Erin O'Toole

[Ethics, November 7th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the Canada-European trade agreement represents an amazing opportunity for our country and for Europe—80,000 net new jobs. The Canada-EU coalition that was announced is working on ensuring that we benefit from the $12-billion injection to our GDP that deal represents.

The real question for this question period today, now that the final text of the agreement is out, is if the NDP is going to oppose yet another trade deal that is great for Canada.

[Remembrance Day, November 7th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, as we enter Remembrance week, in a year that marks the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I, it is important for Canadians to remember the 61,000 Canadians who gave their lives in the Great War.

Next Monday I will be at Osgoode Hall for a special event at which the Law Society of Upper Canada posthumously calls to the bar 58 law students who left promising young careers to serve in the Great War and gave their lives for Canada. They join 113 lawyers who gave their lives in the Great War and are marked on the Osgoode Hall Great War memorial. That includes Sam Sharpe, the member of Parliament for Uxbridge, who was my predecessor 100 years ago. He fought at Vimy Ridge and died as a result of his service in the Great War.

I thank the Law Society of Upper Canada, in particular lawyer Patrick Shea for his vision on this event, and I thank the Highlanders' foundation for making it possible.

[Committees of the House, November 6th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley for his intervention and for his suggestion. I do think there is more common ground. I think the veterans affairs committee demonstrated that.

Something that I will note is that even he fell into the mistake that some made when he talked about Service Canada and treatment at Service Canada for people. “Treatment” is the wrong word. It is not providing the front-line treatment, but is helping the veterans access the range of treatments.

Our veterans affairs committee heard from two veterans who I have known for many years and admire. Both happen to be from the member's province, British Columbia. They are Chris Linford and Tim Laidler. Both are involved in programs directed at operational stress injuries. Tim Laidler is at the Veterans Transition Network, and Chris Linford and his wife are running the COPE program, which is for families.

What our government has realized in recent years, particularly on mental health, is that there is not one single solution that fits the needs of all veterans. We are finding in some cases that they need the equine therapy that Can Praxis and others are offering, the Veterans Transition Network peer counselling, or the family-based COPE program. We need a variety of options for our veterans, and most of the time that is going outside of Veterans Affairs to providers in health care or in veterans' advocacy fields.

We have tried increasingly to fund these programs, either on a pilot or a permanent basis, to make sure there is a variety of programs to help the diverse needs of our veterans with mental health concerns.

[Committees of the House, November 6th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for the question. I know of her passion for our veterans and on these issues.

As I said in my remarks, the report that came before the last session of Parliament ended, in the spring, produced 14 unanimous recommendations. Many of them are good ones. Many came from the more than 50 witnesses who appeared from across the country at the veterans affairs committee.

We have already moved on four of them. I spoke about the most important one, which is to make sure that a medical condition is stabilized and some basic veteran case management setup is done before someone is transitioned out of uniform.

However, there are other important ones. We have already indicated that we will move forward on adding a construction clause and bill of rights into the new veterans charter, in terms of a veterans bill of rights. We are already looking to harmonize the new veterans charter and SISIP and to do that better. That would eliminate some duplication and probably provide more benefits to more veterans.

Another important thing is that we will provide more direct financial support and training for home-based caregivers. These are usually the partners of the veterans. I have seen them first-hand, become the primary support both mentally and physically for veterans who are recovering. There will be more financial support for the families in that regard.

We have said, clearly, that we will review the disability award process to make sure it is robust and provides what is needed. The one thing that is often overlooked in terms of the disability award upfront is the fact that a lot of people do not talk about the suites of benefits that also follow, in some cases, for life. We have to look at the care of veterans over their lifetime. This is not comparing someone's situation to a workplace accident or a car accident. There is a suite of care for our veterans, so there is an upfront payment to help with that transition, but we have to look at the totality.

[Committees of the House, November 6th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I know the member's community was impacted as one of the nine centres where there was an office closure. He knows there is a Service Canada office nearby. In the case of Thunder Bay, I think it is about two kilometres away.

That is a good question. For those offices, and that one in particular, where there was a closure, there is a transferred Veterans Affairs caseworker who is fully knowledgeable and experienced in working specifically with veterans, including the demeanour and empathy required to help them on an administrative level.

As for the rest of the Service Canada network, that is a great question. The rest of the network has received what is considered level one training, which is training on the overview of veterans' benefits, the types of forms, and the types of queries that would come in on a daily basis. Most of the queries, about 80%, tend to be the same types of questions about benefits, including survivor benefits.

There is an intention to also do another level of training. I know that is being looked at, so that those caseworkers will have a good summary of the full body of knowledge to assist veterans when they go to a Service Canada office.

As I said in my remarks, veterans do not just have to live near a Veterans Affairs office. They can actually use the Service Canada offices or the 1,300 veteran service officers at the Legion. Their district Legion veteran service officer has a direct line of access into Veterans Affairs.

If anyone is falling through the cracks, we have to remedy that. This is about serving more and serving a wider cross-section.

[Committees of the House, November 6th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I have the distinct honour to rise in the House, with regularity, on issues relating to the Canadian Forces and our veterans. This is an important part of the reason why I ran for Parliament.

The most formative part of my life to date, my 41 years, were the 12 years I spent in uniform for Canada. I joined the military at 18, after graduating from Bowmanville High School. I attended the Royal Military College of Canada and served with the RCAF. I then transitioned to the reserves when I went to law school.

I have previously said in the House that when I left my military family and hung up that uniform, that transition was a difficult time. The decisions that flow around this are extremely stressful. In most cases, our young men and women joined around the same age I did, at 18. I did not have to write another resume until I left law school. I never had to apply for other jobs.

However, the difference between us being 18 or in our 30s, or even later when we leave, is we now have family, children and we will often be in a province that is different from where we enrolled, so our life has changed radically. It has changed for the better because I think almost every person who leaves the military finds it to be a rewarding experience and something that he or she feels proud of for life.

The reason why the new veterans charter was created was to help our men and women with that transition.

I share the concern of my friend from Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, that how in recent years the debate in this place has been lowered by using veterans and programs like the new veterans charter for political gain. In part, it is shameful because the entire House supported the new veterans charter, including my friend from Sackville—Eastern Shore, who is one of the few who has been here and worked on veterans issues all of those years. Several other members of the Liberal Party voted for it. It was a Liberal project. However, the parties came together because they saw the need to modernize the transition of our men and women out of uniform. The intention of the new veterans charter was to ensure there was access to skills training, education and faster health care so the transition to civilian life was smoother. That is why every sitting member of the House voted for it under the Martin Liberal government.

The new veterans charter has been implemented over the course of our government. The intention of that document was for it to be a living document to ensure it could be reviewed from time to time. Our government has already acted. We increased the permanent impairment allowance supplement for some of our most critically wounded soldiers from Afghanistan. Why? Because those who are most critically wounded have the most difficult time transitioning due to their injuries. They have a hard time finding permanent civilian employment after they leave the military. Our government has already moved swiftly to address that major issue.

I had the honour of sitting on the veterans affairs committee during my first year in Parliament. That committee was charged by the current Minister of Veterans Affairs with reviewing all aspects of the new veterans charter. I still meet World War II and Korean War veterans around the country who complain about the system that was in place before the new veterans charter and how records were lost, how they could not provide support for claims and how claims were rejected. We have been listening and the new veterans charter was an attempt by the previous government, and increasingly by our government, to improve that transition period.

We have also made good changes to the Veterans Review and Appeal Board, such as putting more veterans on the VRAB to review these sorts of claims.

I will use a few moments of time in the House to speak again about veterans' issues. I urge some of my colleagues in here, who use it as a wedge, to learn about the issues a little more, because I have been profoundly disappointed by the low level of knowledge. People are quick to complain, but very slow to actually research.

I have one main quote from the report by the veterans affairs committee on the new veterans charter. Two parts of its report are critical for the House to consider, especially the New Democrats who have brought this concurrence debate to the floor today.

The all-party committee thankfully removed most of the politics from its operations. The members of the committee heard from over 50 witnesses: veterans, veterans' advocates, people with experience in mental health and in veterans care. They put together a series of 14 recommendations, about which I will talk a little. What is important is that they unanimously agreed that the principles of the new veterans charter should be upheld, but that improvements to the charter were critical.

Members from all parties recognized that the new veterans charter provided a “solid foundation” for transition from military life to civilian life. There are aspects of the new veterans charter that need to be improved and updated, but the members of the committee unanimously agreed that the principles behind it in assisting that transition were sound. It is just that their execution needed to be done better.

I said earlier that the origins of the new veterans charter were in submissions by many veterans, including some veterans' groups that are now providing input on how we improve it. However, a lot were asking for more upfront transition support for men and women of the forces, including for those with injuries. That is what the new veterans charter tried to do. It also tried to ensure that health care was part of the transition mix for people leaving uniform quickly, and it still what it does that.

I have heard a few members of the House ask about the $4.7 billion that has been discussed. I hope some of them are listening now. A good portion of those funds will go to benefits for soldiers injured in Afghanistan, having enhanced benefits through the changes we already made as a government with the permanent impairment allowance and permanent impairment allowance supplement. A good portion of it is for that. However, on a basic funding level, Veterans Affairs Canada has a budget that is about $800 million higher per year than it was when we formed government.

I hear it said that this government is cutting from veterans. However, it is actually one of the few areas, while we have been trying to get back to a balanced budget, a principle that is important to our government, that has been largely spared. What I like most as a veteran, having worked after leaving uniform on veterans' issues passionately for many years, is our government is not stuck in the 1950s on how we care for our veterans.

Some people still talk about the Veterans Affairs offices in the House. They clearly do not understand how veterans are served. Those offices were opened around the country at a time when there was no national health care in the country. The only offices the Government of Canada had around the country were the post offices. There was no network of services and there was no health care. Offices were needed to administer to the entire generation that served and that needed care, and in some cases needed direct relationships with physicians who were private operators.

Let us fast-forward to today and to our veterans who are in some cases leaving in their twenties and who have never had a bank book. They want to access not just their banking information, but their veteran's account on their smartphone or on their tablet. I have said in the House a few times that we have to provide services that support our veterans in their nineties and in their twenties. To do that, we cannot sit still. We have to provide a range of services.

What has changed from the 1950s to today is a network of almost 700 offices across Canada called “Service Canada” that were not there before. We now also have health care administered through the provinces, and care for veterans can be accomplished through transfers and relationships with the provinces, including some of the facilities that the federal government used to own but transferred to the provinces.

We all now know from the debates in the House that provinces administer the health care systems in their province or territory, so the federal government now has a partnering relationship. There is still some exceptional work going on at Camp Hill, Sunnybrook, some of the veterans hospitals, but they are part of the provincial health regimes and they work with Veterans Affairs for care for our veterans. That is what has changed.

It is critical to remind Canadians that Veterans Affairs offices, the brick and mortar offices, did not deliver any services. They were administrative centres. Now that same level of administrative support can be offered at the network of 700 Service Canada offices, which did not exist post World War II but do now.

My area of Durham and the region at large, with 500,000 people, never had a Veterans Affairs office. People would have to travel to Toronto. Now with Service Canada, that same level of administrative support can be obtained at five Service Canada offices in and around the edges of the Durham region. That is smart governance, and anyone who says it is not is playing games.

Some of the offices that were closed had less than 10 people in them a day. In most cases, there is a Service Canada office that can offer the same level of support in the same building or down the street. As a veteran, it disappoints me that we actually took the advice of one veteran who had been highly critical of this. He said that the person in the Sydney Service Canada office would not have experience with veterans. We listened to him last October. I went to the minister personally. We ensured that when the Veterans Affairs office closed in Sydney, an experienced veteran case worker was transferred to the Service Canada office. With a caseload of about 10 to 12 people a day, one is appropriate to provide the same level of administrative support and guidance.

At the same time, over 15,000 veterans have signed up for the My VAC account, to manage their own Veterans Affairs accounts online. Most of them are the younger cohorts who I have talked about, in their twenties and thirties. Serving veterans is not about standing still. It is about doing things better and ensuring we can serve more people. We are committed to that.

I am proud of the uniting feature of the Conservative Party and this government. I am proud to serve in Parliament alongside members who have served in the army, the navy, the air force. We ensure this is a priority. There are 30,000 more survivors now taking part in the veterans independence program under our changes than before we took office. I think all MPs know veterans in their constituencies who benefit from the VIP, an appropriately named program, to help them stay in their homes.

With changes, not only have we allowed more people to qualify for that, we have made it easier. Therefore, instead of the administrative burden that families were telling us about of constantly having to submit receipts, mainly the children of veterans, there is now a case where they can be approved for such service and it can be done in advance. I have heard directly from people who say how much easier that is.

We have supported great programs that have popped up in recent years, like the work Wounded Warriors has done with service dogs, like the work the group of physicians and scholars at the University of British Columbia have done with the veterans transition program and the Veterans Transition Network, dealing with veterans with OSIs or PTSD. This has been funded by our government to try to take that great work UBC has done for about 20 years, since the Medak Pocket of Yugoslavia, and take it nationally.

We have increased and modernized the Last Post Fund, increasing both the amounts covered by the fund and extending it to modern veterans, not to ensure every veteran has a funeral paid for by his or her country, because I know most do not want that, I certainly do not, but all veterans want to know that indigent veterans and those who have fallen through the cracks will have those services provided. The Last Post Fund has done that for 100 years. Now will do it for the post-Korean War generation of veterans.

We have the veterans hiring act, where we are putting veterans as the top priority in hiring in the civil service. We know this will not apply to every veteran, because they still have to be eligible for that post within the federal government, but it sends a message when Canada's Parliament has an act and puts veterans in top priority position. We are sending a message to employers across the country that hiring a veteran is not just the right thing to do; it is actually accretive to the bottom line. It would be hiring people with a track record of being able to work well on a team and take to training, and most people who join the military are inherently loyal; they want to affiliate with a uniform or a regiment. Therefore, in an age where companies are spending millions of dollars on retraining and recruiting in the fast turnover parts of our economy, hiring a loyal person can save money in the long term.

We created the veterans ombudsman position. I have the good fortune to speak to Mr. Parent regularly on these issues. He came from an amazing life as a search and rescue technician, one of our most dedicated and brave members of the Air Force who save Canadians. Now he is applying his passion to serving our veterans as the ombudsman. We take his reports very seriously as direct input that he is providing to the discussion on veterans care.

On top of our changes to the VIP, we have eliminated more than two million forms of red tape that were burdening our veterans, as a way of streamlining things. In some cases, our older veterans were having issues and falling behind on paperwork, or it was falling to their children to administer. We want to make it easier.

There are important commemorative things we have done. I still meet Korean War veterans who thank us for, a year ago, making it the Year of the Korean War Veteran to recognize the 60th anniversary of the conclusion of that war. That war has been described as the forgotten war because it came so close after World War II and was a UN-mandated mission. Our work on that and, frankly, the work of the Korean government recognizing our veterans as well, has been empowering for many of our veterans. I am sure next week members of the House will have the honour of providing 75th anniversary commemorative pins to veterans of World War II. These are important symbols that veterans like to have for Remembrance Week, to hand to their grandchildren, or as part of their family memory of service.

We also recognized Bomber Command with a bar for the decorations. It was posthumous as well, so families could complete the service medal set of their grandparent by adding the Bomber Command bar. That was important because Bomber Command actually had the highest casualty rates of World War II, and the young men who flew on those missions were courageous. After the war, because of the nature of those missions, Bomber Command was not talked about, and the men were not properly recognized. There was a lovely exhibit in London, England, that many of those veterans attended, and the Bomber Command bar is a way we can commemorate that as well.

As I said in my remarks before in the House, when I brought up the important role the Legion plays in the care of our veterans, on a political program, I was mocked for that position. The only thing that predates the post-World War II bricks and mortar offices, is the Legion. Its network of 1,300 veteran services officers since the 1930s has been helping our veterans directly, and its mandate comes from an act of Parliament in 1926.

There are 14 recommendations from the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs on modernizing and evolving the new veterans charter. We have already acted on four of those, the most important of which is to make sure veterans are stable medically before they are transitioned out of the Canadian Armed Forces and to make sure they are briefed on Veterans Affairs and their caseworker.

I think most MPs would find that is usually the gap where a problem to the service or benefits of a veteran happens, because they leave one institution, the Canadian Armed Forces, which some joined at age 18, and they transition to an entirely new department. We are now making it mandatory that they are stable and they have the Veterans Affairs training.

The other parts of the recommendations we are reviewing and will act upon, because we are passionately committed to our veterans.

[Privilege, November 4th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I have listened keenly to this debate, including the debate of my friend from Toronto—Danforth who talked about the debate being important to ensure proper accountability of members of Parliament. Then today he supported his House leader's move to immediate action. Despite the fact there remain routes of appeal, they want immediate consequences.

In light of that, there has been a determination with respect to $1.2 million in mailings and salaries for improper staff. I understand the New Democratic Party is looking to appeal to the Federal Court of Appeal because it does not agree with the decision with respect to the money that is owed the House of Commons.

My question for the government House leader is this. Since the New Democrats want an immediate response, perhaps it would be possible for these monies to be paid in trust to the House of Commons pending the appeals the NDP are launching.

[Holidays Act, November 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to rise today to speak on behalf of the government on Bill C-597, particularly at this time when all members of the House are wearing the poppy. It is important for us to debate Remembrance Day, its role in our country, and how we should remember, both here in our nation's Parliament and at the cenotaphs scattered around the hundreds, if not thousands, of small towns and cities across the country as acts of remembrance.

I would like to thank the member for Scarborough Southwest for bringing this debate to the House today. As he knows, the government supports the intention of the bill with some amendments, which we have spoken with the member about throughout the process. I would like to thank him for sharing his personal reflections on what Remembrance Day means to his family, and indeed he showed the House that the events of a few weeks ago in this city still reverberate deeply with the nation and the members of the House.

It is interesting that we are debating Remembrance Day, a very important and solemn day for our country, but it was not Remembrance Day when it first came to Canada. In fact, in 1919, it was referred to as Armistice Day because it was the year following the important armistice to end the Great War, where the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month would be commemorated to honour the dead from that Great War and to respect the peace that was secured through the sacrifice of many. There have been 1.5 million Canadians who have heeded the call of service over our history as a nation, so it is not only a time when remembrance can be given to the fallen but respect for the service of those in the past and present can be shown.

It was Armistice Day for our young country that was honoured each November. Interestingly, which I am sure the hon. member knows from his research on the bill, for the first decade or so, it was not even formally recognized on November 11 but on the first Monday of the week in which November 11 fell. It might be interesting for members of the House to know that it was an act by a member of Parliament from British Columbia in 1931 that solidified November 11 as the day that would be marked, and changed the name from Armistice Day to Remembrance Day that we know today.

The first decade or so of remembrance for our young nation was an interesting period because within that first decade the guardians of Remembrance Day were also born. In 1925 the Royal Canadian Legion was created, bringing together a number of fraternal and service organizations with many veterans from the Great War. They came together. Then in the House the following year, 1926, an act of Parliament was granted to recognize the important role the Royal Canadian Legion played then and plays now on remembrance and care for our veterans.

To this day, there remains 1,100 veteran service officers whose core principle for the branch they serve is to serve the veteran community. I know the veteran service officer in my branch, on an individual basis, has helped over 500 veterans or their partners access benefits. Most Canadians should know that when they support the poppy drive in their towns and cities across the country, they are supporting the work of the veteran service officers because the proceeds from the poppy fund are dedicated to veteran care in the community and across the country.

I would like to thank the Legion for its important role with our veterans and for making sure that Remembrance Day happens. This week I will be at Remembrance Day services at two of the small cenotaphs in hamlets in my community. There would be no service in those small hamlet cenotaphs were it not for Branch 178 of the Royal Canadian Legion, which makes sure that every cenotaph that bears the name of a fallen soldier for Canada has a proper ceremony and mark of remembrance.

Eight years afterward, in 1939, after Remembrance Day as we now know it was brought forward by this federal House, our National War Memorial was unveiled.

It was struck two weeks ago. It was attacked for what it represents to our country. We are all still shaken by the death of Corporal Nathan Cirillo, who was an honorary guard there to show respect for the fallen who are commemorated by that memorial and by the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. There are 22 figures that adorn our National War Memorial that represent the commitment of Canada as a young nation to the Great War, and then subsequently to the wars that followed. In the days following the attacks in Ottawa, everyone in this House was touched by the Bruce MacKinnon cartoon that showed those historic figures tending to the newly fallen Corporal Cirillo.

Canadians continue to commemorate. Just this week, in Whitby, I attended Wounded Warriors Canada's opening of the Park of Reflection. The park is a memorial to the fallen from Afghanistan and to those who travelled the Highway of Heroes. It provides veterans a place of solace for their own recovery. I would like to thank Scott Maxwell and Phil Ralph of Wounded Warriors Canada for keeping these memories alive.

Corus Entertainment's Gary Maavara and Joel Watson, a lawyer from Toronto, are ensuring that broadcasters on November 11 commemorate the two minutes of silence at 11 o'clock on TV broadcasts if they are not already playing the national ceremony.

It is tremendous to see the spirit of Remembrance Day from 1931 to today. I think what my hon. colleague wants to recognize through this bill is that across the country Canadians are showing their own ways of keeping this important date as an important part of their lives and of remembering the service and sacrifice of our men and women.

The specifics of the bill before this House are to correct a drafting oversight from the 1970s, when the Holidays Act treated Remembrance Day slightly differently from the way it treated Victoria Day and Dominion Day, now Canada Day. I am proud that it seems most members of this House will support the member for Scarborough Southwest in rectifying this oversight to ensure that as a federal holiday, Remembrance Day is treated in the same way as those other days that are important to our country.

The other item from the member's bill, as he has recognized in our discussions, is that the flag on our Peace Tower is normally lowered to half-mast on Remembrance Day as part of our act of national commemoration. In some ways, some of the spirit behind his bill is being exercised already. I am glad to see that the House will rectify this 1970s omission from the act.

What is interesting, as the member pointed out in his remarks to the House, is that across the country, six provinces and three territories also grant statutory recognition to Remembrance Day on a provincial level. Federally, it is already a statutory holiday for federal employees within the federal jurisdiction, and six provinces have extended that at the provincial level. It seems that the member is hoping that the remaining provinces might take this rectifying of the language on a federal level in recognition of the importance of Remembrance Day to our country as an opportunity to revisit their decisions on a provincial level. If that is the case, it is a good exercise.

In my time in uniform serving this country, I had the benefit of living in two different provinces where it was handled in different ways. While I was in Nova Scotia serving with 423 Squadron and 406 Squadron, that province had a provincial holiday as well, and we saw large numbers of people at the cenotaph. In Ontario it was not a provincial holiday.

There is merit, as the member recognized, to the argument that it is good to have students in school learning about this process. The Ontario legislature visited this issue in the late 1990s and decided not to proceed provincially with a statutory holiday, for the very reason that it knew students would be learning about Remembrance Day within the school.

Bill C-597 would make it clear where the federal government stands with respect to the importance of Remembrance Day to our country. It would give the provinces the opportunity to revisit whether they want to make it a statutory holiday as well.

At this time of year, if anything, I hope this legislation reminds Canadians that they need to wear a poppy. They need to get to a cenotaph. They need to make sure they remember the people who fell for our country and hold the significance of the date dear to their hearts.

[Holidays Act, November 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his passionate remarks here today.

My question relates essentially to something that he outlined in his remarks with regard to a federal legal holiday and provincial recognition of a statutory holiday. I wonder if the member has consulted the provinces that currently do not have it as a statutory holiday. Is there any indication that he can give to the House on whether this bill would be meaningful to them in making a decision with respect to their jurisdiction?

[International Trade, November 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for that questions because it gives me an opportunity to remind this House that 98% of the trade access by Canadian exporters has been secured through Conservative governments.

With respect to supply management, that 98% has been achieved while respecting the pillars of supply management. We go into all trade negotiations to make sure it is a win for all sectors of our economy, and that is the case with TPP.