Veterans Affairs Committee on Oct. 5th, 2026

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

Mr. Walker, your program requires veterans to demonstrate a commitment to growing their business. I'm wondering if there are particular skills or areas of knowledge where veterans commonly seek additional support.

[Caleb Walker]

Yes, it's very hard to start to build a business as a veteran, to be honest. I've been on other panels that discuss this.

Traditional sales roles are not something that veterans are very comfortable with. They have a bad opinion of salespeople because the only time they ever meet them is when they're buying a car or a house, and they don't like those ones. However, they have the skill in them. They just have to know what that is.

Really, for business fundamentals, it could just be quick, small upskilling. You don't have to go and do a two-year MBA or a four-year business degree to learn those skills. A lot of people have started businesses without them, but more of that microtraining, upskilling and enablement would help them. Just getting the business fundamentals of accounting and everything—maybe just for a few weeks—would be a lot more useful than broadly saying that everybody has to go and do an MBA.

That's typically how most people learn their jobs anyway. A lot of salespeople start with a humanities degree, which doesn't teach them how to do sales at all. They learn on the job. They get mentored and become good at it.

That would be an example of it that I see, from the 200 to 300 veteran business owners I work with.

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

Thanks. I used to work in business development, so I hear exactly what you're putting down there.

I'm going to run out of time, so I'm going to quickly ask both of you whether there are community organizations that you know of that help with the training of veterans for new roles outside the armed forces.

Mr. Walker, you can go first, quickly.

[Caleb Walker]

Yes, there's Helmets to Hardhats, which is great for trades. They're helping a lot.

That's kind of it.

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

Mr. Cameron, do you have any that you would like to add?

[Angus Cameron]

I'm not aware of any. That doesn't mean there aren't any.

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

That's fair enough.

Thank you both, gentlemen.

I'm two seconds shy.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marie-France Lalonde]

Yes. That's very good.

This will conclude our first panel.

I want to thank our witnesses for your service, for coming today and for sharing your comments and recommendations with us.

I will now suspend for about five minutes so our next panel can take their seats.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marie-France Lalonde]

I call the meeting back to order.

I would now like to make a few comments for the new witnesses.

Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. Please mute yourself when you are not speaking.

I would now like to welcome the witnesses for this second portion of the meeting.

We have, from Collège La Cité, Annie Chartrand, vice-president, student services and business development, and Frédéric Thibault‑Chabot, vice-president, academic and research.

From Morrow Consulting & Training Inc., we have Mr. David Morrow, chief performance officer.

Each witness will have five minutes for their opening remarks. Committee members will then ask their questions.

Ms. Chartrand and Mr. Thibault‑Chabot, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Annie Chartrand, Vice-President, Student Services and Business Development, Collège La Cité]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Members of the committee, thank you for inviting us to participate in your work on civilian recognition of skills acquired within the Canadian Armed Forces.

Collège La Cité, in Ottawa, offers nearly 90 programs in the fields of skilled trades, health sciences, emergency services and administration, to name just a few. We work hand in hand with employers and our public partners to effectively tailor training to labour market needs. Our college's language of training is French, but we teach technical language in French and English, which enables our graduates to work in both official languages.

The recognition of prior learning is a strategic priority for La Cité. We firmly believe that when a skill is demonstrated and relevant, it should get the recognition it deserves, which means, for example, that a person should not have to retake training for the sole purpose of confirming it.

Military members develop strong technical and professional skills, often accompanied by qualities of leadership, creativity and know-how acquired in the field. These skills and qualities deserve to be formally recognized and equivalent to certain learning units, for example, or even full courses.

To put this in concrete terms, we can quite easily imagine that a drafting and survey technician in the armed forces who wants to become a civil engineering and construction technologist could have all their courses in topometry, computer-assisted drawing and structures be recognized, for example. That pathway ultimately makes it possible to obtain all the credentials and micro-credentials for working in the skilled trades.

In addition to its approach to recognizing prior learning, La Cité advocates skills-based training. That enables us to assess what someone already knows how to do, identify what they need to master and build a tailored pathway to bring them to the career of their choice as quickly as possible.

Here's another example to illustrate this point: A veteran, say in artillery, could take carpentry training at the Centre des métiers Minto, in Orleans, learn how to build residential buildings and get a full-time job after just two 14-week semesters.

La Cité has expertise, infrastructure and programs that can be mobilized to serve the Canadian Armed Forces, veterans and the federal government to design tailored pathways for individuals or cohorts. In addition, with a federal capital investment in our infrastructure, we can double the intake capacity in the skilled trades.

In concrete terms, we find two approaches particularly promising. First, there is the training approach with predetermined pathways and recognition of prior learning. Here, we're thinking of the earlier example of someone who, after their military career, wants to embark on a new career in civil engineering.

There's also the entrepreneurial approach, with support and assistance in innovation. Think of La Cité's business administration programs, which can be taken online from Halifax to Victoria, as well as our expertise in applied research. It's an opportunity for veterans to put their expertise to work in the innovation and commercialization of dual-use technologies, thanks to dedicated support that leaves them with 100% of the intellectual property.

To take advantage of these two approaches, members of the Canadian Armed Forces and their families need clear information about college pathways before leaving military service. La Cité can also help implement support measures, such as those included in the education and training benefit, to take into account all the challenges that veterans and their families face when it comes to transitioning into the labour market.

We aren't claiming that all the mechanisms are already in place. However, we clearly recognize that the post-secondary sector has a vital role to play. La Cité is able to immediately contribute to the government's goal of accelerating the transition of veterans and their families toward promising careers, while addressing critical needs in priority sectors across Ontario and Canada. To that end, La Cité is ready to work closely with the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence to implement concrete solutions, starting with an area where demand is particularly urgent: the skilled trades.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marie-France Lalonde]

Thank you very much.

I will now invite Mr. David Morrow, chief performance officer, for five minutes.

[David Morrow, Chief Performance Officer, Morrow Consulting & Training Inc.]

Good afternoon.

There are a lot of familiar faces here, and I think I might need a permanent seat over here. I don't know.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[David Morrow]

I appreciate you guys continually inviting me. My offer still stands, by the way. As a consultant, I'll gladly offer my services, but I digress.

My name is Dave Morrow, and I served in the Canadian Armed Forces, for those who don't know me, for 15 years, including a deployment to Afghanistan in 2010. Today I'm also a founder, author and coach who has worked with veterans for over seven years, and I'm proud to say that I just started my own non-profit called the H2K Foundation.

I'm here to tell you that we are locking capable veterans out of the civilian workforce, and we're doing it with the very system meant to support them. Here's the core of it. When a veteran is injured and receiving disability benefits, the potential to translate military skills into civilian employment is severely limited. It's not because the skills aren't there; it's because using them puts your benefits at risk, so veterans stay on the sidelines. We have trained, disciplined people, people this country needs, and we have given them a direct financial reason not to work.

I know this first-hand. Before I had Veterans Affairs benefits, I worked as a teacher with no barrier and no hesitation, but once I was receiving benefits, my path back into the workforce narrowed sharply. The incentive flipped. The same skills that made me employable now came with a cost, because earning could mean losing the support I'd been granted for a real injury.

Disability benefits in the military context are not the same as in the civilian one, and I think this is hurting our community. If a civilian employer forced its employees to work out every morning or sent them into an unsafe work environment, let's say one with bullets flying over their heads, and they got hurt, they'd have every right to sue them. The military member doesn't have that right.

If I'm 80% disabled, it doesn't mean that 80% of my body doesn't work. It means my quality of life since joining has been reduced by 80%, and the only way to try to make me whole again is cash from Veterans Affairs Canada. This doesn't mean I can't make a meaningful contribution to the workforce. If I can work, it's despite my injuries, but I shouldn't be forced to choose between gainful, meaningful work and my injury benefits.

That's the trap, and I'm one of the lucky ones. I built a company. I found a way forward. Most veterans I coach do not have that runway, and they tell me the same thing that I lived: The system makes them choose between their stability and their contribution.

My ask to this community is simple. If we are serious about recognizing military skills in civilian life, we can't stop at credential translation. We have to fundamentally rethink how we compensate injured veterans. As it stands, we are not protecting them. We are sidelining them. We are taking people with the exact skills our country needs to thrive, and we are telling them to stand down.

Recognition of military skills is meaningless if the compensation structure punishes a veteran for using them. Fix the translation of skills, yes, but fix the disincentive at the same time or nothing changes on the ground.

I'm happy to take your questions, and I'm happy to share what I see every day with the veterans I work with.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marie-France Lalonde]

Thank you very much, Mr. Morrow.

We will now start our first round for the panel of our second hour.

Mr. Barrett, you have six minutes.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands—Rideau Lakes, ON]

Thanks very much to our witnesses for being here.

I'll start with our witnesses from La Cité.

You talked, I think, about GIS in your opening. There's a full college equivalency for that. What is another example that would be widely understood where the necessary skills and experience are demonstrated but the training and education have to be repeated, and this could be resolved through a PLAR process—a prior learning assessment review process—but there isn't a framework in place?

I used the example in the previous hour that there are some college programs where, when someone applies for a program, they take a look and say, “Once you've completed this program, if you do one year at this university, you'll also get a degree”. You'll have both a diploma and a degree. I suggested to the witnesses who were here that perhaps we should be doing this when we're recruiting for the Canadian Forces and saying, “When you leave the telecommunication line trade”—that's the trade that I was in when I was in the army as a sergeant—“here's the civilian pathway to employment for you.” Then it's not incumbent on industry or the educational institutions to build the solution. I think that the Canadian Armed Forces needs to come to the table and say, “Here's what we're looking to do,” and talk to the experts about how to do it.

What's another example of that? Perhaps it would be illustrative of how we can close that gap.

[Frédéric Thibault-Chabot, Vice-President, Academic and Research, Collège La Cité]

That is extremely interesting.

A concrete example could be, for instance, a veteran who has developed skills in mechanics. However, the fact that they have skills in mechanics doesn't mean that they can be, for example, a mechanical engineering technologist. They need to round out their skills and get a degree as well, because that's recognized in the world of employment.

However, it's extremely interesting to start right from the beginning and to see a path in advance, to see what might be possible for a veteran, for someone who is in a reserve unit or the army, or for their family. There are various ways to recognize prior learning. There are paths that are already set up, from a job in the armed forces to a second career. Other times, it requires a more personalized approach. We're talking about a veteran who has not only acquired mechanical skills, but also acquired other types of skills in the course of the tasks they had to perform.

We were talking earlier about very useful skills such as leadership, teamwork and so on. That has value. At La Cité, our entire educational structure is based on skills. In a given course curriculum, we have linked skills and can say exactly, based on a person's skill set, what course they have left to take or what learning unit they have left to complete. Learning units are smaller components than courses. That leads to different streams.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands—Rideau Lakes, ON]

Thank you very much for that response.

If I can pivot to you, Mr. Morrow, thanks very much for your testimony. Thank you for your service.

You talked about the problems with the IRB. I think your story was very clear about why it doesn't work in its current form to create an incentive that gives the dignity of continuing to work while also receiving the benefit you earned as a result of having provided service with unlimited liability to your country.

What do we do? What's the change? Is there really a 70,000-foot view of the design that we should deploy that would solve for this?

[David Morrow]

It's a great question, and it's one I think we really need to study.

It comes down to what we want our veterans to become at the end of the day. Do we want them to be productive members back in society? The only reason why I know of a different world is that I spend a lot of time in the United States with a lot of American veterans. Literally everyone I interact with has their “dream job” but they're still collecting their injury benefits. Their injury benefits aren't as good as ours. We have very good injury benefits but to get them is so hard, and then you're locked out of working.

I can tell you first-hand that those veterans, despite their injuries, seem to be doing quite well. I would love to see that type of structure here. It's not like we haven't had it in the past. My grandfather got injured during the Second World War. He got his injury pension, or his pension, and then continued to work for CN for the rest of his life with no clawbacks. He then enjoyed the rest of his 40 years as an able-bodied working individual in Montreal.

That's kind of what we have to come to grips with. What are we doing long term, and why do we have this incentive structure in place? I think that would be the most important question.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands—Rideau Lakes, ON]

I would say that it does seem like we have a tendency, historically, to nickel-and-dime veterans. We just don't show up in the same way that they've shown up for Canada. Again, you described a workplace that couldn't be repeated in the civilian world. This isn't something that happened in the recent past. We have a systemic problem that we need to solve. We have modern veterans with a modern need. They want to contribute to the workforce, but they've also earned those benefits. I appreciate your feedback and look forward to hearing the rest of your testimony.

I thank the three of you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marie-France Lalonde]

Thank you very much.

We now have Mr. Fanjoy for six minutes.

[Bruce Fanjoy, Liberal, Carleton, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses.

Mr. Morrow, I'd like to start with you.

I appreciate your testimony, and I heard you very clearly about the problem of a disincentive for people adjusting to civilian life. I think that having gainful employment that suits a person's skills is not just important for making a living but also important for recovering and moving on with one's life.

I would like to ask you what challenges veterans encounter when presenting their CAF-earned training and qualifications to civilian employers after release?

[David Morrow]

It's a great question.

I can speak to my own experience, having started in the education field. That was my training. I have a bachelor of science degree in education and a master of education degree as well.

When I left the military initially, there was no recognition of the decade's worth of experience I had instructing in the military, so I had to start at ground zero. I started my degree a bit later. I had to participate in the very basic level of instruction of a four-year degree at McGill, which seemed, I'll be honest, like a waste of time. There was no mechanism for me to say that I had 10 years' experience in instructing and that I was a senior, non-commissioned member who had done the following courses and was more advanced than the average education student.

That would be one avenue of approach. It's not just the skilled trades that could benefit from a translation of skills. It also speaks to a broader kind of incorporation of military culture within Canadian society. There are just so few of us, and so few employers know that we even exist. When we come in front of their desks with our CVs, leading with the military is usually a bad idea. That, unfortunately, is just the nature of the beast here in Canada.

To answer your question, I would say that there has to be a broader conversation. Putting veterans in the media in a successful light would start changing the culture and give a bit more recognition to the fact that we can contribute a lot of great work and competencies to people's companies and organizations.

[Bruce Fanjoy, Liberal, Carleton, ON]

Thank you.

Ms. Chartrand and Mr. Thibault‑Chabot, from your perspectives as representatives of a post-secondary institution, what role can colleges play in helping veterans translate their military skills, training and experiences into educational and employment opportunities in the civilian sector?

[Frédéric Thibault-Chabot]

The first step is to recognize the skills of military members and assess them.

Post-secondary institutions, particularly colleges, are responsible for shorter training, usually between one and four years, that makes it possible to secure jobs directly related to the most important and in-demand fields in Ontario and Canada. Their expertise is also in assessing skills and shortening the pathway to graduating and accumulating micro-credentials.

Sometimes, veterans are not even looking for a degree, but looking to acquire skills in business administration, for example, or to get support for innovation when they have interesting ideas that meet dual-use needs, such as for the military, and they want to keep the intellectual property.

That's what colleges do when it comes to innovation.