Veterans Affairs committee  Chair, Vice-Chairs, ladies and gentleman of the committee, Parliamentary Secretary, I thank you for your time and indulgence in allowing me to address the committee directly. My name is Carl Gannon Jr. I am the national president of the Union of Veterans' Affairs Employees, and

Veterans Affairs committee  I mirror that as well. It's somewhat of a shame that we lost our old system, because one of the big areas now where health practitioners will more than likely have to be extremely proficient is in understanding Veterans Affairs' archaic legislation. Unless you understand the le

Veterans Affairs committee  Most definitely. It's another bone of contention for us right now. At one point, we had a very extensive training package. Unfortunately, when we suffered the cuts, we needed every case manager to hit the ground running. It's a huge concern, because we are looking at bringing i

Veterans Affairs committee  To a point, yes. I would say most definitely; I guess it's just that reality is not necessarily always matching what we're hearing.

Veterans Affairs committee  That's literally exactly what we've been fighting for, from the time before your government...and we're going to continue to keep fighting, so yes, I totally agree with you there. The part, though, where I think we have to make a very clear distinction is that we do have issues

Veterans Affairs committee  What I would say surrounding this is that it's more complex than it sounds. We're not necessarily looking at the exact same position that we were hiring for previously. Now, one other thing that was done, unfortunately, by our previous government was that the educational standa

Veterans Affairs committee  What motivated it was job cuts. When you start out as a small department anyway, and you suffer massive cuts pretty much to the front line, unfortunately you have to change the way you do business. We could not do business the way we were doing business. It was sold, I guess, a

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes.

Veterans Affairs committee  I'll start with that part first. When your front lines are cut to the tune of about 900, 400 is not enough. I will say that 100%. As clear as day, 400 is not going to be enough. We teetered with the 900. Before we were cut, we were kind of teetering. We had to be very reactive

Veterans Affairs committee  Since we are talking about Deer Lodge, I know Deer Lodge has put in a proposal to expand their services. I know they are going to be going ahead with certain parts. I don't know exactly where the department is on it and I don't know the level of funding the department is going to

Veterans Affairs committee  I absolutely agree with you. One of the things that we are continually promoting is outreach. We need to get better at outreach, and not just in those types of situations. We find that veterans have to find us. Why is the onus being put on the veteran and not being put on the d

Veterans Affairs committee  I will discuss the training situation first. The reality is that we still have a huge gap right now with training. It stems not just from the training, but from backlogs and from what the numbers look like right now on the ground. As soon as we get somebody in, there's a huge

Veterans Affairs committee  No. That would just be at the very beginning, when it first opens. Staffing with the office is more complex, because most of it is going to happen in waves. There is not going to be a full complement of staff when an office opens. You're pretty much going to have—I'm not going to

Veterans Affairs committee  It's hard to answer that generally, for the simple fact that it has to be based on the requirements for that particular area. The needs for that area have to be met, but every area is going to be slightly different. However, reaching that 25:1 ratio is a very good place to start

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, most definitely. That's the reality of the situation. There has to be better integration when they're leaving the forces so that we are there, so there's a seamless transition in support. It is starting and ending, but there's no gap in that service. As soon as there's a gap