Veterans, honoured guests, and honourable members of the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs, I bring you greetings from Canada's pre-eminent peacekeeping veterans organization, the Canadian Association of Veterans in United Nations Peacekeeping. Thank you for inviting our organization to appear before this honourable committee.
My comments to this honourable committee are a synopsis of suggestions and information that I have received as a result of seeking guidance and input from our members and their families located within our 28 chapters across Canada.
I would like to also point out that I was a member of the original New Veterans Charter Advisory Group under the chair of Muriel Westmorland. Our final report, “Honouring Our Commitment to Veterans and Families, The Living Charter in Action”, was submitted to the government on June 15, 2009. To date, very little progress has been accomplished after the submission of this excellent report.
We are fully aware that Veterans Ombudsman Guy Parent has already appeared before this honourable committee. In principle, we support the testimony and presentation by our Veterans Ombudsman. He touched all the required bases.
We also support a letter and opinion dated November 15, 2013, that was sent to the Minister of Veterans Affairs, the Honourable , as put forth by the Veterans Consultation Group, a group of 20 veterans organizations that meet on a regular basis to discuss matters of mutual interest pertaining to veterans and their families. Our organization participated in preparing the findings, as mentioned in this letter. A copy of this letter is attached to my presentation.
Item one in this letter indicates that the earnings loss benefit, ELB, must be improved to provide 100% of pre-release income, to continue for life, and include increases for projected career earnings for the Canadian Armed Forces members, for example, indexed.
Item two indicates that the maximum disability award must be increased consistent with what is provided to injured civilian workers who received general damages in law court.
Item three describes the current inequity with respect to the earnings loss benefit for class A and class B—that's less than 90 days—reservists for service attributable injuries. That must cease.
Another item that was emphasized in the report presented by Ms. Westmorland was families, in particular, caregivers, wives, or spouses. It is particularly embarrassing that the government completely ignored this part of a veteran's life. Without question, the caregiver, spouse, and/or wife has been treated with disrespect and forgotten, to say the least.
Many partners of armed forces veterans have given up countless opportunities with respect to education and employment to be a military spouse. Their spiritual growth and their ability to be gainfully employed with opportunities for meaningful advancement in a field of their choice and/or to participate in higher education are hampered by their loyalty to their spouse.
An extremely interesting and revealing book, Hurry Up and Wait: An Inside Look at Life as a Canadian Military Wife, written by Dianne Collier and published by Creative Bound books in Carp, Ontario, provides an in-depth and very realistic look at military life as a spouse, and of course by extension, as the spouse of a retired veteran.
Without question, it is accepted in today's Canadian economy that to have a successful financial household requires two people—husband and spouse or husband and wife—working outside the home and participating in meaningful employment. If a veteran is on one of the many programs sponsored by Veterans Affairs Canada and a spouse is the main stay-at-home caregiver, there is absolutely no way that the spouse, or for that matter, the veteran, can participate in programs that will support and enhance future financial responsibilities as well as save for retirement.
The Veterans Ombudsman's report is quite clear on the pitfalls of becoming injured while serving Canada, and if the spouse is a main caregiver, it is respectfully suggested that they are destined to live a life under or at the accepted level of poverty in Canada.
Spouses of Canadian Forces members are treated like second-class citizens in that, being loyal to their spouse who was a serving Canadian Forces member, they are prohibited, by reason of their geographical location, from earning a decent living or securing an advanced education. If the spouse of the Canadian Forces member were permitted to obtain a higher education, they would be able to secure employment that would permit them to move along with their spouse and to transfer that education and employment to the new postings.
Many occupations are transferable: accountant, nurse, police officer, social worker, dental professional, administrator, and psychology and business persons and the like. If a veteran or severely injured Canadian Forces member is to retire or live a life as a contributing member of a community, they must be able to see a light at the end of the tunnel that is not a flickering candle.
I respectfully suggest that now is the time to make changes to the new Veterans Charter. In the past, several well-meaning and respected expert advisory groups have submitted well over 200 suggestions on how to improve the new Veterans Charter. With all due respect, there's been little movement from the government. Please make the necessary suggested improvements to the new Veterans Charter and give the veterans of Canada the proper care, support, and compensation they deserve and are entitled to.
Among the persons I contacted with respect to seeking advice on this particular appearance were Gloria and Ed Blizzard of Wilmot, Nova Scotia. They fall into the exact category that I have just referred to. Mr. Blizzard is not very well. When he passes away, Mrs. Blizzard, if she's still remaining, will experience difficulties. Their case is just one among the many, many, many cases of veterans who will experience difficulty.
With that submission, I respectfully submit this particular report. Thank you very much for your attendance.
:
Thank you, everyone, for having me here.
I appreciate that the government is taking the time to review the new Veterans Charter. In my position as the executive director of the Veterans Transition Network, as a veteran myself who served in Afghanistan, and somebody who's gone through some of the operational stress injuries and come out the other side of the system, there are definitely some improvements that could be made along the way.
That being said, I also want to highlight some of the success stories and encourage some of the good parts of the new Veterans Charter that should be maintained. I hope the entire legislation is not completely thrown out, because our program did start in 1997 and as our clinicians can attest, and they've asked me to mention here today, there were a lot of complaints about the Pension Act as well. I just want to make that clear from the outset.
To best inform the committee, I want to talk a little bit about myself and where I'm coming from, and my experiences and the veterans whom I do speak on behalf of, who've been through my program.
I deployed to Afghanistan in 2008. I was 22 years old and my job was to guard supply convoys through Kandahar City to the forward operating bases in the region. It was one of the more stressful and dangerous jobs, obviously.
However, I can say without a doubt that when I was in Afghanistan, there were no feelings of fear or trepidation about taking on these missions. There was no requirement for an officer to order me or my colleagues to do this mission. We were young and gung-ho, and we wanted to go and take that risk. That's what we had trained for; that's why we joined the Canadian Forces. This was an asset to us and I think it's what made us effective on the battlefield, our willingness to take those risks, to engage the enemy.
The one story I reference for myself is a time we had to recover a crashed aerial vehicle that had gone down in the middle of nowhere and it required us to drive through a minefield. It was an old Russian minefield. There were numerous exploded Afghan vehicles all around this path through the minefield which they had pretty much created by guessing and testing. We were very well aware that anytime there was a big rainfall it would move the mines around. I was in the lead vehicle and there was a really good chance we were going to hit a mine on that mission, but not once did I stop to think that I could possibly die.
I bring this up just to highlight the level of emotional suppression that's required to be effective in the military. This is something that is also common in other trades and populations in Canada. If you think of police forces or high finance, some of these super stressful situations require people to change the way their body has evolved to react emotionally.
Now when we bring somebody who's gone through that experience back here to Canada, putting a label of post-traumatic stress disorder onto that person is not sufficient. It doesn't nearly capture the complexity of the issue the person's going through. The majority of the veterans—we've now had over 400 come through our program—are in this category of dealing with this sort of new way of dealing with emotional expression, changing from the way they were successful in places like Afghanistan, and how they're going to now be successful here in Canada.
The way this relates to the new Veterans Charter is that one of the requirements coming into a lot of the benefits is that somebody obtained a PTSD diagnosis or they have a medical release from the military. One of the recommendations I'll make at the end has to do with addressing this issue, because it's real when we look at the statistics that currently only 14% of veterans, of those who actually served in the forces, come to Veterans Affairs for services. The majority of people coming through our program have never gone to the government for services. We've all heard a lot about the stigma issues, especially with mental health, as being one of the contributing factors. There's also the issue that it's bureaucratically difficult to get your claims processed.
Again, I think there are some very positive strong points, like the earnings loss benefit that does allow people to get funded to go back to school, and the up to $75,000 they can get for that retraining. That's an amazing program. It's just difficult to access for somebody who's trepidatious about coming forward for help, aware there is a lot of anger in the community, and that there are never enough services for them. That also causes a barrier that there is this image that the government is not doing enough.
To take a step back into the Veterans Transition Network, the organization that I run, we deliver a 10-day program that helps these men and women who are in that in-between place. They haven't got the full diagnosis for post-traumatic stress disorder or depression, or one of the other mental health issues, and therefore, they do not often qualify for counselling or the other programs. They will come to our program first and they will get a chance to check in with themselves.
It's group-based, peer to peer. They'll get a sense of where they are, and to see how their peers are doing with it. Many of them do go on to access other services. The peer reviewed research we present every year at CIMVHR shows that our program does have a positive impact on their PTSD and depression scores. We are now evaluating quality of life as well.
Just as I talk about it, I want to take a moment to thank this committee, because it was this committee that helped us get federal funding in 2012. I had the privilege of presenting here in December 2011, and 11 months later we were a federally funded national organization. This committee should take credit for that, and it shows that working within the system does produce results.
This is where I come to my final points on the recommendations.
The one I've alluded to is to find some way to overcome the requirement for veterans to have a mental health or physical disorder in order to access benefits. The one area I've heard much talk about among our community is a Canadian GI bill, something that would target those veterans who are most vulnerable to issues like post-traumatic stress or other mental health issues, those who served in combat in places like Afghanistan or Bosnia when it was really difficult. We know statistically that they are predisposed to have issues around mental health and to have social issues about getting back into the workforce.
If we could get some sort of GI bill like the Americans have that qualify those people for schooling and re-education, regardless of whether they have an injury or not, that would go a long way to reintegrating our population of veterans, catching them early on before they are five, six, or ten years out and have been dealing with problems and they're finally at a point where it's a crisis and they need an intervention from the medical community.
The last point I'll make is around the issues with the Veterans Review and Appeal Board. This is a very psychologically distressing experience for many veterans, and often when they come into our program we have to spend time processing some of their feelings around it. It often isn't the content; it's just the way they're handled. They feel like they're asking for a handout, like they're actually fighting and sort of begging for their rights. This runs counter to the military ethos of self-sufficiency and competency. If something could be done to address that issue, I think it would be a huge help. I would suggest removing that from the system altogether and allowing the veterans to go to the court to resolve their disputes that way.
That's my presentation. Thank you very much.
:
Thanks again, Mr. Chair.
Above all, I want to thank the witnesses for joining us and for participating in our review of the Enhanced New Veterans Charter Act. Your presence is greatly appreciated.
Mr. Laidler, you introduced a program through the Veterans Transition Network. People are saying that the program is very effective. Thank you for all of the efforts you have invested in this area. I hope you will continue your good work.
Unless I am mistaken, your group developed this program in cooperation with the Wounded Warriors and True Patriot Love organizations to provide veterans—especially those from Ontario, British Columbia and the Maritimes—with access to resources. However, it appears that the program is not available in Quebec.
I would like you to tell us what steps we need to take and what resources—financial or other—you would require to make that excellent program accessible from coast to coast to coast, including in Quebec. I think it's unfortunate that the program is currently unavailable.
:
Thank you for the question about the funding for the program and its ability to expand into Quebec.
You are correct. We started with funding from the Royal Canadian Legion in B.C., and then we expanded nationally with help from the Dominion Command of the Royal Canadian Legion, represented here today, with $500,000 that coincided with the federal government's funding. From that, Wounded Warriors and True Patriot Love have also sponsored the funding for our programming, capturing that percentage of veterans who fall through the gaps between their services and DND and VAC.
I'm excited to say today that True Patriot Love gave us an extra $50,000 last year to build our clinical capacity in French so we could deliver our programs in Quebec completely in French. We plan to run two training programs in Quebec this year. Provided the outcome is positive, that the clinicians are able to meet our high threshold of quality, they will be delivering programs by the end of the year in Quebec in French.
I'd also like to say that we will be training women clinicians at that time to deliver this program, to run an all-women's program, because we do gender specific counselling.
:
Mr. Chair, it's really good and it's an honour for me to be back on the committee. As a veteran and as an MP, it's good to be here.
I've heard the terms “gung-ho” and “hurry up and wait” used. I heard both terms a lot when I was in the CF. “Hurry up and wait” applies both to serving members and spouses. I remember that term well.
I'm going to concentrate more on Mr. Griffis. I have a couple of questions.
Tim, I've known you for some time. Certainly, I think the program that you help grow and run under Dr. Westwood is really world-class. I think the more people—whether they are advocates in the Legion or True Patriot Love, or within VAC—see the impact it has, the better. I'm encouraged to hear about your expansion of services in French, which I think is critical. As well, your comments are welcome.
Mr. Griffis, I want to compliment you on your caregiver portion. Part of the reason I was involved in starting the True Patriot Love Foundation with a group of other people, was after Rick Hillier started the Military Families Fund and the challenges and the stresses on the family started being brought into the wider discussion. That is something that successive governments over the last 50 years haven't addressed properly, so thank you for your advocacy on that point. Canadians now understand it a lot more. That was something which True Patriot Love focused on specifically as the first major donor to the Military Families Fund.
My question is on the max injury award. I find, as both a veteran and a lawyer, there's a lot of confusion with this comparison to civil courts.
In a civil court a damage assessment is essentially a one-time payment. The government is looking at the lump sum right now, and is that appropriate, does that address it. The comparison to civil courts leaves out the fact that veterans will receive education and training assistance, the veterans independence program supports within their own home, often, depending on their status, a move post-CF, long-term lifetime assistance with home-based modification needs, health.... None of those are available in a civil court context for a negligence suit.
Do you think that the benefits, and the cost of those benefits, should be part of the discussion of a lump sum? They don't exist for someone in a civil court.
:
I'm under the impression that in civil court they would have an actuary come forward and point out that the young person, or the person who was injured, over the course of their life would receive
x amount of dollars, would receive the cost of living, various expenses.
In the various cases that you mention, I agree with you; I agree with you on some aspects of what you're saying. Some veterans really appreciate the lump sum award, and some veterans require the Pension Act. There has to be consideration with respect to that.
I'm aware recently that it seems to be the older veterans are the veterans that are coming forward and seeking benefits. I know that the older veterans are in favour of the lump sum award, to the extent that when they receive a lump sum award and they're also receiving a pension, they have requested that I contact VAC and they say, “Please put the money from my pension”—$100 extra a month or whatever—“into a lump sum and give it to me; I don't want the pension increase.”
It is interesting from that point of view, but I also take into consideration the young veteran, such as Major Campbell, and Corporal Kerr, who is an excellent example out of Sudbury, who are going to require extensive consideration with respect to their futures. You have an excellent point there with respect to it. It's going to take some clever thinking on how to get around that and how to address it so that it's very fair. Once again, I appreciate an actuary will come in and do something of that nature. It's a very sensitive subject, I think.
I really appreciate you folks being here.
Mr. Griffis, there are some older vets who will say that the lump sum is something they would appreciate. I have spoken to some of them, and they've said, “I don't know how much time I have left. If I'm going to get $30,000 or $40,000, I'd like to get it now and be able to do whatever I need to do with it.”
However, there are the younger vets, like Mr. Laidler, who have just come out of the forces. If they're diagnosed with a severe stress disorder, or they've lost a couple of limbs, and all of a sudden we sort of.... It's been referred to by some veterans as the “meat chart”. We give them a lump sum of $200,000 or $300,000.
I don't think anybody has received more than $300,000, Mr. Laidler, although I could be mistaken, but $300,000. If you were a corporal, you'd get about $60,000, correct?
:
Historically, in 1997 there was a lot of talk about post-traumatic stress disorder, so that's how they started the program, by evaluating whether this program was going to affect somebody's PTSD symptoms. Closely linked to that are the depression symptoms and their self-esteem rating. Historically, three measures were used to determine the success of the program.
Statistically, the decrease in depression and PTSD symptoms that took place during the program's development was very significant. In the last two years, by working closely with some of the researchers across Canada at the CIMVHR conference, we've started to move away from post-traumatic stress as being the only indicator, as we see it as just one of the issues that military people deal with when they're leaving the forces.
We've actually, I would say, seen tunnel vision around post-traumatic stress, to a certain extent. That's why we've moved to a more inclusive survey called the OQ-45. It's a standard program evaluation survey being used by Veterans Affairs. David Ross has been the champion of this survey. They have the funding there to do it. We've been using that. It measures not only somebody's general mental health, but also their relationship with their family, their satisfaction with their careers. Again, we've been doing those for the group, right after the group, three, six, and twelve months following, and they've all been very successful. I can say there have been clinically and statistically significant increases in the case of the OQ-45.
:
Mr. Blizzard was air force. He has had several operations with respect to cancer. He's also a diabetic. They had to sell their home. They moved into other accommodations, very nice accommodations, but they moved into other accommodations.
Mrs. Blizzard supported him throughout his whole life. They have a wonderful family, and things are going along great for them, but with Mr. Blizzard experiencing several bouts of cancer, she's concerned. Her education is one year of community college, and she's older. She's concerned that it's going to happen once again, and that if Mr. Blizzard passes away before she does, then she'll be in a difficult situation. She wishes that be brought to the attention of the committee. If she had an opportunity in an earlier time to go to school, whether it be community college, university, or special courses, they wouldn't be in the boat they are in right now.
By reason of my age and my colleagues', it's reasonable we talk about that particular aspect frequently, because we lose members not by their moving away, but by their departing the scene. They pass away. They die. That's a difficult situation. In the vast majority of cases it's the male who passes away, and the spouse is left.
One of the spouses we have, her husband was on the aircraft that was shot down on August 9, 1974. She made things go for her life and for her children. She had the ability to do that, whereas Mrs. Blizzard did not have the ability to do that.
:
Thank you for expanding on that.
Mr. Laidler, you mentioned a number of times—and this wasn't the original question I was going to ask you—the support you get from the Legion. Legions, of course, are wonderful support mechanisms, but Legions are not all created equal, and many Legions are struggling throughout Canada. They're struggling with membership, with being downloaded, quite frankly, by government.
I can relate a very quick story before I ask you the question. I had some veterans town halls in my riding during this past week when we were back in the constituency. From Branch 5, one of the women said she went there that night because she wanted to tell us what had happened to her the previous day. She got a call from Veterans Affairs in Brandon asking if her Legion could give this veteran, who happened to be a Thunder Bay veteran, some money. Something wasn't right.
Is that a concern of yours? I know we all speak very highly of the Legion and the work they do, but is it a concern that perhaps Legions are not receiving the kind of support they need to do the work they want to do?
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Earlier, we talked about people who have sort of fallen between the cracks. Today, I want to tell you about two cases where individuals found themselves in limbo, so to speak.
The first case is that of Éric Aubé, one of my friends, who recently contacted me to tell me his story. Éric and I served together as warrant officers with the 52nd Field Ambulance. He told me that he had participated in Operation Cavalier in 1992 and that, although he was held hostage for 22 days, everything went well and he was safe and sound. However, after he was injured for the first time in 24 years of service, he was shown the door. Éric hurt himself while going through the obstacle course.
This story illustrates the issues reservists face when they injure themselves in training. As they are not on a mission, they are not considered to be regular force members. They often receive no compensation, or are given compensation that does not take into account their job outside the armed forces.
Let's take the example of a police officer who, when available, works in the reserve force. Let's say they suffer a permanent injury during training that prevents them from working not only as a military member in the reserve force, but also as a police officer. They lose both sources of income, and receive no compensation from their civilian job. They lose an income that can be fairly significant. It is not uncommon for individuals to serve in the reserve force even if they earn one third of their civilian income, simply because they like serving. Those people are penalized if they injure themselves while on reserve duty, since they are not compensated for the loss of their civilian income.
The second case I would like to tell you about and get your comments on took place while I was an officer cadet. We had a twin course provided in English. Although both groups were competitive, no one wanted anyone from the other group to get hurt. Unfortunately, one day during a training session, a young man who was barely 20 years old and had been in the armed forces for only 4 weeks, jumped over a wall and fell head first. He became a paraplegic. That young officer cadet probably would have earned a substantial income after a certain number of years. After that accident, he was unlikely to be gainfully employed over the next 45 years, even if he received rehabilitation services. What kind of compensation could be provided to that officer cadet who was probably earning the same wages as I was, $1,300 a month? That humble income we were receiving was barely above the poverty line at the time.
I would like to hear your comments on those two cases and to see whether something should be done to remedy those kinds of issues, which are fairly frequent.
That does wrap up Mr. Lizon's time, and we have ended the questions.
I would ask something on behalf of the committee. We're not going to get into it today, but we really would appreciate any comment you send along regarding an ongoing issue that obviously is still with us after several years, and that is the transition, DND to Veterans Affairs. We understand there are still some difficulties in the transition, and we get the sense today that there's probably a lot more that could be done in that area. If you would send along any thoughts you might have, we would appreciate it and will include that with the information.
I want to thank you very much on behalf of the committee. We appreciate your presentations. They are very helpful.
We are going to deal with a motion in a minute, but we'll say farewell and thank you to our witnesses, and then suspend for a moment.