Veterans Affairs committee  There hasn't been much of a phasing. There have been deadlines, which I requested, through the deputy minister, be moved because of the amount of work that case managers were under. The request to move the deadline was denied. Then, when the department found that it wasn't able t

Veterans Affairs committee  I do not know.

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you, Chair. The department has been contracting out other work, absolutely. The Medavie Blue Cross was prior to my term in the national office. I was a local president when that contracting out happened. I'm not sure what else you are looking for.

Veterans Affairs committee  As I noted in my response, I have bilateral meetings with senior officials every couple of weeks, and at those meetings I'm trying to build the consultation and collaboration piece, which does not fully happen.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes.

Veterans Affairs committee  No. We've seen a lot of their posters and so on go out. We've also had a couple of the providers reach out to case managers to try to bring them over to the new outsource—

Veterans Affairs committee  —but no.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes.

Veterans Affairs committee  We never liked the streamlining aspect. The department has, as I said, been noting that it's going to ease the administrative burden. We don't find that, and the case managers, as I said, have not seen any less of an administrative burden. Right now they're transitioning all of

Veterans Affairs committee  No, because we don't know what the case manager's role is going to be when this contact comes in on Tuesday.

Veterans Affairs committee  You'd have to specify in which document that was, but, yes, it's something that I continuously try to build, and the department will tell you that I'm always harping on how there needs to be better collaboration and consultation between the union and the department, and how it's

Veterans Affairs committee  Well, it's not just the union's role to build that; it's the department's role as well to come to the table and actually collaborate and consult, which hasn't happened. We attended a national labour management meeting at which the department took away UVAE's individual and nati

Veterans Affairs committee  That's one of the things we're unsure of at this point, because we're not sure exactly how this is going to roll out and what exactly the role of the case managers is going to be once this contract is in place.

Veterans Affairs committee  None of the offices are fully open. We do have staff going into offices based on a hybrid model, but there are still staffing shortages in a bunch of the offices. However, the department will say that there are no vacant positions currently.

Veterans Affairs committee  We're not sure exactly who the department sent the survey out to and whether or not it was to some of the working group's subcommittees. That's still something that I haven't been able to confirm.