Veterans Affairs committee  I want to thank you for this incredible opportunity to speak to you all and hear your wonderful answers. We sometimes tend to look at veterans as liabilities on a balance sheet. From my experience working with the civilian population, and particularly those with high risk, I thi

Veterans Affairs committee  I'm not sure whether I clearly understand the question, when you say “parameters”. When I look at measuring outcomes, I look at there being a starting point of the process and the end process. The end process isn't just measuring the process. The actual end, which I call an outco

Veterans Affairs committee  If I can add just one more point, we use a term called “continuous improvement” all the time. To me continuous improvement is that if each client did not meet that outcome, there are then grounds for continuous improvement. It should not be based upon a performance measure so muc

Veterans Affairs committee  If I could just add one more point, for all of you, as a committee, or for organizations, when you're assessing one agency against another, when you're looking at whether an agency met the client's expectations or the outcomes were as expected, you're now measuring across. Typica

Veterans Affairs committee  I just drew a graph. There are two aspects, I think, in the outcomes. The first aspect is that when a client signs up for any program or service, what has to be asked is “What are your expectations as a client of this program?” The second aspect that has to be clear is “What is t

Veterans Affairs committee  I think what I'm trying to say is that this is not even just about VAC or DND. I speak as an executive director of a social services health field, and I've also done some workshops across Canada about an outcomes-based model, so I speak from the point of view of a cross-section o

Veterans Affairs committee  I'm familiar with it, but I haven't used it.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes. Two years ago when I was putting this report, this one-stop centre, together, I worked with people like a former Brigadier-General Don Macnamara to find out information on the military. I also spoke to a senior case manager of VAC to find out about all the services that were

Veterans Affairs committee  What I was proposing was to integrate all of the necessary services in the one-stop centres. One of the steps did include the financial budgeting. We brought in credit counselling to talk about the financials with the people involved in that program. In the brief that you have

Veterans Affairs committee  To follow that presentation is going to be very difficult, but I'm presenting, actually, from a different perspective. I've tried to be a service provider to veterans, and people like Walter. I just want to talk about my experience going forward so that it may help other service