we're getting from this witness panel.

If you could provide some recommendations for us for this study, what would they be? I would encourage you as well, as I said to some of the others, to think about the study that we are going to be preparing and to please submit any future written recommendations that you might think about.

[Alana Jaquemet]

I'm going to actually defer to my colleague on this.

[Dr. Alisha Henson]

I believe that one of the really important pieces is to think about how we develop research in collaboration with the community. The centre that we're meeting with this evening, the centre for chronic pain, is doing a really great job of having veterans working in collaboration with them. However, what we're really looking at, and one of the recommendations we have, is around communities' participatory research, which looks at individuals who feel marginalized within communities, starting with them and, in collaboration, developing the research questions: How do we access those individuals who are maybe feeling a little bit disconnected overall, and then how do we build that sort of peer mentorship to include more and more voices in this process?

It's a top-down approach that's even sometimes coming from researchers, and I'm a researcher myself. It's coming from that external place and then moving inwards. We're constantly missing the mark, so starting here and then moving outwards in collaboration, I think, is the ideal approach.

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

Dr. MacDermid, in previous meetings female veterans have testified that mental health challenges create physical health problems, and vice versa, as a result of their time in the service.

Can you speak to these types of occurrences and maybe give us some examples of that connection between the mind and the body in general?

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Once again, please answer that question quickly, in about 30 seconds.

[Dr. Joy MacDermid]

There are so many ways. I'll just give an example of sleep. If you think about it, physical pain interrupts your sleep and psychological distress interrupts your sleep. When you don't sleep, you have more physical pain and you can't function.

Everything is connected. We see people sometimes self-medicating, so addictions can be related to untreated physical or mental health problems. We see all these complex interactions between every aspect of physical health and every aspect of mental health.

That's as brief as I can make it, really.

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

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Thank you, Mr. Rogers.

Thank you, Ms. MacDermid.

Now let's go to our final round of questions. We're going to have four interventions. We're going to stop after Mr. Garrison.

Mr. Blake Richards, you have five minutes.

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

Thank you.

Ms. Jaquemet, I want to ask you a little bit about the new rehab contract. I'd like to hear your thoughts on the impact that it's having, both on service providers and on veterans, and whether you feel that Veterans Affairs communicated properly with service providers and with veterans about the implementation of that contract.

Will you yourself continue to be a service provider under that new contract?

That's a lot of questions all in one, but I'll let you address them however you choose.

[Alana Jaquemet]

There wasn't a lot of information about the change. As for me, I learned about it as it was happening. I didn't really have a lot of information about it.

Also, those I spoke to who were involved didn't have a lot of information about it. It was really difficult to help when clients were asking questions, because I didn't have the answers. I also didn't know who to direct them to. That was really challenging. When there are a lot of unknowns, it puts people on edge and creates more anxiety. What helps with anxiety is that we have things that are reliable and we know what to expect.

It was really challenging. Some of our sessions were just about what was going to happen and whether they were losing me as a provider and those types of things.

There's still not a lot of information. I don't know who to contact when it comes to my clients who've been called by PCVRS. My clients don't remember the name of the person. They just remember that they spoke to somebody for three hours and had to tell their story again, but they can't remember the name of the person and they don't have a phone number. I hear that story often.

As for me, I likely will not be signing on with PCVRS. At the same time, we're hearing that we can continue with our clients and continue providing therapy to them. However, getting sessions approved is a big unknown. I'm getting phone calls saying, “Hey, you have to do this quickly because we don't know what's going to happen. Try to send in for more approvals for sessions, because we're not sure how you're going to get more approvals.” That leaves a lot of unanswered questions.

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

It sure sounds like it. We finished a study on it and we're working on a report for it. That's good information for us to have for it, so thank you.

I'm going to interrupt right now to move a motion.

I move that the committee order the Department of Veterans Affairs to provide any results, findings, conclusions, and recommendations related to the sex and gender-based analysis of disability benefits adjudication research conducted by Dr. Barbara Clow.

It was on notice, so it's okay to move it. I know that we don't have a lot of time left and I do apologize to our witnesses. I hope all of you understand that we get two two-hour meetings each week, and if we want to do something like this, this is the only way we can do it. I do apologize, but it's an important part of what we're trying to do with this study.

I am moving that motion. I think it's pretty self-explanatory. I know that there are others who have something they want to say about it, so I'm just going to move the motion and yield the floor.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

The motion has been moved, but would you like to explain it a bit? I think that members don't have a copy yet.

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

No, Mr. Chair. I think it's pretty self-explanatory.

It has been brought up a number of times by witnesses in the committee that there is this research out there that Veterans Affairs has been reluctant or not willing—or whatever the case might be—to release. I know that witnesses have expressed that it would be useful. I don't think there's much more explanation needed than that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Okay. Thank you.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Mr. Chair, if this motion was put on notice, I haven't seen it. I would appreciate the opportunity to suspend so that we can at least have a huddle. I had no idea that this was coming. I think we had a meeting not too long ago where we had committee business, and there were no witnesses to present it in front of. I think I'd like the opportunity to suspend, because if it has been put on notice, I've never seen it.

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

I don't really see a reason to do that, Mr. Chair. It was put on notice. It has been on notice for some time. If members chose to ignore it, that's not the fault of the rest of the committee. We don't have a lot of time left here. I don't think there's a need to suspend.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

It was on notice on April 21, so that's right, but you are going to receive a new copy so that you can look at it.

As Mr. Richards said, I have to say for the witnesses that you can stay with us, but the procedure is that I have to deal with this motion with members of the committee before I go on.

I'd like to know if there's an intervention.

Go ahead, Mr. Garrison.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Thank you.

Just to make things even more complicated, I'd like to move an amendment to Mr. Richards' motion. I think it's being circulated electronically as we speak. It would be to add, at the end, things to make it easier for VAC to identify what we actually need in the committee.

The amendment would be to add the following at the end of the motion: the description of disability adjudication at VAC, a report from September 13, 2019; findings from key informant consultations from October 1, 2019; analysis of adjudication instruments and processes from December 20, 2019; the evolution of adjudication tools and rules at VAC, December 20, 2019; and, finally, sex- and gender-based analysis of disability benefits adjudication at VAC, a summary report, February 11, 2020.

With respect, Mr. Chair, this doesn't change anything about the sense. It just allows the committee to give more definite instructions to VAC about the reports it's looking for.