Evidence of meeting #42 for Veterans Affairs in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was civilian.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Zoe Royer Liberal Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
I guess if we were to develop that similar national framework, it would really create that common language around describing skills. I would add just a couple more, such as deployment and logistics. I know that there's a whole gamut.
Your program—
Director, Veteran Business Network Institute
I probably ran out of time.
Typically, in the United States, with all the companies that sell to the American government, you see them overrepresented in logistics, cyber, security, consulting and IT. Most of those companies that supply the United States government are overrepresented by veterans and veteran-owned businesses.
Right off the top, everything that the Canadian government is looking to build right now with its defence investments would be overrepresented by the veteran community.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Marie-France Lalonde
Thank you very much.
We'll go to Mrs. DeBellefeuille for two and a half minutes.
Mrs. DeBellefeuille, you have the floor.
Vallée-du-Haut-Saint-Laurent, BQ
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
Mr. Cameron, from what I have heard, you are a regular at our committee. I want to hear your thoughts. If you had a single recommendation to make regarding all the discussions and debates on the transition from the military to civilian life, what would it be? What recommendation should we defend at all costs?
Veterans Advocate, As an Individual
I was aware of people releasing prior to 1991. I remember when employers were really excited about having a veteran or a retired military member come to work for them. I see, nowadays, where maybe some employers are hesitant because there's a misconception—since we've been on missions that resulted in conflict—that a lot of veterans releasing are damaged and disabled, that they might have PTSD and are going to call in sick a lot, so they wouldn't be a great person to hire for that job. That needs to go away.
We're the same now as we were prior to the Persian Gulf, when I deployed. There are military members who went to Afghanistan and came back. It seems to me that employers are hesitant. I guess education is the way to get rid of that hesitation. That's my opinion.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Marie-France Lalonde
Thank you very much.
We now go to Mr. Diotte for five minutes.
Conservative
Kerry Diotte Conservative Edmonton Griesbach, AB
I thank the two veterans for attending this committee and for their service, of course.
As you know, this committee is studying how well military skills and qualifications transfer into civilian jobs after Canadian Forces veterans leave the military. There are some challenges.
First of all, I'd like to ask Mr. Cameron if he could give some specific examples of military members who have left the forces. What kinds of skills did they have? What did they apply for and what did they have to go through to get accepted in that job? For instance, say somebody was trained as an electrician and couldn't be hired as an electrician somewhere.
Veterans Advocate, As an Individual
I'm aware that the training as of late has been reduced to address retention. In other words, they don't want to train us to this great, big, high level, because we're going to leave.
However, that's not the case. We want to do our careers. We want to do our time. Giving us less training just to get by and do our job is not a retention tool to keep people in the military. I think our training needs to come back up to a level where we are valuable to the military and also in the civilian world.
Director, Veteran Business Network Institute
Typically, I see it mostly in the senior NCOs, to be honest. For the most part, officers have a university degree. Canada likes university degrees for a variety of reasons—probably because most federal government employees have university degrees—so they typically find jobs out there.
It's not uncommon for senior NCOs to have decades of experience and knowledge, and the ability to do the majority of jobs. Most warrants and sergeants do officers' jobs when there are not enough officers, so they have all of the capability to do it.
In terms of individual examples of that.... Successful stories are not part of the public narrative or in the conversation very much, so a lot of the soldiers don't know what's possible. They think, “This job doesn't really match me very well, I'm not enjoying it, and I don't make a lot of money doing it, but I guess this is the kind of job I can expect.”
You want to change the narrative around it. You want to champion and celebrate people who have successfully transitioned and are now doing really important jobs. A lot of that starts with a larger framework for the country, because it's that population that gets really chewed out because of the lack of a degree or something, going forward.
Conservative
Kerry Diotte Conservative Edmonton Griesbach, AB
Mr. Walker, you said that Canada doesn't really have incentives to hire veterans. Are there incentives that you're aware of to hire veterans in the U.S.A. or with other militaries?
Director, Veteran Business Network Institute
Yes. Follow the incentive and I'll show you the outcome. In the United States, it's a population that's tracked nationally, so companies will let you know how many veterans they employ. Then there are certain benefits for companies to hire veterans as well. There are all kinds of programs like that.
I used to be in this space quite a lot. There's really no incentive for a company in Canada to hire a veteran. There are other programs. It's probably more likely that they get hired for some reason other than for being a veteran.
If you're looking in the diversity and equity groups, veterans never really come up in Canada. That's very different in other countries. It's probably because the defence industry has not been that important in Canada until very recently. Hopefully, that change and the importance of building that up will require a whole lot of veterans who are commercially savvy and have great experience to provide. Hopefully, they get brought into the sector and that becomes a very important piece of it.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Marie-France Lalonde
Thank you very much.
Now, for the last five minutes in this round, we have Ms. Hirtle.
Liberal
Alana Hirtle Liberal Cumberland—Colchester, NS
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Good afternoon, gentlemen. Thanks for being here today.
I'll ask both of you this question: The thing that I'm wondering, first and foremost, is whether there are skills that are more—and, conversely, less easily—transferable from military work to civilian work.
Perhaps, Mr. Cameron, you could answer that first for me.
Veterans Advocate, As an Individual
Sure.
I was talking to a friend, and she said that the combat arms trades are hard to transfer to the civilian world. You can have a master warrant officer or a chief warrant officer who just moved 200 people—and all their gear, equipment and everything else that went with that—from A to B successfully, and set up. What is that skill? How does that skill translate? That job could never have been done unless he had the skills to do it.
There needs to be some kind of investigation or committee put together, or something, to talk about the skills that are not written, I guess you could say.
Liberal
Alana Hirtle Liberal Cumberland—Colchester, NS
That's an excellent point. Thank you for that.
Mr. Walker, what are your thoughts?
Director, Veteran Business Network Institute
As a person who came from those trades—the combat arms trades—I used to jump out of airplanes and blow stuff up. Those skills are not particularly useful in a civilian company, though it depends on what kind of company it is—whether it's a legal one.
There are lots of other aspects around that, which are quite important. You see that a lot of people from combat arms are great at working in large companies: management, building strategy, briefing, leadership and selling. They have to sell a plan or an idea to their soldiers, or they have to sell a plan to their boss for it to get approved. A lot of those skills are the ones you want to pick up in a skills framework, in order to easily show that this is what you're getting. You're not just getting a person. I didn't blow stuff up 365 days a year. There was other stuff I used to do.
You have to talk more about those capabilities and roles compared with the traditional ones.
Liberal
Director, Veteran Business Network Institute
Yes, it was.