Veterans Affairs Committee on June 3rd, 2026

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

Yes.

Based on your discussions with veterans, to what extent has trust in Veterans Affairs Canada and in the program become a therapeutic issue in its own right?

[Christopher Banks]

Part of the trust issue is that this is a contract that has been going on for four years under PCVRS and eight years under the previous contract holder, CVVRS. Everyone has already seen just how well this program isn't going.

Everybody has made the connections among the current contract holders of Lifemark, Loblaws, the bread price-fixing scandal, greedflation and mislabeling Canadian products at the grocery store. Everyone knows who these people are and everyone knows their reputation. It's Canada-wide.

When veterans see that, they'll say, “These guys?” They're not going to have the trust. They never will.

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

I have one last question. It concerns the professionals working in this program, including therapists.

I heard a bit about this from you, Ms. Gillis, but is specific training required or can anyone who is a qualified therapist work with these individuals?

[The Chair, Liberal, Marie-France Lalonde]

You have 40 seconds.

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

However, you must take into account the 30 seconds I lost owing to the interpretation, Madam Chair.

[Natalie Gillis]

When it comes to specialized training, I believe there needs to be something much stronger than the modules offered with the PCVRS training.

When I first signed up—back in 2002, I believe it was, before I went out on my own—there were four little modules to get oriented about the military demographic.

When I talk to people or just colleagues in general who are curious about getting involved with this demographic, I say to them that they can't just read things. They can't just study it. They have to go out there, volunteer and get to know them for a minimum of 10 to 15 years. You have to have the steadfastness to deal with the energy these people come with. I'm not kidding.

We have to think about vicarious trauma, direct trauma and everything that can be a result of that. If people who have good hearts are going in there and they're not prepared, if someone is having a bad day, they're going to get traumatized again. This is what I was speaking to earlier. I'm concerned about anybody working with this demographic who needs a lot of support. I'll put it that way. It can be very damaging to other people. We also have to be considerate about transference and counter-transference. Maybe I can get into that a bit later.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marie-France Lalonde]

Thank you very much.

I'm on the second round, with Mr. Tolmie for five minutes.

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

Thank you to our guests.

Ms. Gillis, thank you for the comments in your opening statement that recognized the intent and why we're here.

I'm going to leap off from that to express some disappointment I've had recently. I've seen military members paraded out in front of the media. When it came to the Snowbirds announcement, they were basically told that they're going to lose their jobs next year. We treat our serving military members by telling them that they're losing their jobs, and then we go to the monument—as Mr. Banks recently shared—and we have no recognition.

These guys just get things wrong. Parade our veterans out for the monument, but don't make an announcement that they're cancelling the Snowbirds. They're failing to recognize the importance of what they mean to Canadians. We don't have the monuments here that they have in Europe for spilled blood. Our only touchstone is the Snowbirds.

I'd like to get your thoughts, Mr. Banks, about the monument, about what we could have done better and about how we can treat our military better.

[Christopher Banks]

First, I'd like to speak briefly about the Snowbirds. These things are not happening in isolation. The Snowbirds, the monument, everything that is being pushed with the honours review, mental health for families and all these issues are not happening in isolation.

There is a social erosion happening, in which we're losing the social fabric that keeps us all together. Contract after contract is not going to fix things if we don't have the community to bring us together—the monument, Snowbirds or whatever else is next on the chopping block.

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

Thank you for your answer.

In your opening testimony, you held up a document. I'd like you to explain a bit more and go in-depth about that document, as well as to share a little about the complaints that are being brought forward but are being ignored.

[Christopher Banks]

Just so I understand, was it the dossier of complaints or the social media analysis? They're both full of complaints.

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

Let's hit both of them.

[Christopher Banks]

Listening to earlier testimony on this study, it became pretty apparent to me that there is a knowledge gap in what is said and what is expressed within the veteran community. On our own, we don't put it out there. We keep it all to ourselves.

In order to address that, I went online. I ran a query and analyzed the results. There were 1,600 comments and 77 posts. A supermajority of them were negative, even the ones in which someone was organically saying, “I'm asking for help.” When you start going through them, at the end of the appeal, people say, “This is bullshit. How can this be happening? Is anybody else going through this?”

There are dozens and hundreds of comments saying, “Yes, me too. Yes, that's exactly what happened to me. Strap in; it's going to get worse.” That's one of the comments I received years ago when I was going through this process. I was at the end of the rope, and I reached out on social media, asking for help. One comment I got was, “Strap in; it's going to get worse.”

For the social media analysis, these are the sentiments of the veteran community. I've included a lot of the public facing comments, but not one of the private group comments.

The other document—this one was obtained through ATIP—is a four-year period of complaints VAC said it did not receive. It tracks in the dossier email after email discussing, at length, the comments VAC said didn't exist.

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

Thank you.

Ms. Gillis, I'm going to run out of time, but you talked about the importance of a relationship with veterans. What I hear is that veterans are being forced to have that relationship with their caregiver broken.

What are your thoughts on that?

[Natalie Gillis]

I think it's very inhumane. I'm glad that I stopped off at Staples earlier today. I've supplied the committee with just one of many that's available. There are 119 pages here, describing the standards of practice with the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association. It goes through professional conduct, saying that we have to take care of ourselves. I also have a termination of psychotherapy. There are many things you can go through here that were published last year.

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

Are we going to have copies of that?

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marie-France Lalonde]

Thank you very much, Mr. Tolmie.

Next, we have Mr. Fanjoy for five minutes.

[Bruce Fanjoy, Liberal, Carleton, ON]

Thank you. Sergeant Banks, it's good to see you again. You talked about trust and the lack of trust.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marie-France Lalonde]

Mr. Fanjoy, I have to interrupt you, and we'll stop the time.

Can you put your microphone down a bit? There is a sound issue.

We'll suspend very briefly, Mr. Fanjoy, to have someone reach out to you to make sure your sound is okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marie-France Lalonde]

I call the meeting back to order.

I'll ask Mr. Clark to go ahead and start his round of questions for five minutes.

[Braedon Clark, Liberal, Sackville—Bedford—Preston, NS]

Thank you to our witnesses for being here this afternoon.

Mr. Banks, thank you for your service and your obvious passion for the veteran community. I think it's truly admirable.

You made a comment during the previous round of questions that so many of the issues you see are around trust. I think you said that trust will never be there under the current model. I'm wondering, as trust is a very.... The saying is that once you lose it, it's hard to get it back in anything in life. From our perspective, you've laid out very well this afternoon what you see as the problems—and pretty entrenched problems, I would summarize.

What things do you think we should be doing, when we start to inform our report? What do we have to do better to help people like yourself and other veterans across the country?

[Christopher Banks]

I'm assuming that we'll go ahead with the program in the future. We're not going to put all the responsibilities back on Veterans Affairs.

In that context, it really needs to be spelled out in the language of the contract what the responsibilities are and what time frames are acceptable, because they're way too tight. What powers will the RSS and the executives over at the contractor have over veterans, over our benefits and over our case management?

There can be no provision that allows VAC to overrule a medical decision, ever, under any circumstances whatsoever. It doesn't matter if continuing the program is going to cost 10 times what it would cost the next veteran. VAC is here to provide rehabilitation services, so either do that or don't.

[Braedon Clark, Liberal, Sackville—Bedford—Preston, NS]

Something that's come up in all the studies we've done while I've been on this committee is that the veteran community is incredibly diverse. I don't mean that just from a gender, racial or age standpoint, but from experience.

You have combat experience. You have overseas deployments. Other veterans wouldn't, or maybe they were in a different service.

How do we create a system that is responsive to all of those groups?

That's a big challenge. I know that's a difficult question. How do we do something that is able to effectively help somebody who served tours in Bosnia and Afghanistan, like you, and somebody who perhaps was stationed here at home for the vast majority of their career?

[Christopher Banks]

Honestly, it really shouldn't make any difference whatsoever whether we're talking about a tier-one special forces operator, a combat infantry soldier or somebody who just got hurt in training. That happens thousands of times a year. It doesn't matter what their experience is. What matters is the injury and getting them better. Nothing else matters—nothing else should matter.

[Braedon Clark, Liberal, Sackville—Bedford—Preston, NS]

I appreciate that very much. That's a very helpful answer for us when we're thinking about how we craft a system. If we have to create something that's applicable across the board, versus something that might be applicable to 700 different types of people, the latter is more difficult. I appreciate that.

I think there's about one minute and 20 seconds left. I'll hand it over to Ms. Royer to ask a question as well.