Madam Speaker, consideration of Bill C-67, an Act to establish the Veterans Review and Appeal Board, to amend the Pension Act, to make consequential amendments to other Acts and to repeal the Veterans Appeal Board Act, is now at report stage before the House.
As you know, this bill seeks to restructure the process for the allocation of disability pensions to veterans. The bill also repeals the Canadian Pension Commission and transfers the responsibility of all initial decisions to the Minister of Veterans Affairs. It also establishes a board to review decisions and to hear appeals. Finally, the Bureau of Pensions Advocates, which was formerly an independent body, will now be integrated into the Department of Veterans Affairs. The bureau will deal with applications made to the new board.
This bill proposes many changes. The evaluation process regarding veterans' pensions has been the subject of numerous debates over the years, ever since the issue of providing a pension for any type of disability suffered by a member of the armed forces in the line of duty was first considered.
Issues such as compensation, eligibility to a pension, assessment of that pension, as well as the review and appeal process and the support offered to veterans were all discussed, not to mention time frames, arrears and certain discretionary actions taken by the department.
The pension system currently in effect is the result of all these debates and of all the legislative measures which followed. For example, we can think of the Woods committee, in the sixties, which led to the 1971 reform of the Pension Act. History tells us that laws follow changes: they do not trigger them.
It is precisely because of change that we are trying to make the processing of applications more flexible. Our top priority is to speed up the process so that veterans who are getting older
collect more quickly the pension to which they are entitled. We should remove any barrier that stands in the way.
This stage begins with the examination of four amendments moved by Reform members. If I am not mistaken, those four motions in the first group deal with two main points. The first is that the Bureau of Pensions Advocates should remain independent from the department. The second one is that the services of that Bureau should be available for first time applications.
Reform amendments would keep the Bureau of Pensions Advocates under the Pension Act. They want to maintain the independence of the Bureau and full access for applicants. However, it has not been demonstrated in committee that this would bring substantial benefits. In many cases, it would be a waste of time.
With the witnesses who appeared in committee, we discussed access to and independence of the Bureau. As a matter of fact, no study made in the last few years questioned the existence of the Bureau of Pensions Advocates. Neither the assessment of pensions in 1992 nor the Marshall report tabled last Fall questioned that. The consensus was that the Bureau should remain at arm's-length with the minister.
We should not forget the main thrust of this bill, which is to speed up the processing of applications. We know full well that, even when the services of the Bureau of Pensions Advocates were used at the very beginning, only 30 per cent of the claims made to the Canadian Pension Commission were approved. When the rejected claims were sent to the next levels of decision, the approval rate jumped to 70 per cent. Only 30 per cent of the Commission's decisions were maintained, despite the legal services provided by the Bureau.
But what is even more surprising is that Mr. Chartier, the chairman of the Canadian Pension Commission, was unable to answer our questions about the 30 per cent success rate of his organization compared to the 70 per cent success rate of the Board, which overrode 70 per cent of the first decisions made by his Commission. Mr. Chartier stated that he could not explain this difference and that he never thought about examining the issue. He told us he was very concerned about hanging on to work through careful scheduling of the files review.
I must say that what I found the most convincing during the chairman's testimony was his nonchalance in terms of the delays our veterans must face. We just have to support the department's bill even though an arbitrary decision can be made at the first level. The proposed merger is not such a bad idea after all.
The bill provides for the pensions advocates to deal with all the claims made to the new board which will be responsible for the reviews and the appeals. Hence, the free legal aid service will be maintained where needed. We hope that an increasing number of claims will be approved at the first level. This is the main object of this bill, to open up the pension allocation system and to make it a lot more flexible.
We think that a forms clerk or expert would be much more useful to help a claimant to complete the forms and make their way through the system. The goal here is to speed up the process while providing assistance at the review and appeal level to those who need legal advice or help in their approach. This is why we will oppose the amendments put forward by the Reform Party.
We will reject the Reform's motions to "judicialize" even more the process at the first decision level. We must trust the proposed change given the performance of the Canadian Pension Commission so far.