Veterans Affairs committee  To the RCMP, the VRAB process—the hearing, the appeal board—is layers of frustration. If you have the endurance to continue through the process, it's like dealing with an insurance company. At the end of the day, if you can endure all the hurdles, there's the possibility of a pos

Veterans Affairs committee  Briefly, if I may, it's very important to us. Peer review.... Who knows our work better than we do? Whether you're a veteran of the RCMP or a veteran of the CF, we're a collection of honourable people who can adhere to principles of law in making decisions about the experiences w

Veterans Affairs committee  Do you mean at this moment in time?

Veterans Affairs committee  It's my belief that it's going nowhere.

Veterans Affairs committee  We still would like to see our members and our retired veterans who are within the Veterans Affairs system of pension have this available to them, but at this time I don't believe there's the will to see it happen.

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon, committee members. As introduced, my name is Abe Townsend. I'm a member of the RCMP, but I'm not here representing the organization. I'm here representing the 24,000 regular and civilian members. I've been an elected representative since 2

Veterans Affairs committee  Can I add something?

Veterans Affairs committee  I think part of your question is related to serving members who are now retired. They're getting on in years, and as a result of some of the injuries and abuse their bodies took early in their lives, they are now realizing the negative outcomes. How do we reach out to those peopl

Veterans Affairs committee  I'm not sure why or how it happened. I know that we went from having a full-time person embedded within the VAC offices in Charlottetown to having somebody—and I can argue with my colleagues in the RCMP over whether it's full-time or part-time—who is not embedded within the VAC o

Veterans Affairs committee  It was approximately a year and a half ago, but that's an estimate.

Veterans Affairs committee  I and my national executive partner and the CHRO have had some positive dialogue.

Veterans Affairs committee  As a positive, once we were included under part II of the Canada Labour Code, there was that obligation on supervisors to report near misses and actual injury and dangerous events, so record-keeping has improved over the last number of years. Back when I was a young constable,

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, sir. This is where we might focus on the transition interviews that are provided by Veterans Affairs to CF members. The project was piloted in two of our divisions; it creates the awareness of Veterans Affairs and eases their transition out of service to the RCMP and to th

Veterans Affairs committee  To help with an answer, of the 16,000 retired members, 4,600 are connected to the RCMP Veterans' Association, so they have their own network. That leaves another 10,000 retired members who are just out there. Some may have some knowledge of Veterans Affairs; others may not. Tra

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, that is correct. Embedded within Veterans Affairs, it was that member's full-time job. In my understanding, at present it's a part-time job for a member, but we believe it's fundamentally important that it be a full-time job, that it be their commitment from our organization