Veterans Affairs Committee on Oct. 19th, 2023

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

You don't think so?

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

I would say no, but that's just my opinion. I don't have a more specific answer for you.

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

We'll see you again soon, so I would appreciate it if you could check this out before then, if you could.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Okay, I'll ask.

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

Great.

I may not be nice in saying this, but I get the impression that you and the government are blaming veterans for this lack of rigour and ethics on the part of the government. I'm the first to stand up for veterans. That's all I've been doing here for the past four years. In the current situation, I think you're using them.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Quite the opposite, Mr. Desilets.

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

Madam Minister, will you reconsider your decision?

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

The decision has been made, Mr. Desilets, and we'll be moving ahead with the monument.

On the weekend, I….

We seem to be out of time, so I'll finish my answer next time.

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

Oh, that's too bad.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Thank you very much, Madam Minister.

Thank you for your intervention, Mr. Desilets.

Ms. Blaney, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair.

I'll come back to the question I asked in the last round. I'll get her name right this time. Retired captain Louise Siew of the navy encouraged VAC to acknowledge and apologize for making it so difficult for women to receive those benefits, and recommended that an automatic approval process be put in place that does not require medical documentation.

I'm just wondering if this is something you would be willing to explore.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

I'm always willing to explore and look at ways that we can better our services, Ms. Blaney, for sure.

What we have done with respect to women veterans as well is establish a team to make sure that when we receive those applications, we have a specialized team, if you will, that is assessing those.

Again, as I've indicated in the past, we've had lots of male veterans come forward. The assessment process has really been based on lots of those types of injuries that men carried and lived with. However, when it comes to women veterans, we are seeing that the Canadian Armed Forces is making an effort to ensure that we can recruit more women. As such, we're going to have more women veterans.

We want to make sure, again, that we have a team—a tiger team, if you will—to make sure that they can do those assessments and we talk about gender-based analysis. It's not just words: We are really doing the analysis to make sure that we know exactly how these policies are impacting women when we look at the level of injuries, etc. It's really important to make sure that we do all that we can.

I talk about equity-seeking groups, and we have some work to do in that area. That area for me is of great importance. We want—

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

I only have a few more seconds. I have to interrupt you, and I apologize.

I will say that we have repeatedly heard that women veterans feel invisible. If they feel invisible, then we need to make them visible. I'm calling on you to do that.

We know that at commemoration events lots of women veterans are often asked if they're wearing their husband's medals. That concerns me greatly. I'm wondering if there are any discussions moving forward about having an official acknowledgement of women veterans at commemoration services, so that we can make what is so often invisible, visible.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

When I attended your event that was hosted by Monsieur Desilets this week, I also heard that women veterans feel invisible. Really, it breaks my heart. They have served their country just as well as their male colleagues.

With respect to that suggestion, again, I'm very happy to bring that back and to look into that. We really need to make sure that women do see themselves and know that their service is valued. At Veterans Affairs Canada we want to make sure they receive the services they deserve and need, and also that we acknowledge and commemorate their service. It's truly important.

[The Chair, Liberal, Emmanuel Dubourg]

Thank you very much.

Now let's go to Mr. Terry Dowdall for five minutes, please.

[Terry Dowdall, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister, for being here with us today.

I'm sure you're aware that on July 1, the insurance provider for the public service health care did a switchover from Sun Life Canada. There are quite a few different veterans who are on that service. I heard quite a bit about it at the time locally from some of my pharmacists in the area.

I have Base Borden in my riding. Lots of people, as they travel throughout their military career, pick a great spot—usually with a great representative—and they'll stay there. I'm fortunate that I have many veterans in my riding.

I'm just wondering how that transition's gone so far.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

As many Canadians, many of us and many individuals across the country, have gone through the transition process, some have been able to sign up fairly easily and others have had some issues. I think that where we're at now, things are going a lot better overall, but there were some bumps in the road at the beginning that we have to acknowledge.

I do have to say, though, that for those veterans who had not signed up to the new program, Veterans Affairs case managers or agents actually reached out to the veterans who had not signed up—

[Terry Dowdall, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

That's my next question: Were they informed? How were the veterans informed prior to it? Did everyone get a notice on that one, and how did they get notice?

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Everyone received it....

I'm going to let Mr. Harris explain, and then from there I'll continue with the response.

[Steven Harris]

They received notices in two ways. One was from the actual provider itself, Canada Life, the new provider of the public service health care plan. It's administered by our Treasury Board Secretariat colleagues.

They also received notices from Veterans Affairs that this was coming, in terms of letters, in terms of messages through the My VAC Account, a system that helps to enable them as well.

In cases where we knew people had not, essentially, signed up through the transition forms, we reached out directly to ask them if they needed any help, if they needed the forms and, if they had the forms, whether they were aware of what they needed to do to make that transition itself. We made several efforts on that front.

[Terry Dowdall, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

In my riding I heard from quite a few who were frustrated: We have quite a few different letters from them, saying that they didn't know.

They needed their medicines. One example here is it's $1,000 a month for their chronic illness. Even phoning, the amount of time to try and get through to everything was really frustrating for those individuals, so I'm hoping you can improve on that.

I'm going to move on to something else that we've heard quite a bit about as well. How many veterans are working at VAC after they finished their careers? Right now 5% of VAC employees are veterans, and at last count that would be roughly around 171 employees in the whole department. I would think or assume that there are good jobs for those who are leaving Veterans Affairs. It's always good to have a good, steady government job, I'm sure—something to look for.

That number itself seems kind of low, and I'm just wondering if you have committed to a certain number to improve in order to have more veterans work in the department.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

With respect to the employment strategy for veterans, it's certainly an area in which we have different levers. Making sure that veterans will have access to federal jobs is, of course, a part of the employment strategy per se.

To your exact question with respect to the percentage of employees we have who are veterans, I would have to defer either to Paul or Steven, as I'm not aware of the exact percentage.

Paul.

[Terry Dowdall, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

As the minister, you would probably want to improve upon that number, I would think. You would probably have some kind of thought process to get more veterans actually working within the department.

[Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

With respect to the employment strategy, it's really important to make sure that all of our veterans are not underemployed, but employed with the skill level they have. Many veterans are not even aware of the level of skills they have—their transferable skills. That is why it's important that we make sure as an employer—the federal government, be it at VAC or in different departments—we provide them with access to those opportunities. Again, our veterans have a lot of skill sets, and they're certainly able to fill these very meaningful jobs—well-paying jobs with benefits, as you've indicated—so we certainly want to make sure that is the case.

For the percentage, I'd like to turn it to Paul.

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

If I could add quickly, Mr. Chair, the last number I have received is that 175 veterans are currently employed at Veterans Affairs Canada.