Evidence of meeting #7 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 women.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Executive Director, LGBT Purge Fund
I have had quite a bit of involvement with them. Early on, they reached out to us, and we said, “Nothing about without us.” They said: “Great. Come to lots of meetings, help us learn and help us improve.”
My sense of the organization and the office is that they're highly motivated to improve and they're doing quite a good job. We can go to them with specific cases if we need to, and I'm grateful they exist.
Liberal
Darrell Samson Liberal Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, NS
We'll tap into that as much as we can.
Sandra Perron is next.
Founder and Chief Executive Officer, The Pepper Pod
I will echo Ms. Douglas's comments. I've had some interaction with them.
One of the recommendations I made to them was for them to go upstream with some of the things that women are suffering today with the military and to see how we can prevent them to avoid casualties in the future. If we have so many women with needs in VAC, with problems, then let's make sure that gets looped back to the military so that we can prevent these problems.
Liberal
Darrell Samson Liberal Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook, NS
Thank you very much.
What you said earlier about the equipment that is designed for men and the weight that women have to carry is very important to remember. We need to collect accurate data on that. We want to improve that so that we can better respond to people's needs.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Emmanuel Dubourg
Thank you, Mr. Samson.
We now have five minutes with MP Cathay Wagantall.
Go ahead.
Conservative
Cathay Wagantall Conservative Yorkton—Melville, SK
Thank you, Chair.
Very quickly, I would like to speak to Ms. Laverdure about the impacts she's still seeing within the francophone community of veterans.
I have trouble determining where we really are in this regard. How many veterans are francophone? How many case managers are francophone? How much improvement is actually taking place? We're hearing confusion again today with regard to those numbers and percentages.
Do you have a concern as you realize—and can you share with us—the importance of the difference between a case manager who is bilingual versus one who is francophone?
As an Individual
Thank you for the question.
I don't have the exact figures because I don't work in the Department of Veterans Affairs offices. I'm on the ground with veterans.
Although the COVID‑19 pandemic has led us to do things differently, I can tell you that, when veterans need help, I usually accompany them to the district offices. I travel throughout the province. It's always difficult to talk to a case manager. There should always be a case manager on call to record the information, because as we talked about earlier, veterans have to repeat themselves over and over again.
As for the exact figures, I know that each case manager is given 25 to 35 cases.
Conservative
Cathay Wagantall Conservative Yorkton—Melville, SK
I made a little note of a comment you made. We've been trying on this committee to come up with recommendations for improving that whole process so that it will be time efficient. One of the issues concerns the point you made about case managers not being the ones who make the decision. It seems to me that we have quite a complicated bureaucratic mess here and, a lot of the time, case managers end up in the middle. As you said, they're overworked. They don't get to make the decisions. Sometimes they get to relay the decision when it's not something that was truly wanted in the first place; it was recommended it the first place.
One of the recommendations that was made was that case managers should become far more a part of the professional process and take that process right from the beginning to the actual decision-making. Do you see that that would make things better? They're at the front of the conversation and build the relationship with that veteran.
As an Individual
I'd like to highlight two facts.
The case manager is responsible for managing the veteran's file, and claims are routed to a decision‑making unit in Charlottetown.
The district offices don't decide whether the veteran is entitled to compensation. Case managers are people who support veterans when they leave the armed forces for all aspects of the professional, medical or psychosocial component. A case manager will support the veteran for a minimum of two years.
Conservative
Cathay Wagantall Conservative Yorkton—Melville, SK
It's for a minimum of two years. Is that correct?
Conservative
Cathay Wagantall Conservative Yorkton—Melville, SK
I ask because I have many veterans who have struggled with the fact that they get moved from one to another. Their case manager quits and they don't even know that they're gone. There's this type of thing, so I appreciate that.
Do I have any time left, Chair?
Conservative
Cathay Wagantall Conservative Yorkton—Melville, SK
I'd just like to put a plug in for the fact that we heard a little bit today about the importance of service dogs. As the witness said, there's a difference between an obedience dog or a family dog and a service dog. We have a responsibility. This committee put forward a study on national standards, and I think we need to improve that accessibility for our veterans.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Emmanuel Dubourg
Thank you very much.
Now, let's go to MP Rechie Valdez for five minutes, please. Go ahead.
Liberal
Rechie Valdez Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
I just have a question for Madame Laverdure for clarification. Are you aware of the specific VAC francophone unit, and have you referred any cases there directly?
As an Individual
In fact, a few years ago, I directed veterans in Victoria, British Columbia, to this service.
Liberal
Rechie Valdez Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
Thank you.
Mrs. Douglas, in my previous corporate career I had supported call centres that handled customer cases to ensure that employees had proper change management training. This is really essential because, unless you train them in a very specific way, it's going to be really hard for them to handle calls that come in.
Since employees at VAC may or may not have your experiences that we've talked about, as you mentioned, and training is vital. Can you touch on specific educational training that we can include in our recommendations? For example, do you feel that simply by adding LGBTQ purge training, it could help them be more educated?
Executive Director, LGBT Purge Fund
I think that would help enormously if they had that kind of baseline training. There are other, broader human rights kinds of training or respectful engagement training that would also be helpful. There are those kinds of base levels that we'd like to see.
The LGBT Purge Fund prepared, with the help of experts, a 250-page report called “Emerging from the Purge”—Au lendemain de la Purge. This report, which is available free online, comes up with recommendations that managers could easily look at and say, “Yes, we can implement those.” They're not such giant system recommendations that they couldn't be implemented at the local level. It would help with the welcoming both as an employer, which is really important to making sure people are respected in their own workplace, and then as a service to clients.
I think both aspects are important, and training would help that a lot.
Liberal
Rechie Valdez Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
That was getting right into my next question, which was around soft-skills training. It's one thing for you to have the knowledge of how to use whatever system you're using, and then understanding the background of veterans, but now there are soft skills, which really concern empathy and how to respect others. What other soft-skills training would you recommend?
Executive Director, LGBT Purge Fund
There are some terrific safe space or positive space ambassadorial training courses available through the Canada School of Public Service, including online.
I know there are other training opportunities within Veterans Affairs that are being delivered slowly, but if we could speed up those kinds of training courses.... We'd love to see basic human interaction training courses, so that those skills reach across everything anybody would do in their job. There are also some great courses that can be purchased, I think, by the department that are available through organizations like Pride at Work. Those are the kinds of things we'd love to see happen all the more within Veterans Affairs.
Liberal
Rechie Valdez Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
Can I request you to share those with us, Mrs. Douglas? That would be great.
Liberal
Rechie Valdez Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
I think it's really important for us to have reference to those direct resources that you specifically recommend for us.
Those are all my questions. Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Emmanuel Dubourg
Thank you very much.
Now let's go back to Mr. Desilets.
Mr. Desilets, you now have the floor for two and a half minutes.