Veterans Affairs Committee on Dec. 9th, 2025

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

If I can ask further about that, there are veterans who end up succeeding quite well, whether in entrepreneurship, employment or whatever it might be. There are then other veterans who seem to get stuck endlessly in the transition phase of moving on with their lives. They have all kinds of complaints about how long they wait. They're delayed and they're denied all the time by Veterans Affairs for things like you mentioned, which then prevents them from being able to move forward.

Is there something uniquely different between these two types of veteran that's causing them to succeed or not, or is there something in the system preventing that success for some of these people?

[Caleb Walker]

I would say that in the VBNI network, realistically we were looking for only about 20% of all veterans to be part of our network, because there are only 20% of them who are probably going to be interested in building businesses and being in the right headspace for that. A lot of veterans retire because they just want to retire, and that's what they're going to do for the rest of their lives. Others, maybe in medical terms, are not in the right headspace.

On the other side, the 20% or maybe even 10% to 15% are top level. I would say that they're probably in the top 10% of all entrepreneurs out there, because they do really well.

It's just a very large, complicated ecosystem, but I think the frequent narrative in Canada is that all veterans are broken. For the veterans who do want to start as an entrepreneur, they don't have.... That's the biggest feedback I get from VBNI. They're like, “Oh, I finally found my group of people, or an organization that kinda matches the thing I'm looking for,” because every other time they go to anything else veteran-wise or any other event about veterans, it's all about how veterans are having issues and are broken and not worth hiring.

That's the complicated part of it, but if you can piece out a good portion of the veterans, the 20% who are interested in building businesses, and you enable them, they will run extremely fast and be very successful. You just have to change the narrative.

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

How do we do that?

[The Chair, Liberal, Marie-France Lalonde]

Thank you very much, Mr. Walker. I really appreciate that.

I'm so sorry, Mr. Richards. We're on to the next round.

I would like to invite Mrs. Hirtle to go ahead for five minutes.

[Alana Hirtle, Liberal, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Good afternoon, gentlemen.

Mr. Walker, thank you for hosting a pitch event in my province of Nova Scotia. I'm going to talk for a moment about COVE, the Centre for Ocean Ventures and Entrepreneurship in Dartmouth. They've been doing amazing work scaling the defence supply chain companies throughout Nova Scotia that are owned by Canadians.

Would you recommend putting resources in the hands of accelerators like COVE, along with changing the purchasing requirements for Canadian procurement?

[Caleb Walker]

Yes.

Essentially, to get into the Canadian government, the biggest thing that's going to hold you back is compliance. Even the most innovative companies working with the highest-level universities might have the coolest products, but if they have no compliance whatsoever, they're not going to go anywhere. Enabling those incubators would be a great idea, because then you'll have the right crowd and right peers to go faster, and then hopefully the right instructors as well, which can get them to go faster and enable those veterans in that space.

[Alana Hirtle, Liberal, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Thank you.

IMP Aerospace has hundreds of staff in my riding, which then supports the supply chain of more than 2,000 people throughout Nova Scotia.

Could that 3% goal that you talked about with the ITB to incentivize Canadian primes use Canadian veteran products in winning larger contracts?

[Caleb Walker]

Yes, that's a great way to get.... That's kind of the problem. You want to buy Canadian, and you want to build an ecosystem, but not all companies will have the capability or interest to be in that space. I can tell you, based on my experience at VBNI, that 40% of veteran business owners are in that space. If you want to get them moving and have an incentive for big primes to work with them and enable the economy in Halifax and in and around Nova Scotia, that would be what I would do. Yes, it makes sense to me.

[Alana Hirtle, Liberal, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Cool. Thank you.

At VBNI, are most of the veterans you're working with solopreneurs, or would they have employees? If they have employees, would they be looking to hire veterans?

[Caleb Walker]

Yes, they do. One of our most famous ones right now is H2 Analytics. They have about 30 people, and the majority of them are veterans from the special forces community. It is a great way to.... I tried for three years to get companies to hire veterans with my previous staffing company, and it's a hard sell, because they hear the negative narratives. It's pretty easy when you go to a successful veteran business owner who knows what he or she is getting. They will also be able to help with the transition into the company, because they will know what the veterans know, and they will know what they have to teach them to get them effective really fast.

Most of the VBNI companies that I know hire a lot of veterans, far more than the current economy.

[Alana Hirtle, Liberal, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Veterans would bring a special skill set. We've heard about human resources skills and project management skills. Are there other skill sets or attributes that would set a veteran apart from another applicant?

[Caleb Walker]

Business development in this space you're talking about would be the primary one. That's typically where the majority of the senior leaders get hired by international corporations. Yes, that would be it.

Leadership of small teams—that would be it as well. Particularly from the software and cyber backgrounds in the military, you see a lot of that in the product development space.

I would say project management, HR, business development and product development would be some of the better spots for veterans.

[Alana Hirtle, Liberal, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Great. Thank you.

I have about a minute left.

Veterans have a specific skill set that is easily transferable to entrepreneurship. How do we engage veterans who might be thinking about going into business for themselves but don't really know where to start?

How would you suggest we reach out to them? This is for either of you.

[Caleb Walker]

Show what success looks like. I literally didn't know a veteran could start a business when I left the military after 20 years. I joked about it all the time. I didn't know that there were veterans who owned successful businesses.

John has already gone into great examples here. If you just showcase that, put it out there and change the narrative, then people will start sniffing around. Even at the event that Veterans Affairs Canada supported in October, there were about 25 veterans who showed up and said, I didn't know that veterans could start and run businesses. Then we talked to MaxSys, which has $100 million in revenue every year, and they said, “Wow! That could be me.”

That's what I would do.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marie-France Lalonde]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Gaudreau, you have the floor for two minutes and 30 seconds.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Have you met veterans who said that they might start up a business but—

[The Chair, Liberal, Marie-France Lalonde]

Ms. Gaudreau, please excuse the interruption.

I must suspend the meeting for a few seconds.

Please give me a moment.

The bell will ring for a maximum of 30 minutes.

I need the unanimous consent of the committee members to continue our discussion.

I will monitor the bells. That's for sure. We need to go and vote. I just want to make sure.... We can certainly have Madame Gaudreau, and then maybe we'll give a few minutes to each of you to complete your round of questions. Are you comfortable with that?

We will monitor. I guarantee that you will not miss your vote.

Thank you very much.

Ms. Gaudreau, you may continue.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Excellent.

After hearing all the witnesses' opinions, I see the following problem.

How can we encourage veterans to take action when they are suffering, when they have not been cared for, when they have not gotten everything they need after an incident, an accident or something else? It's about self-preservation to start, then they can try and go further.

Given what we are discussing here, in comparison, is there really a difference here in Canada in terms of the suffering veterans experience after their service compared to what is happening in the United Kingdom or the United States?

[John Proctor]

Again, I don't think there's a difference in suffering. All three countries have been to conflict; all three have veterans, but it's a matter of how you deal with your veterans and how the country looks at the veteran.

I mean, Walmart will hire army logistics people straight out, because they know how good they are. Where are our logistics guys going? Are they going to Loblaws? I don't know, because it's not talked about, but we have very strong logistics folks within the Canadian Forces.

Again, as you said, it's this perception of the businesses pulling.... Is there a pull, or are these guys having to fight their way? Again, they've been in the military for years. Now you're asking them to fight a new battle, and the new battle is to make themselves relevant in the business world. Instead of asking them to fight that battle, how do we make that easier for them? How do we ease that role into a business position?

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

I want to make sure I am understood correctly. When I spoke of suffering, I was referring to needs. For example, someone may need a hearing aid or a psychological consultation because they are suffering. That is more what I meant. I agree that a program is needed, and I think there are models out there that we should get our analyst to examine.

I'm done, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marie-France Lalonde]

Thank you very much, Ms. Gaudreau.

Mr. Richards will have five minutes. Then we'll give the floor to the Liberals, and then we will end this session.

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

Given the bells, I likely won't use the whole time, but I did want to finish the conversation we were having. Let's try to do that.

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

When we left off, Mr. Walker, you were talking about needing to change the narrative.

Feel free to jump in as well, of course, Mr. Proctor. How do we do that? How can the government help to make that happen?

[Caleb Walker]

It really is just about highlighting the success stories. I think an annual event would make sense, to showcase the veterans who have successfully done that. That would be the start of changing the narrative. I think if you changed some of the incentive structures so that it was easier for veterans to be successful, then more people would see it. I mean, you can't be what you don't see. When most people leave the military, they don't think that they can start a business. It's just not a thing that they even thought about. If you just showcased all the successes that are actually out there and highlighted them more and more, I think it would be important.

It's a very complicated space. I have a lot of friends who did my two combat tours with me, and they are using the Veterans Affairs Canada support a lot. It's great that the support's out there, because otherwise they would not be in a good spot, but at the end of the day, that's not all veterans. You want to somehow be able to tell a couple of different stories. It's a different story, and the story you want to tell is showcased at an annual event, probably. I think that showcasing all the great companies, all the different jobs that you're creating for Canadians and all the different opportunities that you're creating in Canada would probably be a good way to get started.

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

Mr. Proctor, do you have anything to add?