NDVA Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON NATIONAL DEFENCE AND VETERANS AFFAIRS

COMITÉ PERMANENT DE LA DÉFENSE NATIONALE ET DES ANCIENS COMBATTANTS

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, May 26, 1998

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[English]

The Chairman (Mr. Robert Bertrand (Pontiac—Gatineau—Labelle, Lib.)): We can start right away. If somebody from the opposition shows up, fine; if not, we'll go ahead without them.

Colleagues, we are very happy to have with us this afternoon Ms. Carolyn Becraft and Lieutenant-Colonel Huleatt.

I was mentioning to Ms. Becraft that the way it works is that there's a 15- to 20-minute presentation, and then we go to a question and answer period.

If you're ready to start, just go right ahead.

Ms. Carolyn H. Becraft (Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Personnel Support, Families and Education, United States Department of Defense): I'm very pleased to be here on behalf of Secretary Cohen and the United States Department of Defense. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today and applaud your interest in and recognition of the important role the family plays in support of military affairs.

As Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Personnel Support, Families and Education—by the way, I think it's the longest title in the U.S. government, but also the best job—I'm responsible for a large portion of what we call “quality of life” programs and services. These programs support 1.4 million active-duty service members, 900,000 spouses, 1.3 million children, and also the reserve component. We have similar things for our reserve component.

The types of things I'm responsible for include morale, welfare, and recreational activities, such as libraries, voluntary and post-secondary education, and fitness programs. I'm responsible for our overseas and domestic-dependent schools—we have two schools systems—and for all family support programs.

This afternoon I will focus my remarks specifically on family support. I'll first provide you some background on our family support services, and then I'll address child care and spouse employment in more detail, as you requested.

Within the Department of Defense, we consider our military service members and their families to be our greatest resource. We believe the commitment and sacrifice associated with their decision to enter military service to be like that of no other. Possessing peace of mind when training, deployed, or assigned far from home, or maintaining the family during a prolonged absence is vital to mission success and service members' satisfaction with the military lifestyle. In other words, we believe that our commitment to the family is a readiness issue for our forces, and it is under that framework that we support our quality of life initiatives.

We have evolved a comprehensive array of family support services designed to provide the necessary training, information, assistance and support to ensure that our service members and their families have the peace of mind needed to get the job done.

First, here's a little background. The evolution of family support in the United States military is a clear example of how the support of the American people impacts national defence. Much of what we have in family support today started as informal, grassroots efforts. These efforts gained recognition in Congress and led to legislation that formalized the activities within the defence system.

We credit our military spouses with identifying most of what we provide in family support today. They recognized the importance of support for family members when service members are deployed. They identified the stresses associated with deployment and reunion that supports could lessen. They developed the information and established informal delivery networks to assist when it came time to move, and the service member had to leave in advance of the family. They developed the child care support networks and co-ops needed to support their peers with child care needs.

Over time, the military service recognized and came to rely on family programming activities, but support was inconsistent. Family support issues came to the attention of our Congress, which responded in 1985 by passing the Military Family Act. This act created the Office of Family Policy in the Department of Defense, and it tasked this office to develop policy and oversee the provision of family support across the military services.

The Military Family Act was followed in 1989 by the Military Child Care Act. This act placed formal oversight authority of the military child development program with the Department of Defense. It served to improve the quality, availability, and cost of child care for military families.

In 1990, recognition of the importance of relocation support and the impact of relocation on the employment of the non-military spouse led Congress to include language in the National Defense Authorization Act mandating relocation services for military families to include spouse employment assistance.

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This was followed in the 1991 National Defense Authorization Act with the requirement to provide pre-separation counselling and employment assistance to service members leaving military service as a result of the post-Cold War drawdown of our military force.

We, as have Canadians, have had a significant drawdown in our force. In an effort to encourage program integration where practical, and regionalization of services where possible, we have recently reconceptualized our family support system into three support domains: family well-being, economic well-being, and children and youth services.

Under family well-being, we include pre- and post-deployment support, domestic violence prevention and intervention, new parent support, parenting education, elder care information, and crisis assistance.

Economic well-being includes relocation assistance, financial management, transition assistance, and spouse employment.

Children and youth services include centre-based child care, family child care, school age care, youth programs, and special needs programs.

Family support programs are implemented by our four military services: army, navy, marine corps, and air force. The Department of Defense provides military services implementation guidance to ensure that equitable services are provided across all these services. Our guidance is to oversee and make sure there is a consistent delivery.

The delivery of family well-being and economic well-being programs is generally accomplished through the comprehensive network of family service centres. These centres are part of the infrastructure of almost every military installation. The staff of these centres use a combination of outreach, centre-based, and electronic approaches to deliver services. In the past year, we have significantly increased our technology in the delivery of family services through the development and implementation of a military assistance program Internet site. We will leave all the addresses with you so you can look at them.

With that as an overview, I'll now focus on the two specific areas that you are most interested in: spousal employment and child care. As I am a former active-duty officer and a military spouse, spouse employment is a topic that I have been personally and professionally involved with for a long time. I've been unemployed a lot, but I've done rather well.

In 1985, 54% of our military spouses were employed outside the home. This has increased to 65% in 1992. I suspect we're at 70% now. Considering current economic and social factors since 1992, it's probably safe to assume this.

Why is spouse employment an issue? First of all, as I said, 65% to 70% of our military spouses are in the labour force. These spouses contribute significantly to total family income. It's at least one-third of total family income. More than 55% of our male spouses of active-duty women are civilian. More than 62% of all military spouses and 77% of lower-enlisted spouses work for financial reasons. More than 42% of our spouses state that there is a lack of jobs that use their skills, so underemployment is a significant problem.

Compared to employed spouses, unemployed spouses—this is the most important thing for readiness—are more likely to indicate a difficulty in managing while the service member is deployed. So our employed spouses have an additional network of their work environment that helps them in times of deployment.

Military spouse unemployment, though, is four times greater than that of their civilian counterparts. As I said before, there is significant underemployment. Military reassignments often cause spouses to lose their jobs and give up seniority benefits and career progression opportunities.

So what have we done to address the spouse employment issue? Since 1982, there have been a variety of legislative initiatives. We have been able to give special attention to military spouses and offer certain hiring preferences, particularly when they are assigned overseas. We have spouse employment programs in our family service centres that provide career counselling, assistance in resumé writing, jobs skill training, interviewing techniques, and networking in the local communities. We have a dedicated person at each staff place who works on spouse employment.

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Spouses also have an access to the automated job banks that provide worldwide job information. Through these automated systems, spouses have a better opportunity to plan ahead when notice is received of an impending move.

What we've found and what we're doing is combining our automated systems that we use for transition for our military members and marketing to those employers— The employers we have in our transition really want military members as they leave; they are very excited about the skill sets that they bring. So we have marketed this program to them also, saying we have spouses we move who are in your community, and they have the same characteristics that the military member has: discipline, hard-working, sophisticated for moving, and so on. We're finding great expansion of our ability to place spouses. It's not perfect, but those are some of the things we're doing.

We are currently in the second year of a three-year spouse employment demonstration project. This was an incentive award project that generated 34 proposals from the military services. We've funded ten of these; eight of the projects are in the United States, one is in Germany, and one is in Japan. The projects provide training and experience in highly transferable or locally needed job skill areas, such as computers, clerical and medical fields. Some of the projects even provide child care to increase participation. We are optimistic that we will draw from these pilots some ideas that will have service-wide applicability.

We've also recently entered into a partnership agreement with the small-business administration, through which military spouses can receive over 30 hours of professional entrepreneurial training targeted at portable careers or self-employment. Women business leaders serve as mentors to those who are enrolled in the program. This partnership also provides an access to the network of community professionals and on-line services. Upon completion of the training, military spouses are also eligible to receive job search counselling. This program is currently being piloted at two locations, and we hope it shows results that will allow us to expand. So we've leveraged our resources with other government agencies to try to assist us in this problem.

The significance of spouse employment cannot be understated. It's a core family support program and it's continuing to evolve. We've made some significant strides in our efforts to assist military spouses, but we know more work needs to be done.

Here, I'll make a natural transition to discuss child care, a topic that goes hand in hand with spouse employment.

Our child care program is by far the most evolved component of our family support system. We offer quality, affordable child care, and we feel that it's a central component of the support we make available to our families. The President of the United States has recognized the Department of Defense child care system as a model for our nation.

Our system is the largest employer-sponsored program in the country, serving over 200,000 children, from newborn to 12 years of age. Our system includes child development centres, family child care homes, school-age programs, resource and referral services. Through these delivery systems, we offer full-day, part-day and hourly child care, part-day pre-schools, before- and after-school programs for school-age children, and extended care, which includes nights, weekends, and care for shift workers.

The military services operate child development centres at over 300 locations worldwide. These centres provide child care for children 6 weeks to 12 years of age. Most child care facilities operate between the hours of 6 a.m. to 6.30 p.m., Monday through Friday. Over 83% of our centres are nationally accredited.

Over the past 15 years, the military services have tested 24-hour child care in child care centres. The results show repeatedly that there is low usage and exorbitant costs. Because a military mission can require unusual hours, including shift work, nights and weekends, we have best developed an extensive network of family child care homes to assist us with this need.

The family child care program consists of in-home care provided by certified providers living in government-owned or leased quarters. We have over 9,700 licensed and trained family child care providers. Families rely upon family child care for these night, weekend and unusual hours.

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Our school-age programs are offered for children ages 6 to 12 years, before and after school, during holidays, and on summer vacation.

We also provide resource and referral information for on-base child care programs and programs in the local community. Since it is impossible to meet 100% of the need of the installation, resource and referral services are critical to our ability to refer families to quality child care off-base when care is unavailable on-base.

Our child care program is funded through a combination of appropriated funds and funds generated from parent fees. The Military Child Care Act of 1989 established a policy that requires DOD to ensure that appropriated funds that are available to operate child care centres are at least equal to the amounts raised in parents' fees. There's a 50-50 match.

The amount of appropriated fund support varies, depending on the program component. All parents pay for child care, but fees vary between the components.

Child care centres follow a sliding fee schedule set annually by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, my office. The fee determination is based on total family income. In 1997, the average weekly fee paid for centre-based care was $69 per child. For 1997 to 1998, fees range from a low of $37 per child to a high of $98 per child per week. Fees paid by parents to child development centres and school-age care programs are called “non-appropriated funds” and are used to pay the wages of personnel, the child care givers who care directly for the children.

All other expenses, including some caregiver wages, are paid by appropriated funds. These funds go directly to the program to support training, administration, equipment, supplies and food service. Maintenance and utilities are also paid with appropriated funds.

Construction of new child development centres is paid for with appropriated funds for military construction.

The family child care providers reside in government-owned or leased housing. All costs for administration, oversight, and training of family child care providers are paid with appropriated funds. These functions are viewed as an appropriated fund expense, because they are conducted in the best interests for the government.

Family child care providers are viewed as private contractors and, as such, negotiate all fees directly with the parent, except when the providers are receiving direct cash subsidies from the government. We do provide cash subsidies to these family child care providers, particularly to encourage them to take infants and toddlers. They are the most expensive to give care to, so we subsidize the providers as an incentive.

The Military Child Care Act of 1989 authorized but did not mandate the use of appropriated funds to directly subsidize family child care providers. So that's how we were able to do it. The goal was to provide assistance to the providers so that care is provided at a cost comparable to the military child care centres. We're extremely proud of our child care system, and we have more detailed information and materials that we can share with you if you so desire.

That completes my prepared remarks, but I also should say that my office had oversight over the quality of life executive committee, which was a committee established to advise the Secretary of Defense on all aspects of quality of life, and as such, we handled issues such as housing, pay, compensation, and retirement. So the department has been looking at the whole array of issues that make up the package we call quality of life.

I have narrowed my remarks today to those areas you asked me to address, but if you have additional questions, I'd be glad to try to answer them or we can provide information.

Thank you very much.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

Mr. Hanger.

Mr. Art Hanger (Calgary Northeast, Ref.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to apologize to the committee and to our guests for my late appearance. I was tied up with something else and didn't know if I could make it here.

Thank you for coming. I'm pleased to hear some of your comments already. I've read a little bit of the background information on your— I don't know if I would call it a committee; I guess I have to have a better understanding of what your structure is.

There are some questions here. You have under the morale, welfare and recreation program— and then there's the National Security Committee special oversight panel on these particular functions and issues of morale.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: That's our congressional committee.

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Mr. Art Hanger: Your committee was struck for this purpose of quality of life.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: The way we work— I'm the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Personnel Support, Families and Education and I work in the office of the Secretary of Defense. I have responsibility, essentially, for community support programs. Our oversight committee is the House National Security Committee, and the Senate Armed Services Committee write the laws and oversee the actions of the department.

In the House there's a special committee, the MWR panel, that particularly addresses the morale, welfare and recreation and exchange issues. They're one of our oversight committees.

I work for the Office of the Secretary of Defense and, as such, am responsible for developing the policies for community support. We also then do budget oversight of the services budgets to make sure the money flows where the secretary's priorities are.

Each of the services then develops their policies based on the policy we write, so they write implementing policy to the overall policy that is written by my office for community support.

Mr. Art Hanger: Okay. It's not really an agency, is it?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: No.

Mr. Art Hanger: It's separate and apart from Defense.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: No. It's not separate and apart from Defense, no.

Mr. Art Hanger: So you're right in the thick of it.

I wanted to get that clarified because there's a tendency here to wander the other way and to contract out a lot of these items. I'm kind of curious as to how it fits into—

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: We have also been looking into contracting out, into what areas and services can or cannot be contracted out. To be very frank with you, there hasn't been a lot contracted out, but we are looking at that to see if we can get the same degree of service for the price. So our government is also looking at those things.

Mr. Art Hanger: To support the morale, welfare and recreation program, your Department of Defense is spending $1.35 billion in the fiscal year of 1998.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Yes, across the services.

Mr. Art Hanger: That's U.S.?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Yes.

Mr. Art Hanger: And anticipated $1.43 billion for 1999.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Yes.

Mr. Art Hanger: What does that include? That is a substantial amount of money. It's obviously ranging in a lot of support services. Would it include new postings allowances?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: No. In the morale, welfare and recreation area, that is our equivalent of— we call it a military home town, if you will. It covers the fitness centres that are mission essential. It covers the library system. It covers our parks and recreation system, our child care system, all of those types of activities. I think you have a similar— Is our definition the same?

Mr. Jim Jamieson (Director, Military Family Support Programs Division, Canadian Forces Personnel Support Agency): Yes, the personnel support agency.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: The personnel support. Now, those moneys are the moneys from all of the services rolled up into one.

Mr. Art Hanger: The other areas that also impact on the quality of life too would be the evaluation for different postings, the allowances that are associated there.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Yes.

Mr. Art Hanger: Does that also fall under your—

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: No.

Mr. Art Hanger: That comes under a different—

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: That comes under my counterpart, military personnel policy, and they have compensation, pay, allowances.

Mr. Art Hanger: So when you look at this expenditure and you talk about the needs, when you refer to fitness centres, might that be construction of a gymnasium or a library?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: That's correct. It also includes the labour. For instance, the librarians are appropriated fund employees, so it's salaries. It's also base infrastructure and support. That's out of a total defence budget of $270 billion.

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A voice: U.S.

Mr. John O'Reilly (Victoria—Haliburton, Lib.): That's not yen.

Mr. Art Hanger: How many military families are there in the United States?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: We have 900,000 family members in a force of 1.4 million. I'll also say that our force is almost 70% married. Those numbers rose gradually as we went from a conscripted force. We began our volunteer force in 1973. So it's gone up gradually since that time, but it's been pretty level at a little over two-thirds married.

Mr. Art Hanger: How is your oversight committee handling the single parent?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: You mean the single-parent military member.

Mr. Art Hanger: Yes.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: That's an issue that's been of concern to the services. The status of the single parent tends to be a transitory status, meaning eventually they remarry or marry. We have developed policies on deployment that in order to remain in the military they have to provide for family care plans. Dual military couples also have to do this, so in the event of deployment, they have care plans for their children when they leave.

Mr. Art Hanger: Okay. When it comes to issues of deployment, is it looked at in your military that as long as they're deployable they will be sent, and these other issues, whether they're single with children, are another matter? It is the responsibility of the member to make sure there are enough provisions there for the family.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: That's correct.

Mr. Art Hanger: So deployable is the number one issue.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Yes.

Mr. Art Hanger: All right. You don't really look at government supporting the family in that regard.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Our family support programs are geared to supporting every military member, whether they are single, married—

Mr. Art Hanger: Regardless.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Regardless. We have an array of services that range from family, to financial management, to programs for single people. The whole underpinning of it is we want to provide them with the services they need to facilitate their ability to be mobile, pick up their lives, fit in, and have a sense of community. We believe these programs are essential to the readiness of our force. That's how we philosophically look at this.

Mr. Art Hanger: Right. So that member who's deployed overseas, or wherever the case may be, doesn't have to worry a whole lot about things back home.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Ideally that is so, and that's why we put these programs into place.

Mr. Art Hanger: One other issue that has come up with us is the military store. We have CANEX here.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: We have our exchange system.

Mr. Art Hanger: What do you call it?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: It's the PX, the post exchange or the base exchange.

Mr. Art Hanger: I know it provides some pretty good opportunities for members or members' families to purchase goods that are a lot cheaper than what they might pay elsewhere.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: That's correct.

Mr. Art Hanger: How is that sponsored? Is that a separate agency or entity?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: The army and the air force have an exchange system that is combined. It's called AAFES. The navy has their own exchange system, the naval exchange command, and the marine corps has its own exchange. We are currently looking at blending them.

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The exchange service provides goods at reduced prices. Its profits are ploughed back into our MWR programs. That's how we fund the non-appropriated funds in our MWR programs. The rest of it is ploughed back into the business for capitalization and health of these stores.

Mr. Art Hanger: Are they well supported?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Yes, they are.

Mr. Art Hanger: Putting them back into, if you will, social programs or whatever is I think the same thing being done here, but the stores are, I understand, very well supported down south.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: They're very well supported. Last year about $330 million was ploughed back into MWR programs across the services.

Mr. Art Hanger: Wow. That's very good.

The Chairman: We can come back to you later, Arthur.

Mr. Pratt.

Mr. David Pratt (Nepean—Carleton, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a lot of questions here. I almost don't know where to start.

Let me start with a general question, Ms. Becraft. With respect to the challenges you face in the whole quality of life area, what would you describe as the greatest challenge approaching your work right now?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: I'm always fighting for money. I'm pretty good at it, but it's every year.

I've been at this for about 15 years. Prior to my coming to this position I was on the activist side, and actually helped set right some of the legislation behind the programs in place today.

Our network is becoming more sophisticated. We are right now retooling. We had a set of policies in place to stand up the programs. We are now relooking at our policies. We're kind of in the second stage. We are trying to put money into technology so that we can deliver some of the programs that can be resourced and referred through technology. We do have some web sites—and we'll leave you the names—for our relocation programs, military teams on the move, and that kind of information referral.

Youth programs are a major issue for us. Financial assistance is a major issue for us. Quite frankly, it probably gets back to pay. You can only manage so much money. If you don't have much money, there's nothing to manage. So we really are putting a lot of attention into financial management programs and general assistance programs.

We have a lot of deployed people now, just as you do in Canada. Your personnel and operation tempo has increased. So has ours. That involves family support networks to keep the families who are left behind connected. We've been pretty successful at that. It takes a lot of effort.

I always, though, want to make sure our programs remain funded. During my tenure, even though we have gone down in numbers, our money has remained constant, and in some places has gone up. I believe that is a tribute to the fact that military commanders really do know that this is part of readiness. They really need these programs to be able to deploy as they do and to operate as they do.

That doesn't mean every year isn't a new adventure.

Mr. David Pratt: The commanders, then, see a very clear link between operational readiness and morale and the ability to defend the interests of the United States with what we call the “rear party”?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Yes. Really, Operation Desert Storm solidified that, in our mind. It was a massive mobilization for our country, as it was for yours, and the reserve component. The family support networks we had in place delivered.

Mr. David Pratt: Okay.

I gather that in October 1995 there was a quality of life task force, chaired by former army secretary Jack Marsh.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: That's correct.

Mr. David Pratt: Can you tell me if Mr. Marsh, in the conduct of his work, got out to the bases to speak to individual service people and their spouses?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Yes, he did. He chaired a task force of individuals who were selected across the spectrum and had expertise in personnel issues, housing issues, compensation issues and so forth. They met for about a year. They travelled extensively to bases, both in the United States and overseas, and talked to commanders, focus groups, families, and service members and came back and made their recommendations directly to the Secretary of Defense.

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My office then coordinated, within the defence department, a group that worked in collaboration with the Marsh panel. As they were addressing issues to the Secretary of Defense, we were working the same issues through the department, and our work has also been reported to the Secretary of Defense.

That quality of life executive committee is still in existence and has been very effective at highlighting issues of concern to the services. We use that as a vehicle then to look at our policy and our financing to make sure the services are putting the money appropriately.

Mr. David Pratt: When do you expect that task force to wind up its work?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: The task force wound up its work in 1996, and I'd be glad to send to you all a copy of its final report.

Mr. David Pratt: Okay.

Our initiative is different from your initiative in the sense that members of Parliament are doing the legwork on this in terms of getting out to the bases and talking to the service people and their spouses.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Of course.

Mr. David Pratt: One of the things that has struck me is that rather than doing this as a one-shot deal, perhaps it might be worth while for us to do it again at some point—whether it would be five or ten years I don't know. Have you folks given any thought to revisiting these quality of life issues at some point in the not-too-distant future?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: We constantly do that; every year we do that. This executive committee for the quality of life internal to the department keeps those issues on the burner.

I presume that as you finish your work, you're going to be writing a report of your findings and making recommendations that will have policy implications both for your government and for—I don't know if my term is correct—the defence department, if you will. Is that correct?

Mr. David Pratt: Our report will be tabled in Parliament and the minister will have a certain period of time—I think it's 150 days—to respond.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Well, just that very nature of responding back has a momentum itself.

The way our Congress works is when they have an issue they want us to address, they require us to report. So this year's House National Security Committee mark-up, for instance—which I just read before I came here—has us do some reporting on MWR, on exchanges, and on a whole range of issues. That's another way the body has us reporting back and collecting data to make decisions.

Mr. David Pratt: There must have been a tremendous amount of interest in the work of the task force and in your work from the congressional side.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Yes. Our Secretary of Defense made quality of life his primary interest, so from my standpoint, that was wonderful.

As for the Marsh panel, Secretary Marsh is a very esteemed member, a former Congress member as well as a Secretary of the Army for eight years. He is very well thought of and the panel was a prestigious panel. They made their recommendations and they carried a lot weight.

Now we're following through with that. Secretary Cohen has quality of life on his plate. Obviously it was his predecessor's push, but we still have that momentum for the quality of life of service members.

Mr. David Pratt: Mr. Chair, how much time do I have left?

The Chairman: About three minutes.

Mr. David Pratt: Okay.

One of the issues we've been grappling with here is the whole business of the pay system being linked to the federal public service. Can you tell us what system the U.S. is using in that regard? Are there direct links to the U.S. civil service, or is it a separate pay system completely that recognizes the nuances of military service?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Ours is linked to what they call the ECI minus 5%. We had our last catch-up pay raise in 1982, and from that point— What does ECI stand for? Economic something indicator. Anyway, it's the inflation, the cost of living adjustments.

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It's pegged at the ECI minus 5%, so by that you can see that you slip behind. There are conversations now in our government to link it to the ECI without the minus 5%. In fact, this year the House has directed us to do that. We'll see what the Senate does when it comes in. There is a comparability with our civil service pay system, but our civil service pay system isn't linked to ECI minus 5%.

Mr. David Pratt: Okay.

I noticed that in your comments about the spousal employment issue you talked about hiring preferences. Can you be a bit more specific in terms of what preferences are available? For instance, do military service spouses have preferences for U.S. government jobs that may be based close by? Are there any work-at-home initiatives that are sponsored by the DOD or the U.S. government? Can you expound a little bit on that?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Sure.

The spouse employment preference was written in law, and it provided the spouse, if she moved on orders with her—it's usually her and sometimes his—military member, a preference for locally available government jobs, and that's behind veterans. We have a veterans preference, as you may or may not know. Those were jobs that were available at the local base. So it was enormously effective.

Prior to that time, quite frankly, military spouses were excluded. I'll use my own situation as an example. I am a veteran, and veterans preference never worked for me. My application always went into the military spouse path, so I went back and changed the law.

But it has been very effective in hiring spouses and allowing them to move with their member, and although their career progression isn't as fast as it might have been, gradually a number of them have been able to increase their skills and still remain employed as they moved. I think it has been one of the singularly most effective programs we have had.

Now, we have been downsizing, so there are very few jobs any more. So now my push is outside the gate. In every community where we are located there are employers, and quite frankly our spouse employment coordinators have always looked inside the base, at the civil service jobs, either appropriated or non-appropriated fund jobs. Our requirement now is to go out from the base, outside the gate, and liaison with employers in the local community, as well as go through our automated job banks for national companies that register with us that may have locations where we have bases.

Overseas, I believe and feel that our spouse employment problem is really critical because there are very few jobs. Particularly in Europe, we have gone from the Cold War scenario to— What we have done is forward-deploy to Europe, so we have taken our families outside of the United States, and then the member deploys to Bosnia, Macedonia, you name it, where you all go also. So we forward-deploy them outside of their country. Keeping people gainfully employed is really an important part of the coping mechanisms that families have, and there are few jobs. I'm very concerned with that.

Our spouse employment demonstration projects are attempts to both help people with self-employment—that's where we've linked with the small-business administration—as well as take certain periods where there may not be jobs and provide skills. So you can say, “I was three years in Germany, but I really learned computer skills through available courses.”

So we're trying to take available positions in our civil service courses and put them in for spouses, trying to do a whole host of things, maybe provide educational tuition assistance for spouses—and the services have begun that—so they can continue to build their skills while they are located in a place. So you may not always have a job, but you are able to develop skills that can assist you.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Pratt.

Mr. O'Reilly.

• 1630

Mr. John O'Reilly: Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you very much for attending, Madam Becraft and Lieutenant-Colonel Huleatt.

I wanted to ask a couple of questions. The chairman always gets upset if I don't mention that there are three opposition parties that aren't here and that we thank Mr. Hanger for attending faithfully and providing the opposition.

In your speech you talked about the care plan on deployment. Could you expand on that?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Yes. All single parents and all dual military couples have to provide to their commanders a dependant care plan that aligns child care arrangements that they have made for their dependent children should they deploy. I think we have fair examples of these that we can provide. All services do that. It's required.

Mr. John O'Reilly: So they have to supply the plan to the personnel?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: To their commander.

Mr. John O'Reilly: To their commander. If it isn't adequate, what happens?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: The commander evaluates it, and if an individual cannot provide for the needs of their dependent children in times of deployment, that's grounds for removal.

There are always exceptions to that. There are exceptions for those military members with a civilian spouse. There are times when there may be health reasons. They may have a broken leg. They may have a child who's severely ill. There are always exceptions. But that is what we have in place. It works very well.

Mr. John O'Reilly: Is it a major plan or is it a minor part of deployment?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: For the single service member and for the dual military couple it's a major plan. They have to have provided and be able to say “In case of deployment I have arranged for X person to take care of my children. I have provided a—” What do they call it, Bill?

Lieutenant-Colonel William Huleatt (Associate Director, Office of Family Policy, U.S. Department of Defense): Power of attorney.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: “I have provided a power of attorney to take care of all of their needs”. Sometimes a person, such as a family member, may move into their quarters on the base, or sometimes the member may send their children to a relative, friend or parent, but they have to identify who it is and what arrangements they have made.

Mr. John O'Reilly: It sounds like a good plan. We noticed Mr. Jamieson making notes.

What would be your recommendation to this committee of the major area in which to start to improve morale? What would you consider most important, as an outside observer?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: You've had extensive field hearings and you've heard issues as you've travelled. I presume there are a number of issues that are consistent, so that's a good place to start.

Mr. John O'Reilly: That's a great answer. I couldn't have said it better myself.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: It costs money, though.

The Chairman: Mr. Hanger.

Mr. Art Hanger: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'm very curious. Does housing fall under your purview?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: No. Housing policy falls under my boss. Housing construction falls in another area of the department, although my office has done extensive work in following the housing issues.

Mr. Art Hanger: Good. So it's not a separate agency.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: It is separate, but we oversee and review housing policy.

Mr. Art Hanger: Great. Could you explain how the funding would work, say, for married quarters, one region to the other, in comparison with costs of living and what kinds of adjustments are made in rent, things like that?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: I can do that.

We have an allowance system that is pegged by grade as well as by marital status. Those who live off-base draw what we call quarters allowance based on their rank or grade and their marital status. Because that was inadequate, we superimposed a variable housing allowance on top of that, because we have areas where rents vary dramatically.

• 1635

For example, if you're in Washington, D.C., that's a high-cost area so you would draw what your— If he's a lieutenant-colonel, he would draw what a married lieutenant-colonel drew plus an additional amount per month based on the zip code where he lives. They determine housing costs, so he would get an additional amount.

If you live in quarters on a military base, those moneys are forfeited. They never draw the money. They just live rent-free.

Mr. Art Hanger: Did you say rent-free?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Well, they forfeit their quarters allowance.

Mr. Art Hanger: There's no charge if they live on military—

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: That's correct. Another distinction when you get into housing— this has to do with how they maintain it. Family housing is a separate account in defence moneys, so to speak. Barracks are part of general O and M money.

Mr. Art Hanger: What does that stand for?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Operations and maintenance moneys.

Mr. Art Hanger: So there are no allowances for living in married quarters on base.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: That's correct.

Mr. Art Hanger: Outside of base, there's an allowance.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Pegged to your grade and your location.

Mr. Art Hanger: Pegged to your grade, your marital status and location.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Yes. Then there are certain areas that get additional cost of living allowances that are—

Mr. Art Hanger: On top of that.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: On top of that. Places like San Diego, San Francisco, New York.

Mr. Art Hanger: Sure, it's very expensive to live there.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Not Washington, D.C. So it's really up there.

Mr. Art Hanger: I have another question on that alone. These allowances outside the base, are they taxable? Are they taxable income? Are they considered taxable income?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: No.

Mr. Art Hanger: They are not considered taxable.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Just our basic pay is considered taxable. The military salary in the United States is basic pay. On top of that is quarters, and on top of that is a subsistence allowance for the military member. The subsistence and the quarters are not taxable.

Mr. Art Hanger: That's good. I'm surprised actually that you're working it that way, but again, I would think that's quite positive, too, from what you're telling me so far.

Are there financial incentives beyond housing allowance and salary, like a posting allowance, for moving?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: We have cost of living allowances in certain high-cost areas. We pay for the moves, we pay for the transportation, we pay a dislocation allowance.

Mr. Art Hanger: What does the dislocation allowance cover? Does it cover the member having to change his status from state to state, for example, where he might have to pick up licence plates in that state, or is it— What does he get?

LCol William Huleatt: Basically, what they do when you have a permanent change of station— Right now it's 1.5 times your basic allowance for quarters, your housing allowance, and that money is used to offset costs, which could be some of the things you mentioned or it could be other things. It's just some extra moneys that are provided to you to try to cover some of those costs that aren't covered by the transportation and movement of your household goods and other possessions. There's recognition by the system that says moving costs money. You have to do certain things early on that you may need some extra moneys for. So to help offset that, they set a certain amount of moneys that you receive when you in fact move. How you spend that is really an individual—

Mr. Art Hanger: Whatever choice you want.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Right. And then we have some additional allowances that are paid to people overseas.

Mr. Art Hanger: Lieutenant-Colonel, suppose you own a house in the community. You take these allowances. You sell the house on a posting because you're posted to the other side of the country. You sell your house at a loss. Who swallows the loss?

LCol William Huleatt: I do.

Mr. Art Hanger: Is that because of this allowance you're being paid?

• 1640

LCol William Huleatt: No, it's not because of the allowance. We have no provision, in terms of choice. If you make a decision to purchase property and you're in the military service, that's a personal decision you've made and it's a personal risk you've assumed, recognizing that the nature of your business would likely mean you would be moving at some point.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: However, if civil servants in our system had a loss because the government moved them, they would be reimbursed.

Mr. Art Hanger: Yes, okay.

There are a number of questions in that area I would like to ask, but I want to get through this other one before my time is up.

I think there is some reference to some of the supporting information that was sent to us, pending your visit here, and it deals with spousal abuse and child abuse. I guess that's just part of it. There's also this whole process of sexual harassment and assault. I don't know if your agency or your committee gets into any of that at all, or how you view it. It must have an impact within the military community. How does that impact and what, if anything, does your committee do?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: My office oversees all policy for what we call family advocacy programs, our child abuse and spouse abuse programs. We have a very active and I think effective program for prevention of spouse and child abuse. We feel that's part of our family readiness.

We also have a new parent support program, where we go out to the homes of military families with newborns and work with the parents. We feel this is very effective, particularly in helping us spot situations where there could be potential abuse and helping people with parenting skills. Not everybody was blessed to grow up in a family with good parenting skills, and people tend to replicate what they learned.

Mr. Art Hanger: So you really don't deal with support for members outside, when issues of harassment appear within the military structure.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: No, I do not. Our military structure has reporting mechanisms for sexual harassment, and protocols. We've worked quite extensively to educate people in what is sexual harassment, what is appropriate behaviour, what is not appropriate behaviour. Each of the services has varying programs. We'd be glad to provide you with some examples of the overall policy, and how they have developed the training modules that go along with these policies to educate.

Mr. Art Hanger: The committee and I would be very interested to see some of that information.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: As you integrate women into the force, it is really important to have the education process on what is appropriate behaviour in the workplace and what isn't, for all concerned in the chain of command.

The other concern is that there has to be a concerted effort from the top to say this is important and we are going to do it—because I believe leadership sets the tone—and then to be fair and consistent in its application. There is generally sometimes a lot of confusion. Sometimes it's the leaders who are confused. They want to do the right thing but don't quite know how to do it.

Mr. David Pratt: We have that type of training, Art.

Mr. Art Hanger: I would be interested in seeing your—

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: I'd be glad to provide that.

Mr. Art Hanger: Thank you.

The Chairman: We can come back to you, Mr. Hanger.

Mr. Clouthier.

Mr. Hec Clouthier (Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, Lib.): Thank you very much for appearing here today, Ms. Becraft and Lieutenant Colonel.

The first question I'd like to ask is on funding. Is there a formula in the United States of America that determines how many dollars are going to the Department of Defense? Are you aware of that, or do you just exponentially, as you indicated, each and every year try to access more funding? Is there a criterion in place where it says the funding for the Department of Defense will not fall below this, or the funding for the department is programmed to a certain percentage of the GNP or GDP? Are you aware of that?

• 1645

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Our top line, as we call it, was set by Congress as part of the budget deal to balance the budget. Our top line is $270 billion, which is down considerably. That's the top line the department has to deal with.

We have had to go back for additional supplementals to fund the Bosnia mission, so for those things over and above the operating needs of the military we've had to go back for additional funds to Congress. There is not a formula that says x percent will go to quality of life, for instance. These things have evolved over time. There's not a fund that says x percent will go to housing. It's part of the budget deliberations within each of the services and the office of the Secretary of Defense.

The Office of the Secretary of Defense sets programming guidance at the beginning of the year with the priorities. Then each of the services develops its budget, which comes forward for a review at the level of the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Some of our programs are bottom-up, like our child care program, which is installation on up. Some of them are top-down, like our family advocacy program. The funds come directly to my office from Congress and we distribute the funds. There are many different ways of funding the individual programs.

As I said, the MWR programs are a combination of appropriated funds and non-appropriated funds generated by fees, as well as exchange dividends that are poured back into the program. We have many different ways of funding these programs.

Our two school systems are based on our per-pupil costs, which are set by law and tied to teachers' salaries and a formula.

So there is no set formula.

Mr. Hec Clouthier: So even for the number one figure, which is $270 billion, there would not be a formula for determining the $270 billion. I realize where you're coming from for the different departments within the department; it would be determined by the Secretary of Defense how much money is allocated there. But for the overall budget, the $270 billion is not a formula; it's just something that's worked out between the Secretary of Defense and Congress.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: That is correct.

Mr. Hec Clouthier: Okay. Now, before I get to the other questions, in the United States of America is there a defence committee, like this committee, made up of members of Congress?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Yes. The Senate has the Senate Armed Services Committee and the House has what we call the House National Security Committee. There are also some different oversight committees, but our two main committees are the Senate Armed Services Committee and the House National Security Committee.

Mr. Hec Clouthier: Now basically what would their jobs entail?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: They're the legislators and they write our laws. Then they provide oversight on the laws.

Right now we're in our legislative process. The House has finished its hearing and is marking up its bill. The Senate is marking up its bill. The two of them will get together and hammer out the differences so that the two bills become one bill. They will then go back and vote out and send it to the President to sign.

That, then, is our guidance. That's the authorizing bill. Our appropriations committees work the same way, so the authorizers authorize what is to be spent for what programs and the appropriators appropriate the money. We do that every year.

Mr. Hec Clouthier: So the two committees, between the Senate and the Congress, would be the two committees that set the guidelines?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: That's right.

Mr. Hec Clouthier: That make the laws?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: That's right.

Mr. Hec Clouthier: And then the Secretary of Defense, under law, would be required to follow those directives from those two committees.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: That's correct.

Mr. Hec Clouthier: How many are on these committees?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Our Senate has 100 members and there are probably 15 members on the Senate Armed Services Committee. The House has 436 members, and I'm not quite sure, but it's considerably more. Then each of these committees is broken down into subcommittees, like a personnel committee, a construction committee, a readiness committee, etc.

• 1650

Mr. Hec Clouthier: Okay. Now, with regard to the military, I know one of the great difficulties we have in Canada is that in the military people move a lot, and that in itself is very difficult for quality of life and relationships and infrastructure. Do you have a policy in place in the United States whereby some of the military would stay at one particular base longer, or do they just move at the discretion of the CO or the military brass?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: The moves are at the discretion of the military department. Some services move more than others. The air force tends to be more stable; an average air force tour is maybe four years. They say the army moves every three years—although my husband retired from the army and we had moved almost every year. It depends on the career pattern of the individual. The navy is looking to home port, to try to have bases so they can then deploy from ships in a home port; they're looking to try to stabilize things that way. There is recognition of a need to stabilize, but quite frankly, I don't know if there's the will.

Mr. Hec Clouthier: With regard to the housing—I want to get this perfectly clear—if a military person stays at the PMQ on a particular base, it's at no cost.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: If they have assigned quarters on base, they do not draw their quarters allowance; they forfeit their quarters allowance. So I live off-base, let's say, and my basic pay—I'm just making up numbers—is $2,000 a month, my housing allowance is $700 a month and my variable housing allowance on that is $500 a month. I would get $1,200 a month to pay for my housing. My mortgage may be $1,800 a month, but that doesn't matter, because this is all I get off-base. If I lived on-base, I would draw my $2,000 base pay, period. I wouldn't draw my housing allowance or my variable housing allowance over that.

Mr. Hec Clouthier: Irrespective of whether you're single or whether you're a married person—

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: That's correct.

Mr. Hec Clouthier: —with four or five children, or whatever? It doesn't make any difference?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: If you live on-base, you do not draw your housing allowance. If you live off-base, you draw your housing allowance.

Mr. Hec Clouthier: Let's say the lieutenant-colonel, as Mr. Hanger had indicated, sold his house. If you sell your house, it's just fair market value. There are no programs in place like guaranteed home sale or anything else through the United States military?

LCol William Huleatt: That's correct.

Mr. Hec Clouthier: You buy the house, Lieutenant-Colonel, you pay $100,000 for it, and you're transferred to the other end of the country. If you have to sell it at $75,000, do you eat the loss?

LCol William Huleatt: That's correct.

Mr. Hec Clouthier: But in the interim, though, you would have been collecting some of this supplement because you were living off-base in your housing. Would you have been collecting that?

LCol William Huleatt: I would have been receiving the supplemental—

Mr. Hec Clouthier: A certain amount.

LCol William Huleatt: Right, which may—

Mr. Hec Clouthier: Is that tied to your rank or to the cost of the house?

LCol William Huleatt: The basic housing allowance is tied to your rank. The variable portion of that is tied to the location.

Mr. Hec Clouthier: Okay. That's not the impression I got.

The Chairman: Do you get the same allowance if you rent?

LCol William Huleatt: Yes.

The Chairman: Okay. Go ahead.

Mr. Hec Clouthier: If you rent off-base, you get the same allowance.

LCol William Huleatt: Yes, that's correct.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: You draw your quarters allowance and your variable housing amount. Not everything we do—

Mr. Hec Clouthier: I have more questions, but I'll pass this on to someone else for now.

The Chairman: Mr. Hanger.

Mr. Art Hanger: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Looking at issues at the recruiting level, are recruits in your military brought in at any age? Could they be in their forties and married with children?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: No. There are age limitations. I think it's 29, something like that—

LCol William Huleatt: That's right.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: —and generally the recruits are single. The percentage of married people brought in is creeping up a little bit to maybe about 10% in some of the services, but generally the recruits are single. The average age is about 19, almost 20.

• 1655

Mr. Art Hanger: So having recruits who are married wouldn't be a major problem.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: It's a significant problem. They come in at almost 20 years of age, but by the end of the first enlistment about 40% are married. So while they may come in single, a little less than half of them are married by the end of three years. They have very low incomes and high expenses, so it's a major problem, I believe.

Mr. Art Hanger: And most of them are going to be living in barracks.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: If they marry they don't have to live in barracks.

Mr. Art Hanger: No. At the recruiting level though, prior to or right at training, they would be definitely—

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Yes, they would live in the barracks.

And if they are married when they come in, while they go to basic training and advanced individual training they would live in the barracks. When they move to their first duty station, they would be eligible for married housing, but most of our married housing does not go to the junior enlisted, so they would get their housing allowance and live off-base.

Mr. Art Hanger: So they wouldn't have a choice. They would have to live off-base.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: No. He can't live in the barracks unless the family is not with him, and then he would forfeit his housing allowance if he lived on-base.

Mr. Art Hanger: Alternate service delivery—in other words, contracting out a lot of services—is another issue that's come up here considerably. I assume that it's going on—

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Yes.

Mr. Art Hanger: —in your military. To what degree? And how is what's going to be contracted out analysed? How is what is best for the military, best for the country, determined? I assume that it wouldn't always be just the dollar figure at stake.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: It depends. We have a process we call the A-76, which is a process that has us evaluate whether or not it is cheaper for us to contract out. Before you contract out any service, you go through a process.

Some of the things have already been contracted out, like food services for barracks. A lot of the base operating support has been contracted out. Many things are contracted out.

Now the department and some of the services are looking at some of the programs. They're looking at some of the community support programs as to whether they can contract them out. The issue there is that they're very labour-intensive and many of them require a certain skill set—like family advocacy, where you have licensed counsellors and so forth.

Mr. Art Hanger: Right.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: And can they make the contracts competitive? There hasn't been a lot contracted out yet. I know people are looking at it. We have said, for instance, that in our child care area they must meet our standards. Most civilian child care contractors don't want to; they don't want to handle babies and toddlers because they are expensive. Our biggest need is care for infants and toddlers, and based on that need, we're not going to compromise our standards.

Mr. Art Hanger: With this alternate service delivery position, of course there is always a lot of concern on the part of both the military and even the civilian support as to how it's going to affect them—

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: That's right.

Mr. Art Hanger: —and it certainly impacts right onto the family. It impacts onto the whole military community, for that matter, and I guess it isn't always necessarily the bottom line, if you're looking right at the military structure again, when it comes to the trades, when it comes to some of the support services. I assume there have to be other considerations, that is, can we deploy these people?

You say you're looking at it. Is there some sort of criteria in that regard that your military is basing its analysis on, like what can be delivered alternatively, what can't, and is it always the best for the military itself?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: In some instances it's very decentralized. Local bases are out-sourcing various services. In some cases, the individual services are looking at larger pieces. There are a lot of concerns about this. Contracting out is only as good as the contract you write, and most of our people don't know how to write contracts. So there's a need to really beef up the contracting.

• 1700

In the community support area, it's very labour intensive and there are qualifications that are required. So it's problematic. I'm not saying it can't be done. I think some of the services are looking at contracting out family support centres.

The navy— you may want to speak to that a little bit.

LCol William Huleatt: The navy in particular has been looking at the whole family centre area as one to consider for contracting out, as Ms. Becraft pointed out.

Also, one of the points you made was that in this A-76 process all aspects of contracting out are looked at and considered, to include the impact the contract now would have on the community, or the whole military culture, because these areas we're talking about in family support are things that have intrinsic value, on which it's hard to put a dollar value, yet can have a significant impact that only shows at times of deployment.

So it depends on when you're looking at contracting out. If it's during a period of stabilization, it may seem that, well, this makes a lot of sense; it would be cheaper to do it this way, and you don't have to consider—

However, we rely on our tenured professionals to add that other piece that says we have to overlay the impact of when we have to mobilize and deploy, as to whether this would be a good idea or not, whether a contract would impose limitations that could really impact readiness, which is what we're about to begin with. We always kind of bring ourselves back to readiness—

Mr. Art Hanger: Operational readiness.

LCol William Huleatt: —in all of these things.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Part of the framework of what we're dealing with is the sense of providing a community to enable the individual to do their job of support services. That's really part of our overall conceptual values that we bring to this. We do believe it's directly related to readiness.

The Chairman: I have a few questions, if you don't mind, Mr. Pratt.

Who administers the base housing in the United States? Do you have a special agency, or is the base commander in charge of it?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Each base commander administers the housing on their base.

The Chairman: Does the base administer its own school system?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: We have an overseas school system for all of our bases overseas. We administer some schools in the United States. They're primarily in the southeast. That's our domestic school system. There are approximately 16 schools in seven states.

The rest of the schools and the bulk of our children who are on military bases in the United States attend civilian schools in a local educational agency, in the local school district, wherever they're located.

The Chairman: What happens, for instance, if you have a special needs child? Would he just fall into the regular school system or would the military, for instance, offer financial assistance?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: We don't offer financial assistance. We have an exceptional family member program for service members who have a family member with disability. This could be their spouse also. They register in this program.

• 1705

We'll talk about children now. For those children who are multiply disabled, that will be a consideration where they're stationed, to make sure medical care and other services are available for them. In our overseas school system, we take care of all of their needs under our law. Under our laws, every child is guaranteed a free public education, so we must take care of these children. In the United States, the local school district where the child attends school is responsible for the special needs in the school setting.

The Chairman: Do you have a lot of complaints when a member transfers, for instance, from one school system to the next? Is there a lot of difference between the state systems?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Yes. Education in the United States is very political and very local, and I think one of the biggest concerns of military parents is quality of education as they move. They are willing to put up with sacrifices to themselves, but they don't want their children to be hurt. Education varies, and it's a major concern of our service members in many areas.

Our Department of Defense school system is a good school system, and they're generally very happy when they're in the system, so they tend to compare it to other systems where they are located. It's a big issue.

The Chairman: As for the different systems, how do you address the problems that come up, for instance, when you go from one system to another system that's not as up to date or of the same standard?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: It's a major problem because the onus rests with the parent. The installations have school liaison officers, and in many areas they are ex-officio members of the local school boards. Our local school boards are elected, and generally the military's not there long enough to get themselves elected, so they have an ex-officio position with the school board.

The commanders at each installation designate a schools officer to try to work with the local school system. Our military, in their culture, will provide a lot of assistance to school events to try to be good neighbours for their children.

But the fact is that for those individuals located on military bases where their school system does not belong to the defence department, they have to negotiate their way through each school system as they move. It's a major issue of concern. It's probably the same in Canada. Each state has their own state history that's a requirement for graduation. Each school system may have different graduation requirements, so it becomes more problematic, as you get a child in high school and try to get them to graduate, to make sure they have all the credits that their last school system requires. It's a problem.

The Chairman: I have just a couple more questions here.

As for the tax system, do military personnel file both state and federal tax in April or do they have just one tax system?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: First of all, all the service members pay federal income tax—or they had better. Then we have what we call the Soldiers' and Sailors' Civil Relief Act, and that says that you declare a home state and you pay the taxes and abide by the rules of your home state. So you register your car there and you pay the state income tax of that state, regardless of where you move.

Now, some states don't have income tax. We tend to have a lot of people who—

The Chairman: And everybody comes from those states?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Exactly. We have a high proportion from Texas.

But that was set up so that you declare a state and then you abide by the laws of that state for those purposes.

The Chairman: I have just a couple more quick questions here.

In your presentation you talked on a few occasions of an automatic job bank. Could you elaborate on that, please.

• 1710

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Yes. It really started out with our transition assistance program. We have a system, first of all, where individuals can input their resumés, and then employers, for no charge, get an access number and they can access our data bank for resumés. We also have a system where employers register, and a bulletin board that says “We are looking for employees; call me”.

All of our systems are hooked up to America's job bank, which is part of the Department of Labor's automated job bank. What we are really pushing is our own transition assistance program tools that we have, our transition bulletin board and our automatic job resumé service, providing access to spouses for this system, because the employers that we have are very loyal. We know from our statistics that every military member who puts a resumé in the system has it referred at least 25 times and a lot of people get jobs from this. We just had a job fair in the Far East, for instance, and when the employers left they had 800 firm job offers that they offered on the spot.

We'll collect the statistics over the year, because not everybody does it on the spot and not everybody accepts the job that is offered. But we have built up a very loyal band and a very diverse band of employers, so we've said “Okay, you like the product you have gotten. We have another product, our military spouse. You have companies in this area and she's going to transfer.” So we're working on linkages that we've already made to expand it to our spouse employment.

Our transition assistance program has really been very successful as we have downsized our military. Of course, our military is set up so that every year we finish our drawdown— About 200,000 to 300,000 people leave every year, and we have not had a high unemployment rate for our veterans when they've left, and we really attribute it to this transition program.

Part of what has been so successful is that we, first of all, took their military skills and put them in civilian language, what this is the equivalent of. Then we provided training to people on how to write a resumé, how to interview, how to dress. So we're preparing them for leaving, and if they take the time to go through this program, by the time they leave they have a resumé that is ready for the civilian market. They've been schooled on how to do an interview, what the civilian game is like, how to research a job in the local community where they're going. They will have registered in our transition program and their resumé should already have been targeted out there to employers in the area where they say they wish to go.

It's available on the web. In fact, we're just now about ready to put it on the web. We'll give you the web address and you can look at it.

The Chairman: I have one last question. Do the reserves have the same benefits as the regular force?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: It depends. When they're on active duty, they do. We have worked with the reserve component for family support programs. They have access to the exchanges, MWR program. They have access to our commissary once a month, and there's legislation now that says it will probably be twice a month. So it depends on their status. When they're on active duty, they have access. They have the same privileges.

The Chairman: Mr. Pratt.

Mr. David Pratt: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I was interested in your comments with respect to the school system in the states. The department of health, education and welfare, as I understand it, oversees education—

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Right now we have a Department of Education.

Mr. David Pratt: Okay, I'm sorry.

With respect to the individual school districts in the U.S., is the quality of education linked directly to, for instance, the level of local assessment, the amount of tax dollars?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Yes, property taxes.

Mr. David Pratt: Are there any equalizing factors brought into school funding so there's a basic minimum national level?

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Ms. Carolyn Becraft: We do not have a basic minimum national level. The basic funding source for schools is the property tax. Various states have added additional revenues, and there have been attempts by states to equalize the funding stream and to put in place a basic standard to raise the funding, particularly for poor districts that have no basis for property tax. As we've had population shifts and area shifts, it's really affected school funding. It's one of the problems we have in the United States: how to fund schools.

Right now, for instance, in Virginia for the first time, the governor has an initiative for school construction. And the President has just put money out, through the Department of Education, for states to come in to apply for grants for construction and for technology. So the federal government is trying to push money down to the states for them to apply, in black lands or whatever, to upgrade, with some stipulations that it should go to the disadvantaged, etc.

So we have those initiatives, but it's all very local.

Mr. David Pratt: Getting deployed to a state that is notorious—I suppose that's probably the best word—for a poor education system must be a big dissatisfier for members of your armed forces.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Yes, it is.

Mr. David Pratt: One of the ways I suppose you could track how families are coping is the divorce rate.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Yes.

Mr. David Pratt: Has the Department of Defense made any efforts to track the divorce rate in the U.S. military over the years to determine whether or not these quality of life initiatives are having a significant impact?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: We survey our folks every five to seven years, both the military members and the spouses. We ask, “Have you ever been divorced?” We don't ask how many times. So our data is not very good.

We tend to think our divorce rate is probably equivalent to that of the civilian side as a whole, but I don't know that we know that.

LCol William Huleatt: Right, we don't.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: We haven't asked the question, “How many times have you been divorced, or are you thinking about getting divorced now?” We don't know.

Mr. David Pratt: Would you say the situation as far as divorce goes in the U.S. military has stabilized, or is it decreasing or, God forbid, increasing?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: We don't know, and we don't know about what is happening with our young families. At this point we don't have data on that.

Mr. David Pratt: One of the things we've noticed in our hearings over the course of the last few months is if we go to an air force base, people tend to be generally more satisfied with their situation, and if we go to a naval base, it's a notch below an air force base in terms of level of satisfaction. Where we seem to hit rock bottom is with the army. Is there a similar situation in the U.S. that way?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Yes. It's an air force cultural thing in the United States. They've really put quality of life first. I travel and visit all services, and you can tell the level of support they've put in the air force. They've put money in and they've sustained the money. They've put the investment in and they've never let their investment go down. So they tend to be the most satisfied. It's a cultural thing with them.

The least satisfied tend to be the marine corps. They put in the least amount of money, if you can say that, in a quality of life sense. They've just begun to address their infrastructure.

Mr. David Pratt: Dealing with the issue of infrastructure and housing in particular, one of the problems we have is the age of some of the housing we're dealing with. Some of it is in a very, very poor state of repair. I gather that as a result of Mr. Marsh's task force, you have a military housing authority now.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: It was his recommendation that they create a military housing authority. However, that has not happened.

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We do have a number of initiatives within the various services to try to privatize part of the housing. It involves a variety of different schemes, such as giving the developer the land to build housing, and making arrangements so that military people have it first come, first served, with the developer getting the quarters allowance and so forth. Other schemes have them taking over existing housing and running it, and contracting out the management of the housing.

These things are just getting off the ground, and there haven't been many true successes yet. Quite frankly, it's one of those things where everybody says they want to do it, but everybody who is a stakeholder in the old way doesn't want to let go. So we've had our problems.

Mr. David Pratt: I have another question, Mr. Chair.

With respect to the health services available for members of the American forces, all of their health care needs are met while they're in the service, I presume?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Of the active-duty member?

Mr. David Pratt: The active-duty member and the family.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: The active-duty member is guaranteed health care. The family member is guaranteed health on a space-available basis, but we do have some managed care programs now, which we're calling tri-care, and various levels of support for medical care for families. Our military bases do not supply all the medical care for families. We have health maintenance organization insurance plans.

Mr. David Pratt: Do members of your forces then buy supplementary health insurance?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Yes.

Mr. David Pratt: That's a common practice, is it?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: It's a very common practice. Many organizations that are associated with the military provide varied supplemental policies. I know when my husband was on active duty we carried one.

I presume you carry a supplemental policy.

LCol William Huleatt: Yes.

It's pretty standard practice. The medical benefit covers basic medical care. When it gets into extraordinary and specialized care, that's where there are co-pays.

The dental area is a whole other arena, and is handled separately through a separate type of insurance policy. We actually pay a monthly premium for family dental care. It's a standard rate for everyone. It's not based on rank or anything.

Mr. David Pratt: When a soldier is in an operational theatre, though, presumably every aspect of their medical care is covered.

LCol William Huleatt: Yes.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: The soldiers' needs there, including dental, are all taken care of. That's for the active-duty soldiers.

Mr. David Pratt: Okay.

You mentioned the job bank you have available. Are there any incentives for national companies to participate in the job bank?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: We offer it at no cost. The incentive for them is that they love the employees they get. In fact, our problem is to make sure people register, and keep on, so that we have enough resumés. I mean, when they hire these people, they love them and want more. We tell them we have fifty more just like them.

Mr. David Pratt: To expand on that very slightly, one of the problems we have is that I guess the size of some of our bases, even our larger bases, would probably not compare with the size of some of your bases in the States. Do you have small bases of, let's say, anywhere from a few hundred people to a couple of thousand in a community where the issue of spousal employment sort of falls between the cracks in terms of the programs you have available, or do you feel the programs are meeting those needs as well?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: It's my personal opinion that it's harder to do that in the smaller areas, because they aren't staffed as well.

Would you agree?

LCol William Huleatt: Yes.

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Ms. Carolyn Becraft: They would have the same policies in place, and this is where we're hoping we can use technology better to ensure access of information and access of programming. It's not a be-all and end-all, but it will help us.

Mr. David Pratt: Once again, thanks for being here.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Sure.

The Chairman: Mr. Hanger.

Mr. Art Hanger: Going into the military structure again, you have a base commander, and he or she may have x number of military families living there, and of course he or she has the responsibility to look after the infrastructure, including the housing. If there is a need for repair, he issues the order and it's repaired by the expertise on his base—

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Yes, or contracted out.

Mr. Art Hanger: Or he calls a contractor to look after it.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Yes.

Mr. Art Hanger: When it comes to contracting-out issues, when I say alternate service delivery— has his authority been a point of discussion on any of your alternative services delivery? When you deliver this with another agency, or whatever the case may be, a base commander isn't going to have the control he once had. Is this an issue that has come into any points of discussion?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: That's an issue. We have some parallel things going on.

Some of the services are looking to contract out base operating support. They've already done part of it. Lawn mowing, food service, and some of the engineer/electrician kinds of functions are already contracted out. But it has sort of been piecemeal.

As to contracting out the whole thing, some commanders are concerned about that, because they want to own everything on the base and have it be responsive to them when they want it and when they need it. So there is a great deal of concern among commanders about what kind of control they will have.

Yet there are pushes. We have contracted support in Bosnia. Brown & Root delivers all of our stuff in Bosnia. That's probably easier to do because they didn't have any commander in charge that owned anything at the time.

Mr. Art Hanger: I've heard it expressed in our military by some of the base commanders that they'd like to be able to fix this or do that, and they can't do it because it's delivered alternatively. So I'm curious if that was a point of discussion within your—

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: It always is.

Mr. Art Hanger: Yes.

You coordinate services of non-profit agencies such as the armed services YMCA, the Red Cross and USO.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Yes. Obviously those are non-profit organizations that provide services to the military, and my office provides the linkage for these organizations to assist them as they work with the department. Sometimes it's kind of hard to work with the U.S. Department of Defense.

Mr. Art Hanger: A liaison.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: A liaison, yes. And we provide some in-kind services. The Red Cross has provided services on our installations. The armed forces YMCA provides services for young enlisted families and single people on our installations. They do their own fund-raising. Oftentimes we provide a location for them, office space—gratis—and phone support and so forth, but they do the hiring of their people and raise their money.

Mr. Art Hanger: So you don't have any problem with outside services coming in to assist.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: No, we don't. To the extent they can within our laws, we welcome that.

Mr. Art Hanger: There is one other question I would like to put to you. This has been an issue up here. Do you have any military personnel on food lines or food banks?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: We have some service members that apply for food stamps. This is always not a point of pride.

Mr. Art Hanger: No.

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Ms. Carolyn Becraft: We also have a program called WIC, Women and Infant Children. It provides nutritional supplements to nutritionally at-risk mothers and children. That is a U.S. program but it's administered through the states, and in the United States we have many families who apply for it. The income threshold is quite a bit higher, and through our family service centres we encourage eligible families to apply for that.

Mr. Art Hanger: My final question is what is the pay level at recruit stage, entry level? Do you have any idea?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: It's about $11,000 a year, I think, but I don't know. We can find you a pay chart.

LCol William Huleatt: We can give you a pay chart. That's not a problem.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Remember, we have base pay. It's a screwy pay system, but anyway—

LCol William Huleatt: The pay chart's helpful, though, because it includes by grade all the different components that make up the pay. So that would probably be interesting for you to just take a look at to see how the variations go by grade, years of service, all those things.

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Yes, we will be glad to provide that.

Mr. Art Hanger: You would also be willing to supply us with the Soldiers' and Sailors' Civil Relief Act?

Ms. Carolyn Becraft: Yes, we can get you a copy of that.

Mr. Art Hanger: Good.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

Ms. Becraft, Colonel, I want to thank you both for your presentation. You've given us a lot of insight on how things are done south of the border. You've given us, again, a lot of food for thought for our report, and I thank you very much for your presence here this afternoon. We hope to see you again. Thank you very much.

The meeting is adjourned.