Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Thank you for having me and Janice Burke here today. My name is Sheri Ostridge, and I am senior director of e-comms, marketing, and transformation communications at Veterans Affairs Canada. We're really excited to be here today. We're talking about an e-tool for veterans, for a gentleman like Mr.

Veterans Affairs committee  Just to recap a little bit on the benefits that we envision for veterans, they will see, as Janice has said, policies that previously they would have had to request from the department, and it would have taken time to send them. They are now able to go online and immediately see them, so if they're with advocates or folks who are helping them, they are able to access them really quickly.

Veterans Affairs committee  I would also make a suggestion. It depends on the committee's time, but if folks want to come up, we'll have our computer terminals. If you want to take a look through it yourselves so that you can then show others, we would welcome that. We're going to take two scenarios. We're going to use a veteran of the Second World War.

Veterans Affairs committee  You mean now?

Veterans Affairs committee  Ah, yes.

Veterans Affairs committee  You're welcome. If we go to the rehab link, we'll click on “More”, to see.... In this one we have “What is the program?”, “How would I qualify?”, “How do I apply?”, and any important notes that the client should be aware of—or in this case, a potential future client. As well, always you will see that there is “Contact Us”, so that, if somebody gets to a point at which they have a problem, this is an option as well, and they can contact us by phone or by email.

Veterans Affairs committee  Now we'll go up. I want to show folks, if we go back a page.... We'll come out of the rehab screen and go back to the section talking about “Related information”. You'll see the bar at the top. This gives them more details on medical benefits, the VIP, and long-term care. You can see that there is quite a volume of information.

Veterans Affairs committee  As you can see, it's easy and visible, and there is greater access to information than there ever was before. It will hopefully cut down on the time needed for veterans to find out the information they need. They would be coming to a case manager, in the case that Janice used, with probably more specific questions than ever before, because they've been able to access and read it themselves.

Veterans Affairs committee  Pretend that Bob is Charlotte for a moment and you will see her information. The user will get a confirmation that an email has been sent. As I mentioned earlier, the email is not retained. And so, off goes the information, which they can then print out at their leisure and read.

Veterans Affairs committee  We'll do it right now.

Veterans Affairs committee  If you want, Janice, I can handle the first question. Mr. Stoffer, at the end you referred to veterans in areas where they don't have a CAP site or they're not on computers. We have many different options. This is not the only tool we use in communication. We're extremely proud of it, but it won't cover all our audiences.

Veterans Affairs committee  I would agree, and we were quite excited about how well it was received. Even at the announcement at our VAC office, we had feedback from veterans saying how great this is and that they're excited to use it. A couple of emails have already come in on it, so thank you. We're very proud of the work our staff and the OVO staff have done to get us to this point.

Veterans Affairs committee  This is a key part of the red tape initiative and also the plain language initiative, which started quite some time ago. We have spent time on plain language to make the information that much more understandable, whether it has been decision letters or content on our website. This gives veterans another choice in how they communicate with Veterans Affairs and how they receive their information.

Veterans Affairs committee  For veterans who don't have the access, we have multiple channels. We can send them information as we've always done. We also have Service Canada points of service, which have increased exponentially in the last number of months. We also have trained staff in our offices who can help with questions any time the veterans have them.

Veterans Affairs committee  I would add that I think it's about efficiencies, in terms of a veteran being able to access it and making it more efficient and reducing the hassle. It was less about resources or reducing resources; it's more about communication in this case.