Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. We have the privilege to represent almost 2,800 mostly frontline workers who have the honour to serve our veterans to make sure that they receive proper supports, timely decisions and the benefits they need. The latest repor

Veterans Affairs committee  No, I can't, because these are stats that human resources would have. For that, you'd have to go to the department to get their hiring stats.

Veterans Affairs committee  I don't have specific stats, because I'm not involved in the staffing processes.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, there is a limited hiring pool for recruiting bilingual professionals to complex positions within Veterans Affairs in Charlottetown. My sister Doreen Weatherbie noted the same thing to you. The department is actively hiring outside to bring people into Charlottetown.

Veterans Affairs committee  Only through the temporary funding that the government has provided; that's all they're doing. They're working on hiring. Nothing else, in my opinion, has really been discussed about the influx coming in.

Veterans Affairs committee  At the onset of the pandemic, it absolutely slowed down the process, because not everybody had the proper equipment, desks, printers and that type of thing. In the adjudication aspect, the files are physical, so they aren't necessarily able to be consistently transported home un

Veterans Affairs committee  I don't have specific data in that regard. We know that the output of work has increased, but no, I don't have the numbers to that.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, I think it would be easily implementable. As to whether I think it would fully work, I'm not sure, because there has been such a battle with trying to get service medical records now and the challenge between the two departments on access versus who has the right to that acc

Veterans Affairs committee  It potentially could be, but in the brief that we provided to you, there are actually recommendations from the staff themselves in regard to looking at the potential of automatic approvals and having a type of fraud section set up to review cases after the fact, similar to CERB.

Veterans Affairs committee  The educational qualifications are not the same for the positions, and they've actually just again changed the education requirements for the case managers. They could potentially be transferable to some degree. Whether they would be able to provide an acting or a developmental o

Veterans Affairs committee  We need to have more resources right across the board in order to properly support our veterans. The biggest issue is trying to get them the treatment they need in a timely manner. We need to beef up every position across the department, from intake right through to case managers

Veterans Affairs committee  No, I haven't as yet, and I'm still waiting for information from the department in regard to those.

Veterans Affairs committee  In September and October, we completed a second survey to do with harassment, discrimination and mental health in the department. That's where our focus was, and that survey came out of the first survey results.

Veterans Affairs committee  We've been working, as I said, on surveys. As much as the department is saying they're bringing in 300 new employees to work on the backlog of the disabilities, some people who are being hired in those positions are coming from other areas within the department, which is going to

Veterans Affairs committee  No. We actually have employees, members, who work in the disability adjudication section, including in the administrative aspect, reviewing the applications when they first come in, as well as the payment process of those claims when they are done. Our members do in fact work ver