STANDING COMMITTEE ON NATIONAL DEFENCE AND VETERANS AFFAIRS

COMITÉ PERMANENT DE LA DÉFENSE NATIONALE ET DES ANCIENS COMBATTANTS

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Wednesday, January 28, 1998

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[English]

The Chairman (Mr. Robert Bertrand (Pontiac—Gatineau—Labelle, Lib.)): Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to welcome you to the second portion of our meeting.

I want to remind you of the way we are operating. We have one person so far on the list who wants to make a brief presentation. We will have questions and comments after presentation by the committee members. After that's done the floor is open to anyone who would like to come forward and offer an opinion.

I would ask the members to identify themselves and their ridings.

Mr. David Price (Compton—Stanstead, PC): I'm from Compton—Stanstead, the southern part of Quebec.

Mr. Art Hanger (Calgary Northeast, Ref.): I'm the Reform Party defence critic.

Mr. John Richardson (Perth—Middlesex, Lib.): I'm a member of the committee and parliamentary secretary to the Minister of National Defence.

Mr. David Pratt (Nepean—Carleton, Lib.): I'm the member of Parliament for Nepean—Carleton, just outside of Ottawa.

Mrs. Judi Longfield (Whitby—Ajax, Lib.): I represent the Ontario riding of Whitby—Ajax, which is just east of metropolitan Toronto.

Mr. Bob Wood (Nipissing, Lib.): I represent the riding of Nipissing, which takes in the city of North Bay. I'm vice-chairman of the committee.

The Chairman: My riding is Pontiac—Gatineau—Labelle in Quebec.

Our first presenter is Sergeant Duke.

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Sergeant T. Duke (A Company, Third Battalion, Princess Patricia Canadian Light Infantry): I would like to thank you for letting me come to vent up here for a little while. The last time I did that was with Justice Létourneau a couple of years ago.

My name is Sergeant Duke. I'm with A Company, Para, Third Battalion, Princess Patricia Canadian Light Infantry. I'm also a member of the disbanded Canadian Airborne Regiment, 2 Commando. I wasn't in Somalia and my conduct sheet is spotless, but I was crapped on by the Liberal government along with 780 other good men and I've been in a bad mood for the last three years.

Originally I was asked to come up here and talk about a letter to the editor that I wrote back in November about a subject that is prominent around here, and that's pay. I had two concerns when I wrote that letter, and I'm going to expand on one concern because I see it's probably going to happen here as it seems always to happen.

The first concern is that there seems to be a misconception or a lack of knowledge among civilians in general, but also civilians in the government and civilians who work for NDHQ. There is a big difference between people you see up here in uniform and the 65,000 people or so who are in the Canadian Forces.

There are people at one end of the spectrum, just like me, whose only function or only training that we do is combat training. There are people at the other end of the spectrum, 90% of whose career is made up of doing a civilian type of job. It's true that we're all in uniform. We're all subject to the Code of Service discipline; we're all subject to the National Defence Act; and we're all subject to unlimited liability. That's a term that I guess is supposed to tell us that things like Dieppe and Gallipoli can still happen. Yet our actual job and our function is 100% different from each other's.

In a lot of cases it seems as if the government and people at the top of NDHQ fail to recognize this. I can use dozens of examples in things like equipment that we continually get.

As infantrymen, combat soldiers, we have certain pieces of equipment for which we're the primary users. We're the heaviest users of this piece of equipment. At the other end of the spectrum, you'll get people who, at best, could be called very casual users of this equipment, or complete non-users. The government fails to recognize this, and when they test equipment for us, they'll take ten people. They'll have nine casual users or non-users testing this equipment and one primary user testing it. By the time we get the equipment at our end, we hold it up and look at it and say, yes, the tail has really wagged the dog on this one, as usual—and we throw it out.

People at the top fail to recognize that there is a big difference in people who are employed in the Canadian Forces. We all wear the uniform, but there's a lot of difference.

When you say you are going to go out and do a survey or look at the 65,000 people in the Canadian Forces, that's like saying you're going to go out and do a survey in this town of 65,000 people. That's how many different people you can find in the Canadian Forces in different jobs. This misconception keeps cropping up.

It gets to the second concern that I have and the reason why I wrote the letter. There was a female member who I think was trying to mention it earlier. There is a program the federal government seems to be running called the pay comparability program. I wrote a letter to the editor when Art Eggleton was in the paper talking about this program.

Apparently it's where the government is going to look at the jobs the Canadian military do and they're going to compare these to jobs in the civil service and make sure our pay is comparable. As soon as somebody says they're going to compare the job I do to a civilian job, that immediately validates my first concern, that there are people who don't have any idea of the differences in jobs in the Canadian military.

To go on about the program, I'll explain to you what I do as a combat infantry soldier, how I wrote it in the letter.

I'm a combat infantryman in the Canadian Forces. I'm not a dental technician or a librarian or a postal clerk or any of the other civilian types of trades. I'm not trying to say one person is more important than the other person, or one person works harder than the other person, or one person deserves more money or anything else than the other person. I'm just trying to say there are different types of jobs and people with different concerns.

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The types of training I've received in the military are things such as field craft, patrolling, jungle warfare, winter warfare, demolition, mountaineering, parachuting. I'm a qualified demolitions instructor. As a senior NCO I'm also qualified to instruct on every small-arms weapon in the Canadian Armed Forces from the pistol through to grenades and all sorts of machine-guns, right up to anti-tank rockets.

I've been to Yugoslavia twice. While I was over there I was shot at, I had weapons pointed at me, I had my life threatened. I fed refugees. I worked in the mud.

Back here, in-country—you've heard this before—I can be made to work twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, without one penny of overtime. I can come into work on Monday and be told I'm going away for three months on Friday and I have nothing to say about it. That's my job, and I accept that.

However, people say they are going to compare my wage to a civilian's. Well, I have ten years of on-the-job experience. I can tell you right now I still make almost $15,000 a year less than a rookie RCMP officer his first day on the job after he has completed his probationary training.

I don't know how anybody can compare what I do, and with other people in the military do, with civilian jobs. If people at the top knew what we do, they wouldn't come up with programs where they think they are going to be comparing us with someone.

My primary point, or what I would like to summarize to you, is that when you're looking at the Canadian Armed Forces, you're not looking at a small special-interest group. You're looking at a cross-section of society. If you don't look at each individual group and their concerns...

For example, day care is not one of my concerns, not to me as an infantry soldier. I'm in charge of seven young fire-pissers, and day care and working hours are the last things on their minds. In fact, I have young guys who have been in the battalion only for a couple of months, and they are asking me when they are going to get bugged out in the middle of the night, just for the fun of it.

There are different concerns for different people. You have to pay attention to the group you're talking to and who it is you're listening to.

A good example, just to narrow it down to a piece of equipment, is the rucksack. That's one of my big concerns. A rucksack is what I carry on my back. I carry my life in that. I stuff my world into it. I jump out of a plane with it, and I'm living out of it for two and three weeks at a time. Right now in the Canadian Forces, I'm using a rucksack that has a frame on it that the United States Army discarded in 1964. The reason I'm doing that is that the last rucksack we got, back about eight years ago, had a frame made out of coat-hangers. It's unusable by paratroopers and most infantry. The reason we got that rucksack is that the Canadians Forces take ten people to test it; it takes nine non-users to test this rucksack, and one user, and that's what they come out with.

The Chairman: Sergeant, could we have a copy of the notes you read from, please, for the clerk?

Is there anybody else who would like to make a statement?

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Mrs. Wendy Lee (Individual Presentaiton): This is completely different.

I live in the military housing, the PMQs. My husband is gone for most of the year. I am in that PMQ with our two small children. Last May, two weeks after he was on his QL5 course in Borden, our basement started pushing up water through the floor. On any given day there was between one and eight inches of water in my basement. Everything was on pallets, but it didn't matter; once you have eight inches of water in your basement, it's a swimming pool.

The base health man came over to my house, and on his report, dated June 20, I believe it was, he remarked that the house was uninhabitable and not up to code. Even without the water problem it was not up to code. I figured this would give me and my two children somewhere else to live.

I took the letter up to housing and they laughed at me. They said, “We don't have to listen to you. This letter means nothing. We don't have to listen to the military; we're completely separate”.

The garrison surgeon also provided me with a copy of the Alberta Health Act and the renters' code, which I also took up to the CFHA office. They once again laughed at me and said, “Ha, ha, we don't have to pay attention to that. That's provincial. We're federal”.

I had a baby who was born two months premature. I paid to have the water in the basement tested. They could not positively identify it as sewage, but it was definitely contaminated; with what they couldn't tell me. They made me live in that house for four months.

I have a severe allergy to mould. My son has a severe allergy to mould, which is all documented through the doctors and everything else.

That same summer there were two or three fires on the base, or people who needed to be moved quickly, and there seemed to be PMQs quick. I could sit on my back doorstep at night and count six or eight empty PMQs, but I wasn't allowed to have any of them until sometime in August, when they decided, well, maybe we'll give her one.

I don't understand.

This has put my eldest child with respiratory problems at risk. He spent most of his time outside. It put my health at risk, and my newborn baby. My husband was gone and I was left to deal with it. I did have support from his unit. He was with 1 Service Battalion at the time, but in between—he is now with 1ASG—that support stopped. The minute he went from 1 Service to 1ASG, it stopped dead.

In August I was given four options: I could live in the house with the water; I could live on the economy, which they knew we couldn't afford with two children... They showed me a house that hadn't been renovated. It was very old and it would have taken four months to renovate, so I would still have had to live in the other house until then. We were at the house that I'm now living in now, which is much bigger than my old house but comes with an extra cost of $205 a month. They say, well, you take what you're given or go live on the economy.

We had bills like any other normal family does and I was forced to take out a loan, which I don't feel I should have had to do. That problem was not mine. At one point they almost came out and accused me of drilling holes in my basement floor.

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The first thing they did when the situation started, which was two weeks after my husband left, is they came and put a sump pump in the basement. You have to realize that this water was being pushed up through the floor. Everyday I would go into my basement and there would be four or five new holes pushing up water. At first the water was clean. Actually, I have pictures, if you'd like to see them.

When they came to put in the sump pump there were witnesses to the conversation that the sump pump would not work unless weeping tiles were placed all the way around the house. But CFHA only authorized two 20-foot trenches in my basement. They took all of my belongings from the basement and put them outside for two nights, and it rained both nights. So what hadn't been wet then was now.

I went downstairs the night after the sump pump was put in to put laundry on, and guess what? I hit the bottom floor and, sploosh, there was another two inches of water.

It gets better. The second thing they did was to authorize a whole yard and a half of dirt to be placed around my house so that the run-off would go onto the sidewalk. What they forgot was that the water was being pushed up through the floor. I have a post-secondary education, and I know there are two ways water can be pushed up through a cement floor. Either you have a natural spring under your house or there is a sewage backup somewhere. It need not be under your house. It could be anywhere. I guess the cement in my house was thin enough that it was able to push through.

On their third attempt to try to fix the problem they drilled more holes in my basement floor. They were going to come in with a drill and drill more holes in the basement floor so that the water that was being pushed up would have somewhere to be pushed down. At one point they actually accused me of doing it myself. I have two small children. I'm sorry, but I don't have the time or the energy...nor do I care to go down into my basement to drill holes in the floor. I would need to be severely medicated if that was what was happening.

After they had me in this corner and we were forced to take a hefty loan, which I don't think I should have had to take because it was not my fault... If CFHA had been able to recognize the problem and deal with it quickly and efficiently from the start, if they had seen the severity of it, that it was a real problem and not just some whiny wife who didn't like where she was living and wanted a bigger house, this could have been taken care of very easily. I phoned Canadian Tire myself and said, look, this is what's happening in my basement. They told me I needed this, this, this and this. I took it to my husband's officer, who sent it up the line. We never heard anything back from them.

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The health inspector warned me about doing laundry. He said, make sure it's low tide; there is a major risk of electrical shock if the water is high. He made a mark on my furnace—I think I have a picture of that—of where the water had actually been about eight inches high.

Our family is out of pocket now about $12,000. I don't know if any of you can afford to lose $12,000 and carry on with your lives. It's taken a great toll on our family life, on our marriage, on everything. We lost a third of our belongings. Everything is gone.

It was suggested to us to contact a lawyer, so I sat down one day and started phoning lawyers. No one wants to touch it. I don't know why. Probably because it has something to do with the military. Everybody tells me that CFHA is not affiliated with the military. But then why do we pay our rent? Why does our rent come off the member's pay cheque?

When we first signed for the house, we signed a lease. We got a 10% reduction in our house for a leak. The townsite never explained the extent of the leak, that it would be a swimming pool.

I was also told on more than one occasion from housing that they were not going to move me, period. My husband's officers went up to housing to see if they could get me other accommodations, and they were also told no by Glenn Davidson.

The Alberta renters act says that we have the right to have the roof, foundation, exterior cladding of walls, windows, and doors maintained in waterproof, windproof and weatherproof condition, and walls, ceilings, windows and floors maintained in good repair and free from major cracks and crevices. I took that up to CFHA and again I was laughed at.

Other than going through the military, that's the only course of action I have.

I was alone with the kids. I had to, out of my own pocket, fly in my relatives, my sister and my mother, to help me move from one house to another. I don't know if this is happening anywhere else.

It's pretty sad when I can get help from one unit but the next unit that comes in says, we don't want to talk to you. All they told me was, wait till your husband gets home, wait till your husband gets home, wait till your husband gets home. My husband got home. I waited for a month and then I said, okay, give me back the file.

I have a file at home that's two inches thick of every phone conversation, every memo that was sent, pictures, the independent labs that I hired to take the water samples to tell me what was in them.

It's just a sad state of affairs that these houses that CFHA now are responsible for...don't want to take responsibility for them. They don't want to keep them up.

I have a burst pipe in my basement. On Sunday night a pipe burst in my basement. I phoned CFHA first thing on Monday morning. What is today, Wednesday? I've heard from nobody. So I've done no laundry since last Saturday, as a matter of fact, and I have two small kids plus a husband who needs a clean uniform at night. Where do I go with that? I am so frustrated I could just scream.

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Everybody I talk to has a different story, or they take it and they twist it. It's the things that aren't necessarily worth money to you. Paul wasn't here to see his son's first pair of shoes thrown out, to see my wedding dress thrown out, all his toolboxes and tools—he's a mechanic—gone. It's not necessarily the monetary thing that matters.

Did you want to see these pictures?

The Chairman: Yes, you can bring them up.

Mr. Hanger, I believe you had a question.

Mr. Art Hanger: I do have questions.

Thank you, Wendy, for sharing that story and your experiences with us. I can appreciate that it would be very frustrating. I don't think I would want to live in that house, to be honest with you, just from what you've told me.

I am curious about the loss of your personal items. I gather that's the $12,000 you're speaking of. When a complaint like this is filed, what are the normal channels one would take to have it addressed?

Mrs. Wendy Lee: There is a special form it has to be done up on, and it has to go up through the chain of command to Ottawa, and I assume the JAG in Ottawa.

Mr. Art Hanger: This is just for a basement that is leaking and where there is a loss of goods; is that what you are saying?

Mrs. Wendy Lee: No, I'm out of that house now.

Mr. Art Hanger: I know, but you filed a complaint.

Mr. Paul Lee (Individual Presentation): I'm her husband, sir. I was told through my channels that it's a claim against the crown. When all this was happening, she was told she had to put in a claim against the crown. But they canoed around, no, you go up that river for a while, and then we'll shut you up, put you up that stream for a bit. Then they said no, when I came home they would deal with it and put in a claim against the crown. That's been done around and jerked around, and they said, okay, now you have to put on some form 59-1, CFAOs. So I hunt and search, and find out there is no such form, 59-1 CFAOs. Needless to say, I go into the CFHA, rip a strip off them, they turn around and rip a strip off me. You know, I'd rather drink gasoline...no, I can't say that.

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Mrs. Wendy Lee: No, don't.

Mr. Paul Lee: Anyhow, these forms that they're saying have to be filled out are now finally on their way up, I guess, to Ottawa, on a claim against the crown. Other than that, I can put in a redress of a grievance if I don't like their means or their answer. But other than that, sir, we're told to come and share our story with you people.

Mrs. Wendy Lee: My problem with that is why, last May, when this started, or June, July, August, September, October, November, December, January, why couldn't one officer have told us or me that that's the route we had to take?

Mr. Art Hanger: I guess I have to understand the process, first of all. I just want to clarify it in my own mind, so that I know exactly what should be done and maybe isn't being done. The point is, did anybody come after you filed a claim, or at any time when you had voiced your concern, to inspect the situation? Who came to inspect it?

Mrs. Wendy Lee: The house?

Mr. Art Hanger: Yes.

Mrs. Wendy Lee: The pre-med tech.

Mr. Art Hanger: I'm sorry?

Mrs. Wendy Lee: Pre-med tech.

Mr. Art Hanger: Preventive medicine, medical?

Mr. Paul Lee: Medical. Preventive medicine technician.

Mrs. Wendy Lee: That's what they're called, the pre-med.

Mr. Art Hanger: So you had concerns about the contaminants. That's why they inspected it.

Mrs. Wendy Lee: Yes.

Mr. Art Hanger: Didn't anyone from CFHA come and look at it?

Mrs. Wendy Lee: Oh yes, occasionally, when they felt like it. After they saw that it was a definite problem, that's when they started trying all these silly little things that they did and said they were doing their best. Well, you're putting dirt around my house and the water is coming up through the floors.

On approximately June 20, or June 25—I'm sorry, I don't have that piece of paper here with me tonight—the preventive medicine techs... It went to the garrison surgeon from him, and they declared that the house I was living in was uninhabitable. And I lived in that house until August 15.

Mr. Art Hanger: Okay. I wonder if you could explain this in simple terms for me, because I'm having a hard time grasping it. Maybe it's just that I'm getting older and I can't really twig to all these things quickly.

What I want to know is this. You had a problem with CFHA because you were renting a PMQ that was supposed to be administered and maintained by this organization.

Mrs. Wendy Lee: Yes, sir.

Mr. Art Hanger: Is there a clear route you must go to get this issue looked after? There must be some sort of a directive given to you when you rent the house, saying this is what you do if you have a complaint.

Mrs. Wendy Lee: No. Oh, I understand. Sorry, I didn't understand you. Yes, you just phone them and they come over, and then...

Mr. Art Hanger: Just phone them. But the response you were getting was not satisfactory. They never came out and looked at it. They never said they were going to fix it.

Mrs. Wendy Lee: No. It got to the point where they wouldn't even answer my calls.

Mr. Art Hanger: Okay.

Mr. Paul Lee: They say they have seven days to answer a call, sir. Right now, the little pipes in the basement I could fix myself, but I don't own it; I'm renting it.

Mrs. Wendy Lee: It's been four days.

Mr. Paul Lee: So why should I go and fix their house, when all this other stuff has happened in the past? So I'm not about to help them out.

Mr. Art Hanger: Okay.

Mr. Paul Lee: So they have seven days to come and fix this pipe. If they had come and fixed it yesterday, or the day before, they wouldn't have the problem they're going to have when they come to fix the pipe.

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Mr. Art Hanger: Is this a common occurrence, that some of these issues haven't been addressed?

Mr. Paul Lee: A lot of people have that problem.

Mr. Art Hanger: All right. First of all, tell me where your house is.

Mr. Paul Lee: The old home is Lancaster Park, sir. The one with the leak is in Lancaster Park.

Mr. Art Hanger: Lancaster Park. We were all in a house today that had a big crack in the wall and somebody filled it with something.

Mrs. Wendy Lee: Sir, the water was coming up through my floor.

Mr. Art Hanger: Yes, I'm aware of that. I'm just trying to determine from you when these problems arise, and it sounds like they are plentiful. The process is breaking down, obviously, and not addressing your concerns.

If the dwelling you're in isn't satisfactory, then you probably shouldn't be in it. Is there someone living in that place right now?

Mrs. Wendy Lee: No.

Mr. Art Hanger: Is it condemned?

Mrs. Wendy Lee: Yes.

Corporal W. Leonard (Individual Presentation): Sir, it's not the process you find out. It's not whether or not you're going to get your house repaired. Everybody in this room has stories like this; they're very plentiful. Some are equal to, worse than, or less than Wendy's, but they're all devastating as you live there.

You could have Bob Villa come to your house and repair it, it doesn't matter. The point is, these are 50-year-old houses that were built very quickly in order to house an army that was mobilizing, a very large army. They're not suitable for us to live in.

Mr. Art Hanger: Right. I'm aware.

Cpl W. Leonard: And there are lots of quarters like that. I would say more than the majority of quarters are just structures that we live in.

If this comment that Wendy made today had not been made, it would be a fair bet to say that next summer, when postings start up again, someone would be moving back into that house, with very little being done to it, other than we'll clean it, make it smell good, and by the way, you get a 10% discount.

Mr. Art Hanger: Thank you.

Mrs. Wendy Lee: Sir, to this day they still refuse to say that house is condemned. At one point they had a basement specialist come in. It was a duplex, and we went into the other side of the duplex to see if the same thing was happening there. But it wasn't. It was a two-inch crack in the foundation right through the whole floor. But there is a family living in there now.

Mr. Art Hanger: Suffering the same kinds of problems.

Mrs. Wendy Lee: I don't know.

Mr. Art Hanger: We were told today that something like 15% of the houses right at this moment are uninhabitable.

Mrs. Wendy Lee: Yes.

Mr. Art Hanger: If they are uninhabitable and they're all built around the same time and still have many of the same problems, the rest of them must be pretty much in the same boat.

Mrs. Wendy Lee: Yes. The plumbing sucks. All the electrical these days has three prongs, but when you go to plug in your vacuum all the electrical outlets only have two prongs. There's no ground. We have to pay for it if we want something else, if we want to be able to plug in the vacuum properly without pulling out the ground. We pay rent for this. I paid rent in a house full of contaminated...I don't know what.

Mr. Art Hanger: How much do you pay?

Mrs. Wendy Lee: I paid $350 a month for three and a half months that I lived in there. It was going to be taken of.

There was a recent letter written by Lieutenant-Colonel Parker that I received in the mail, giving CFHA a glowing report. I just wanted to throw up. It said that by doing these little things—the sump pump, the dirt around the house, and drilling more holes—they had done all they could to try to please this woman.

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Mr. Art Hanger: I wonder if you could do something else for me, and I know there may be other questions here. Describe this agency, CFHA, for me. How separate from the military is it?

Mr. Paul Lee: About that much, sir.

A voice: It's a civilian organization that took over the base housing. All of these houses used to be looked after by the military.

Mr. Art Hanger: Thank you.

Mr. David Pratt: Mr. Chair, I have a point of order. I can't hear a lot of what's being said back there when folks are making comments. If the witnesses would get a bit closer to the mike...it is very difficult to hear.

The Chairman: Art, did you have any more questions?

Mr. Art Hanger: No.

The Chairman: Wendy, you were mentioning that your house is a duplex?

Mrs. Wendy Lee: The old house, sir, or the new one?

The Chairman: The old house.

Mrs. Wendy Lee: Yes.

The Chairman: Your neighbour's basement wasn't affected at all.

Mr. Paul Lee: Not at that time, sir.

Mrs. Wendy Lee: No, it did not have water in it, but it did have a two-inch crack right through the foundation from one end to the other, and there are people living in that house.

When they suggested drilling more holes in my basement floor so that the water would have somewhere to go down once it came up, I said, “I assume you have a grade 8 education. If you take a cheese grater and throw it in the sink, what does it do? Does it sink or does it float? One morning I'm going to come down here to do laundry and there's going to be an extra eight inches of basement. I'm going to break my ankle and sue your butt”. That's when they started...

The next step, if I don't get some resolution from this quickly, is that it's going to the media. I have video. I have pictures. I have done nothing wrong and it's been almost a year. It's taken a toll financially and physically on our family, and nobody wants to take responsibility for it. CFHA? It's not their problem. 1ASG? It's not their problem. 1 Service Battalion? Well, Paul is not with them any more. So where does that leave me? It leaves me $12,000 in debt.

The Chairman: When the problem first arose, you mentioned that you stored some of your belongings outside—

Mrs. Wendy Lee: No, I didn't. The 1 Service Battalion came and did it for me.

The Chairman: Were you able to collect from your private insurer, or did you have private insurance?

Mrs. Wendy Lee: Yes, we did have private insurance and it was for $1,000.

Mr. Paul Lee: You can't get flood insurance in Canada, sir, and your basement is only worth $1,500.

Mrs. Wendy Lee: That's if it backs up with sewage or your hot water tank explodes.

Mr. David Pratt: I have a more general question, and that is whether or not there is anyone here from the CFHA.

The question I would like to ask—I don't know if anyone is even prepared to venture a guess, and it may be a dangerous thing to do under the circumstances, but I'd be interested in knowing, based on the PMQ housing stock that's out there, what percentage of it would pass the provincial housing inspection.

[Editor's Note: Laughter from the audience]

Mr. David Pratt: I think I have my answer.

Corporal M.L. Fleck (Individual Presentation): Can I make one comment? My unit is LFWA.

The PMQs in Calgary could not be passed over for low-rental housing. That was one of the considerations when all of the people were moved up to Edmonton. They thought, oh well, all of these wonderful PMQs can be re-used. They couldn't pass any type of inspection whatsoever. That's the same problem.

I don't live in them, so I have no right to speak, but I know this did happen in Calgary. I can definitely relate and sympathize.

Mr. David Pratt: Was there any news coverage about that at the time?

Cpl M.L. Fleck: Never. You would never see anything like that in the news.

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Mrs. Wendy Lee: Even the plumbing in these houses... When I do dishes, I pull the plug out of the sink and the water comes up in the other sink. They are so old you can do nothing with the plumbing. It takes 20 minutes for the bathtub to drain. I can't even get hot water up to the top floor of my house. If you try phoning to get someone over there, they want to do the quickest fix they can in the cheapest way. Nine out of ten times you're just frustrated, as I am right now.

Mr. Bob Wood: Wendy, is it in your present house where you are having these problems now?

Mrs. Wendy Lee: Yes.

Mr. Bob Wood: That's where you moved and paid the extra $205.

Mrs. Wendy Lee: Yes.

Mr. Bob Wood: Wow.

Mrs. J. Summers (Individual Presentation): My name is Mrs. Summers. I live up in Lancaster Park.

The gentleman asked about the PMQs in Calgary. I don't know if it was in the Calgary Herald or the Sun or the Edmonton newspaper, but there was a big article about the amount of renovations they had to do on a lot of those PMQs. They are now renting those PMQs for from $1,000 to $1,200 a month.

The second point I have to make is about CFHA. I myself just moved from Griesbach up to Lancaster Park. My rent did increase, but I have a much bigger house. However, when I moved in I was told the only fixing up CFHA will do to my house is security, health, and safety. If anything else has to be done in that house, don't call them. They won't do it. It's up to you.

They offered me and I got a month's free rent, moving into my house. It's going to cost me more than that just to paint the place and get it all done up.

So it's not worth it. It is for me because I have three kids. I needed the extra space, and I needed to be closer. We had one income. Now we have two incomes. We couldn't afford a second vehicle. Driving back and forth to Griesbach was just killing us on gas and stuff like that. So we moved up.

It was a good move for us. I haven't had the problems she's had, but as you said, if you talk to anybody in this place, there will be at least one major problem with CFHA. If you go to them, they will now tell you it's safety, health, or security, and that's it.

Mr. Art Hanger: I'm looking at the photographs you took, just to get clear in my mind what you had to go through. All these tarpaulins covering the equipment or furniture—I don't know what you had there—I assume those are your goods and they were placed out on the lawn like that.

Mrs. Wendy Lee: Those were the contents of my basement the night before they came to put the sump pump in.

Mr. Art Hanger: It rained for two days while this stuff was sitting out here. It looks as if it filled up most of your backyard.

Mrs. Wendy Lee: Yes.

I have lived on five bases. When we move into a new PMQ, if we have a basement, the first thing anybody can tell you is to put your belongings on pallets, because when spring comes you don't know what will come through those walls. It could be an inch, it could be a puddle; nobody knows. So 99% of everything in my basement was up on pallets; and the water got high enough, as you can see in those pictures, that the pallets didn't matter.

Mr. Art Hanger: I know this isn't going to be a consolation to you, but criminals in this country live one heck a lot better than that. They are building them $250,000 houses so they can be more comfortable in their leisure time and have a nice place to stay.

Mrs. Wendy Lee: I'm frustrated, because there was a health concern there. It's proven for me and my son. My baby was born two months premature. She was living in this. People were constantly coming and going. Even when I moved into my new house...I guess I had been in there about a month, and every now and then I would have that smell and I would find a box I had missed and I would throw it out. I came down one morning and I could smell the smell but I couldn't find the box I had missed.

• 2155

Mr. Art Hanger: What is the place you're living in right now like?

Mrs. Wendy Lee: It's fine, except for the plumbing and the electrical work.

Anyway, I pulled back the carpet in the house I'm living in now, and just from general traffic from the basement in the old house it was growing mould, spores, penicillin, whatever you want to call it. I had to phone my friend and say come and get this out of my house. It was making my five-year-old sick.

This frustration for me has been going on since last May. Paul wasn't here. He doesn't have a clue how I was treated, how I was spoken to. I've lived on five bases, and this is the worst one I've ever lived on, ever. I've never been treated—

Mr. Art Hanger: I do have one other question. Who ultimately oversees all of this on the base?

Colonel J. Selbie (Commander, 1 Area Support Group, Edmonton Garrison): Mr. Hanger and Mr. Chairman, to answer the question posed by Mr. Pratt, the Canadian Forces Housing Agency is a special operating agency of the Department of National Defence. The local manager was here this afternoon. I do not believe she is present here this evening, so I am not in a position to reply on her behalf.

About who is responsible on the garrison side, I am the one. My name is Selbie. I am responsible for any action or inaction taken by people belonging to 1ASG.

Mr. Art Hanger: How would a young lady here, living in that condition, with her husband away, cope with this situation? Were you aware of it?

Col J. Selbie: Sir, I personally was not aware of the problem until this evening. It would appear some members of my staff were. I'm not in a position to describe their actions in detail. However, obviously it is incumbent on me to do so once we return to work tomorrow.

Mr. Art Hanger: With all the breakdown that is going on...and I can understand there are these old structures, but obviously you are well aware of the condition, I would have to suggest, probably all the way back to Ottawa—

Mrs. Wendy Lee: I don't understand why they couldn't move me when this was going on. It felt personal to me. I asked Mrs. Davidson and was told no. My husband's officers at the time went up there on my behalf and were told no, when you could sit on my back porch and count 10 empty PMQs.

Then in mid-August, all of a sudden they have two for me to look at. Well, they knew I couldn't afford one of them. As for the other one, I walked in there and said, “Mr. Black, I'm sorry, but there is something dead in this house”. He laughed and said no, there wasn't. I went down into the basement and I explained to Captain Haines how I felt. I felt cornered. My husband was not here.

They did find something dead in the house. When the previous owners left in March, they unplugged a freezer full of meat and left it there. We went in there in August.

This house would have had to be renovated. He said it would have taken about four months. So I still would have had to live in the house with the contaminated water.

• 2200

Mr. Art Hanger: I don't know how you put up with it, to be honest with you. I would not have done it.

Mrs. Wendy Lee: Sir, the stress level is incredible.

Mr. Art Hanger: I understand that you didn't have a lot of recourse.

Mrs. Wendy Lee: I'm tired of being treated as a nonentity because my husband is away. I am the one who maintains that house. I am the one who looks after the kids. I am the one who mows the lawn. I am the one who fixes the taps when they're broken, when he is gone. Then it's as if I'm just a whining wife who doesn't want the house. I liked the house I was living in. There is no way I wanted to move.

The Chairman: Colonel, I have a few questions for you once Wendy is done.

Mr. David Pratt: Mr. Chair, I have a point of order. I don't think any of us would want to go through what Mrs. Lee has gone through over the last nine months, but with all due respect, I don't think we are in a position to solve her problems tonight. We have pictures here and we have a full explanation on the record. I think if we get an undertaking from the colonel to look into the matter and perhaps report the facts of that back at some point... There are a lot of people who have waited a fair length of time at this point to have their say, and I'd like to hear from a cross-section of the people who are in this room.

Again, Mrs. Lee, I sympathize with your situation, but I don't think we're going to solve it here tonight in terms of what you've been through. We have to hit quite a few spots over the next few days—we've already hit quite a few in the last few days—and we'd like to hear from as many people as possible.

Mrs. Wendy Lee: Sorry. I do have more paperwork, memos, from higher up to higher down about the houses and stuff if you need it. I left it at home. I can get it if you want it photocopied. Tonight I just brought what I thought was pertinent.

The Chairman: Colonel, can we have your assurance that this will be looked into?

Col J. Selbie: Mr. Chairman, I give you that undertaking, yes.

The Chairman: I am sure that if you need any additional information, Wendy will be very happy to give you all the necessary papers.

Is that satisfactory?

Mr. Art Hanger: I don't agree with that. I'm sorry, Mr. Chairman. I think that to just leave it at that point... We'd better get a darned good clear picture of what's wrong with the housing in this place so that we can report it loud and clear—not that it's going to be handled in an undertaking by the colonel, and I'm sure he's well aware of what the problems are. We'd better get a good, clear picture of it. I think we should see any paperwork, and if there's another problem with that place or any other place there, we should have it recorded, pure and simple. I don't know why we should avoid it.

[Editor's Note: Applause from the audience]

Mr. Art Hanger: You said you had another problem there, Wendy.

Mrs. Wendy Lee: Yes, sir.

Mr. Art Hanger: What's your other problem?

Mrs. Wendy Lee: Oh, nothing. Sorry.

Mrs. Rebecca Muise (Individual Presentation): Can I make one comment about the housing? My name is Rebecca Muise. My husband is a private in the infantry.

As for the housing, if somebody ends up fixing it, it's going to cost us who are lower down—we don't have the money to pay for it—about $200 or $300 more a month to live in these places. That's our other concern, too. They renovate them, and then it costs us more just to live there. Right now, we're paying for something that isn't suitable to live in.

I have three children, too. My daughter is afraid to walk in the bathroom, because when you walk on the floor, it sinks. There are all kinds of concerns about the housing.

Mrs. Wendy Lee: I personally walked into Mrs. Muise's house one evening and got smacked in the face with the smell of natural gas. I went home and got my carbon monoxide tester and we plugged it in, and it started humming right away. There was a big leak.

Mrs. Rebecca Muise: Yes. The fridge and the stove are older than I am. They're 25 years old.

Mrs. Wendy Lee: So we phoned housing, and the gentleman who was working at housing that night couldn't help us. I thought, okay, Mrs. Muise is having headaches and nausea and three small children are living in this house, one who has allergies and major health concerns. I thought, I'm going to phone the fire department and they will come over and turn off the gas for the night. Well, they had someone over there pretty darn quick to turn off the gas. Then they complained to me because they had to hire two contractors instead of one to come to the house, as if it's my fault the gas was leaking out of the stove.

• 2205

There are all kinds of concerns. Everything is so old it's not even worth fixing.

Corporal I.A. Hanif (Individual Presentation): Sir, I'm with 1ASG. Along that line, my complaint is with CFHA. They have to have some people in there who give a damn.

I had a problem with a gas leak in my PMQ. It was so strong you could smell it from myself to yourself, sir. It took CFHA two hours to respond. I had cleared out of my row house at the time, cleared my whole section out, by the time the fire department showed up and they found it was a gas leak. The pilot light had gone out or something like that. It took two hours for CFHA to send somebody down to look at it.

My biggest concern is to have somebody in there who gives a damn.

Thank you, sir.

Mrs. Rebecca Muise: I have one other comment. They replaced my old stove with one that was five years younger. The guy who brought in the new stove to me said if my husband were higher up in rank we could get a brand-new stove, but they saved that for CFHA. It's for them. They get that luxury of choosing and picking what they want. We get stuck with something that's taken from somebody else's PMQ, one that's not lived in right now. That doesn't make sense to me. It doesn't seem fair.

When I first moved into my house, the fridge electrocuted me. It was one time only, but it did happen. The fridge is so old I don't even know the make. I've never heard of it. I asked him, is there anything I can do about getting a new fridge? He said to me, no, the only way you can is if this fridge is completely dead. I said, well, look at how old it is. The door seal doesn't even hold shut all the time. Sometimes it slips open.

It's just ridiculous. To get anything done you have to fight for it. You don't even want to waste your time doing it. There's no point in it. You waste your time doing it and they basically tell you, well, you know, there's nothing we can do; this is the best we can do. They look around and they get things to fix it five years younger. That doesn't make sense. It should be enough newer that you don't have to concern yourself that there's going to be a gas leak or it's going to electrocute you. There shouldn't be that kind of concern, especially when you have children in the house.

I have more concerns.

Mr. Art Hanger: Thanks.

Col J. Selbie: Mr. Chairman, I would simply acknowledge once again the undertaking I have given the committee to provide you with an accounting of the actions of 1ASG personnel in the case of Mrs. Lee. There are obviously other persons here who would like to speak to you. Having given you that undertaking, may I return to my course?

The Chairman: Okay.

Next.

Corporal K.D. Atkinson (Individual Presentation): My name is Corporal Atkinson.

On leaky basements, I moved in on August 13. On the second day it rained and everything in my whole basement was soaked.

My problem isn't quite as large as hers.

Every time you phone anybody you get a door slammed in your face. I have phoned Health and Welfare Canada. To me, water in my basement is a big health concern. You have mould. You have mildew. Health and Welfare Canada send you right back to the base, to the pre-med techs. The pre-med techs aren't allowed to take down any drywall to check for any mould or mildew. Everywhere you go, you have a door slammed right in your face.

There is supposedly a leaky basement list, and somebody in Ottawa is supposed to be deciding on whether or not the funds are going to be provided to fix the basements. The only thing is nobody will tell you who is deciding this or when a decision will be made.

• 2210

The Chairman: Thank you.

Cpl W. Leonard: Good evening, Mr. Chairman. This is so good I had to come back for a second round. I spoke earlier this afternoon in reference to rates of PMQs that are different throughout the country.

Before I continue, I want to direct a question to Mr. Pratt, because he did respond.

I'm sorry, Mr. Pratt, I did not hear you. I'm ashamed, because I turtled and I didn't ask you to speak up. I was a bit nervous speaking in front of my peers, as I've never had the opportunity to do this before.

If you remember what I said with reference to the PMQ charges today, I'll leave it at that. I will ask you to just make that comment again so I can properly respond to it. You had a solution, I think.

Mr. David Pratt: Yes. One of the suggestions that has come up in terms of addressing the housing issue from a cost standpoint is that perhaps, given the salaries of people, especially in the lower ranks, privates and corporals, we should be looking at setting rents for PMQs at basically a percentage of the salary, around 30%, that type of thing, and in a lump sum. This would involve getting rid of, for instance, the housing allowance so that we could equalize things across the board. You're all getting the same rates of pay, but a corporal in Gagetown would be paying for housing essentially the same as, let's say, a corporal in Esquimalt.

At the time I asked whether you thought that was an appropriate route to go.

I think I was picking up that, based on the information you provided earlier today, people in Esquimalt are paying, let's say for a four-bedroom PMQ, $712.

Cpl W. Leonard: Correct.

Mr. David Pratt: It's hardly fair when someone in Gagetown is paying $427 with utilities, if my notes are right.

Cpl W. Leonard: Close enough.

Mr. David Pratt: That was the comment I made and that was what I was looking for.

I should mention as well that we've heard a lot of different suggestions and proposals. The situation that exists right now, at least from what I can gather, is a bit of a mess when you factor in the triple A, the accommodation assistance allowance, and in some cases you've got a deemed taxable benefit that actually increases your taxable income. The triple A is taxable, so you're not getting the full benefit. You throw in the CMHC calculations on that and it just becomes an absolute morass of regulations and rules that don't appear to be doing the job they're intended to do, which is to provide some equalization in the whole process.

Cpl W. Leonard. Okay. It sounds good.

CMHC is half the problem. Before this posting in Gagetown I lived on the economy, I had a house, but prior to that I was in Germany, living in PMQs there. When I came back to Canada in 1993, I was in PMQs for a short period of time. I don't think CMHC had anything to do with rates at that time. Am I correct? I think CMHC came into play somewhere around 1994 or 1995. I'm not sure on that. Whenever it did come into play, it just ruined everything by comparing us to local economies.

My father said to me, “You're going to Alberta, son. Chip up”. I'm a New Brunswick boy. He said I was going to make more money out here, that taxes were cheaper, etc. When I got out here, of course, my PMQ rate was more. I didn't make more money in the end. I've lost money, really, if you want to look at dollars and cents, what I have to spend per pay period.

When I asked about it, they told me it was because CMHC are the ones who dictate what you pay where you live.

• 2215

I told that to my father. My father said, well, you're a soldier; you're on an army base; you're in a military house; whether you're in Gagetown, Esquimalt, or Timbuktu doesn't matter, you should be paying the same rate.

If you could come up with some kind of plan such that we are paying the same rate, maybe based on rank—I don't know; there might be some other issues there—fine. Go back to Germany. There are probably a lot of post-Germany syndrome people still in the forces today. It has been six years since I was there, and I've been disillusioned with the military ever since I got back. Why? In Germany I was treated—not just I; all of us—quite decently, because we had benefits that covered cost of living; substantial benefits, like foreign service pay. This is a $600-a-month allowance. This is excellent. I made $10,000 extra a year, tax-free, in Germany. I come back to Canada and wham, there's $10,000 of my pay. I'm still adjusting to that pay loss.

You talk about the soldier in Esquimalt. Well, hey, he gets triple A. Do you know what triple A is for a family with two kids? It's $160 before taxes. That figure I gave you today, compared with the same PMQ in Shiloh, Manitoba... If you get posted to Esquimalt at my pay rate of $3,058 gross a month, with triple A accounted for, I lose $267.14 per month, out of pocket.

Thanks for the triple A, but it's not doing anything for those guys in Esquimalt, and it's certainly not doing anything for us here, because we don't get triple A in Edmonton. Yet I'm still paying more.

Something certainly has to be done about that. You can mention it to the government when you submit your findings. I know it's an important point of contention for me and a lot of my colleagues. Basic spending dollars are gone.

I'm finished with that point. If the chairman and everyone else are happy with that, I can move on.

I'm a professional soldier, and I really enjoy my job. It's not just the members; it's the wives, and the husbands if the female member is in and she has a supporting husband at home. They make it all happen.

We celebrate Remembrance Day every year, and we do that for the people who died in uniform in both world wars. I don't want to sound patriotic, but they left a legacy behind for men and women in uniform and their families around the world; and I don't know if the government is aware of the kind of legacy they left behind. Do you know what the maple leaf and the uniform mean in places such as Europe and around the world? It's unbelievable.

I'm going to give you a personal example of some of my proudest moments while I was serving in the military patrol competition in northern Italy in 1989. Out of 75 international teams from NATO countries and abroad, one four-man team was sent from 4 Canadian Mechanized Brigade, and I was a member of that team. We came in 9th out of the 75 teams. It was pretty good for a bunch of six guys. We were proud.

When it was over and they called our name up for our award, the local people of this town, Chiesa In Valmalenco, in northern Italy, you should have heard the response when they said “Canadian Mechanized...”. They didn't get the rest of the stuff. They just heard “Canadian” and they gave us a standing ovation. They cheered at the top of their lungs because we were Canadian soldiers. Families came over to us with their kids and wanted pictures of Canadian soldiers with their kids.

Shortly thereafter the American teams were called—there were probably five or six participating in that particular event, and they did quite poorly, I might add; they more or less bummed out, with 55th place—and there were 50% boos in the crowd. I was a bit embarrassed about that. But the fact is they love us.

That was one spot.

• 2220

I went to Nijmegen, Holland, and did the march. Because we liberated that country, the Canadian contingent always gets the respect of marching last. Our forefathers set a legacy for the men and women in uniform to the present day. I don't know if the government is aware of this, because of the way they're treating us—like crap. When that march was over, I was so proud I couldn't believe it. We're marching, we're the last ones on the march. Little Dutch girls came out and gave the soldiers tulips. Little boys gave us Heineken beer and we drank it on the march and it was good. Proud moments. It was really fun.

I met my wife in Germany. She's a German national. She would have loved to be here tonight. She's a fighter, but she shies away from these kinds of things because she doesn't feel that she's part of Canada, because she's still a German citizen.

When we got back to Gagetown in 1993, we had some problems with PMQs, but we got over them. CE was in control, and I must admit they did a fine job compared to what CFHA is doing now, which is nothing but fuck-arsing around and giving people a hard time.

I came here in October. I was on a UN posting in the Golan Heights in July when I found I was posted to Edmonton. Excellent, I thought, because I knew the base was relocated from Calgary to Edmonton. I figured, they're moving the whole brigade up here; they're going to be building brand-new PMQs and it's going to be good. I was quite happy and I kept calling back to the unit from Israel asking if the PMQs had been built yet. Every time I called they said, no, they're not built yet; they've built some single quarters. I was saying, geez, they're not going to build new PMQs; what's going on?—my date's coming up, where am I going to live when I get out there?

So I had to worry about where I was going to live. I had no confirmation. Finally I got a message from Edmonton.

This is how the process works, and I just want to go over how it works so you will know.

The message came: PMQ so-and-so, such-and-such address. Do you accept or do you not accept?

I have to accept this PMQ from 5,000 kilometres away without even seeing it, in the hopes that it's in good condition. It's only respectful that they're going to give me good living accommodations. I accepted it. Of course when I got here it was a different story. It was not acceptable to move into.

This is where we get back to the problems that Wendy and some of the other folks have to deal with with CFHA.

I have paperwork here. I'll throw that down, because I don't need it any more.

Basically, when I came here, on October 15 I arrived in Edmonton. My furniture and effects are on the truck. I have one hour to do my march into the PMQ, hope it's acceptable, and then tell the moving truck to get over there and unload the furniture.

I went to my PMQ that I had accepted via message. I got down to that PMQ, and as soon as we walked into it we discovered rotten wood underneath the kitchen sink. The cabinets were all rotted and mildewed. There were old, stained carpets throughout. Yes, they painted the PMQ; they put new lino on the kitchen floor. I'll give them that, and with some of their exhibits they proved that. Well, they didn't have to prove it to me. I knew they had done it. Fair enough. But the point is that the PMQ wasn't acceptable to move into on that day.

I had one hour to make a choice. Do I take it or don't I take it?

The moment I told the gal up at CFHA that I rejected the PMQ for these reasons, we weren't friends any more. She got pissed off. She wouldn't talk to me. She asked what I was going to do, so I said, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to drive down to Griesbach; I'm going to take a drive around and I'm going to write down the addresses of all the vacant PMQs that look liveable. That's just what I did, because I had one hour.

F and E called me and said if I didn't get an address for the moving truck within one hour, by 0900 hours, I'd be charged $40 an hour as a storage fee for my F and E. Well, I couldn't afford that, so I had to get going.

I picked out ten suitable PMQs that were vacant. I brought these addresses back to CFHA, to the same lady. Well, that didn't impress her one bit. I thought I was doing her a frigging favour. She didn't have to go searching through her computer. That just upset her more.

• 2225

Anyway, basically it was no, you can't have this one; no, you can't have that one; no, no, no. It was a waste of time.

She wanted to control the conversation and the whole situation, so she picked out two PMQs off her computer. She informed me, “Corporal Leonard, one of these PMQs is ready for immediate occupancy; all the work has been done to it; new this, new that, etc. The other one I'm offering you is in as-is condition; nothing has been done to it, nor will anything be done to it, except for health and safety”.

Off I went with the two keys. I get down to the one that has been repaired, only to find, yes, it has had new windows installed, but for some strange reason not one damned window would close. The contractor put the windows in improperly, so you could not lock the windows. It's October 15. I'm in Alberta. We've been lucky this year, but I know the winters usually are pretty cold. So we had no time to mess around with that house.

So I went over to the other one. The other one I accepted in as-is condition. I had no choice. Of course the lady at housing said I did have a choice; I could go downtown and buy a house. Thank you, but I don't have $115,000 or whatever it is a house costs out here.

That's where all the problems started. I took the house in as-is condition. I don't know if you're aware of it, but on their housing agreements now, on the first page of every standard Canadian Forces Housing Agency agreement, paragraph (3)... I'll read it:

The premises are to be in good repair on possession, except for those deficiencies noted on the married quarters deficiency report “march-ins”.

—i.e., I have to get down there in five minutes, or within that hour, do my march-in by myself, and if I find cracks or whatever, that's something extra—

The Crown will make repairs as necessary to the main fabric of the dwelling (e.g., permanent elements of the building, common areas, public areas and all technical areas) during the rental period.

I do believe Wendy's permanent concrete basement does fall under those criteria. But if you notice what they are doing now to CYA themselves is they will write in handwriting on the contract “As is; safety and health only”. On the second page is the same thing: just above my signature block, “As is; safety and health only”.

Of course when I inquired about, in my particular case, old windows where the wind was just blowing through in my duplex—the other half of the duplex has new windows that are insulated properly... When I inquired about getting new windows, or a rent reduction because I'm paying more in heat, etc., she obviously had me, because she just went back to the agreement and said, “You signed a piece of paper that says `As is; health and safety only', Mr. Leonard, and that's it; we're not going to do anything for you”.

That's where the paperwork went in. I put in a memo to my deputy commanding officer, Captain Crocker of HQ6 SIGS. He was supportive. He forwarded the memo of my grievance to CFHA. CFHA responded. The manager is Gwen Davidson. She responded with a letter here back to my DCO, back down through the chain of command, basically stating that because I rejected a PMQ I had accepted and they had put money into, I was shit out of luck. Basically that's what she says here.

So not only do I not qualify for this new program of a month free of rent if you accept it in as-is condition, because she says I wasn't a relocate... I didn't relocate because I didn't actually move in. I never actually moved in because it wasn't acceptable. As well, she says here in paragraph (2):

It's no secret the Griesbach site will eventually be disposed of and it would not be prudent to replace windows in a house that will eventually be disposed of.

Excuse me, but I have to live there now with my two children. I was damn well hoping they would have new PMQs on this base when I got here. They never did. I'm out of luck.

• 2230

So I went through the chain, but I have to go back through my chain of command again, because obviously this memo is not acceptable.

So I still have recourse—don't get me wrong—but the point I'm making is basically that we're Canadian soldiers, we made Canada recognized in the world when we took Vimy Ridge, when we did this and we did that, when our forefathers did this for us, and we still do this as ambassadors for Canada, in Bosnia, in the Golan Heights, wherever the heck we go, only to come back home and be treated like...

I'm glad Mr. Hanger, who just left the room, made the comment comparing our living accommodations to those of the criminals in this country.

It's a well-known fact that it costs the taxpayer probably $50,000-plus to feed and house those fellows in prison and give them their colour TV and whatever the heck else. Yet you have guys defending your country and acting as ambassadors for this country, spreading the goodwill of Canada, and we're being treated like substandard citizens.

That's the only thing I have to say. If you have anything, I'll try to...

The Chairman: Thank you very much for your comments, Corporal. I guess you were quite clear and precise in your presentation.

Cpl W. Leonard: I take it you don't want a copy of my memo from—

The Chairman: Yes, please, if you would bring it up to the clerk.

Cpl W. Leonard: Okay. Thank you.

Mrs. B.C. Northmore (Individual Presentation): My name is Christine Northmore. I don't have any housing problems. I'm sorry, everybody. I'm here to talk about our extended health and dental benefits.

First of all, with the extended dental benefit, for a lot of the procedures there has to be prior approval and it's subsidized to only so much percentage. I know of three cases now where a root canal, which is only 50% covered, has been approved and undertaken. Part-way through the procedure complications arise. The procedure is extended. It ends up costing more, and the patient is left paying that bill out of pocket. That's a real hardship, because we're looking at about $700 for that particular procedure.

Second, with our medical benefits, the time lapse between the submission of bills and the time when we get our cheques reimbursed is way too long and does create a real hardship on some families where there are chronic medical conditions that require some fairly expensive medications.

In some of the associations, like the Alberta Teachers' Association, when they go in for prescriptions, for instance, the insurance company is billed directly by the pharmacist. They have 100% coverage, however. In other companies where it's just percentages, again the insurance company is billed directly and the consumer pays their percentage portion on site. So I'd like to see maybe some investigation into those things.

My other concern is about family resource centres on the base. I work as a volunteer at our particular centre, and I've been hooking up with other FRCs on the Internet. A survey had gone out around this base about the FRC and what services they would like to see, and so forth. So I'd like to see, basically, a new mandate for the FRC, responding more to the needs of the community.

An example of this is that there was concern, people wanted some financial advice. So they brought in speakers to talk about RRSPs and investment funds. That wasn't it at all. The whole point was that they wanted to know how to go from pay cheque to pay cheque.

I believe now we even have to have a food bank operating on the base, and that's absolutely tragic for the job that our uniformed members do and for the way their families are treated.

The other thing I wanted to talk about was some support for families when the uniformed members are called away quickly, as happened with the ice storm.

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Now, I understand there is something in place for members who are gone for over a month. However, I am not aware of it, whether it's a breakdown in communication or I don't know where to go for the information, but that is a problem. I do know that when I have gone to my husband's unit or whatever you guys call it, base orderly room or whatever, for information—particularly, it was about the dental plan—they were very quick to respond. I had it within three days. It was also two years out of date.

I think there has to be some sort of integration for the families, with support from the FRC and the units, and maybe some method of feedback so that they're really listening. As I say, when I need some financial advice, I don't need to know about RRIFs, I need to know how to make it to the next pay cheque and to feed my family nutritious meals.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

I was given a list of people who would like to come to the microphone. I will go immediately to Mr. Mike Douglas, and then after that I would proceed down the list. Once the list is done, if anybody else wants to come up and say a few words, they will be most welcome.

Mr. Douglas.

Mr. Mike J. Douglas (Individual Presentation): Thank you very much. I have a quick addendum to the PMQ issue they were talking about.

I've been here seven years and I've been here during the transition from air base to army base. During the time when there were very few people here except for us helicopter weenies, they did a survey of the PMQs. The people who were doing them told us outright that they were all going to get plowed to the ground because they weren't fit to live in. When the guy came to do our place, he said, oh yes, they're all getting plowed down because nobody wants to live in these dumps. Guess what?

The reason I'm here is to talk a little bit about something aside from housing. I've recently received a medical release under the National Defence Act. The reason is that I didn't fulfil the requirements of the universality of service principle. If you don't know that principle, it says we all have to be at a certain level of physical fitness to be able to accomplish a certain amount of tasks above and beyond what's required in our own occupation.

My occupation was flight engineer, as air crew on helicopters. The injuries I got were caused by a helicopter crash back in 1991 in Burk's Falls, Ontario, but it ended up that I couldn't recover to the point of satisfying the universality of service principle.

To give you a little more detail on the injuries I did in fact suffer so I can back up what I've seen—because I also want to talk about the way the forces treat their wounded as well as this universality of service principle—the crash I was in on October 10, 1991, killed one of the crew members. I and the other crew member who got out sustained very serious injuries, to the point where I got medivacked to the Toronto General Hospital. I spent six weeks there in initial recovery and I had some 23 hours of surgery done on me. After that, I was brought back here to Edmonton and they figured I'd get better, but they were wrong. They had to send me back to NDMC for another three months before I was fit to actually get back up and around again.

I went back to work in January 1992, and around December 1992 they figured I was well enough to start taking out some of the hardware store that they had put into my leg. Unfortunately, three months after that I developed a chronic bone infection, which made it necessary for them to go into my leg. I spent pretty close to another two years in hospital getting my leg put back together again.

The thing of note that I'd like to bring up on the medical services the Canadian Forces used to have, which they don't seem to have any more, is that the military medical people took fantastic care of me. The civilians downtown were ready to lop my leg off, but Dr. Rob Banner up here at the base looked into some outside stuff through his U.S. Navy contacts and started me on a program that the people downtown didn't even understand, involving hyperbaric oxygen, intravenous antibiotics and aggressive surgery. He ended up saving my leg. I'm still walking around on it. That was all done through the military people.

I fail to understand why we're taking our military medical system apart and giving it back to the civvies. They used to be pretty good at taking care of us, contrary to what most of the stories say.

After that, I ended up going back to flying status in October 1995 and I went back to being a flight engineer instructor at the OTU up here on the base. They gave me a permanent medical category in January 1997, giving me a medical review board hearing in July and telling me I was out in six months—thank you for coming, see you later—even though I'd flown 1,200 hours since the accident. Go figure.

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During that time I've been involved personally in many field exercises which I wasn't supposed to be fit enough to do. I was involved in the operation in Winnipeg, several search-and-rescue operations, and some of the other sneak-and-peek stuff we do from time to time. But I'm not fit to do my job.

I would like to address some of the support I got over that period. The medical support, which I've already touched on, was phenomenal. The thing I found was lacking was some of the administrative support we got.

Immediately after our crash, if you remember your dates correctly, about three weeks after, a Hercules went down in Alert, Northwest Territories. A lot of the attention that would be focused on people who crashed in an airplane was automatically shifted to a much bigger and more visible problem. We were actually pretty much forgotten. The resources they have for dealing with this are very limited, and they had to focus them on the people up at Boxtop 322. That's understandable. But the thing I noticed was that for post-traumatic kinds of deals like that, which they are starting to get into now, critical stress management and what not for victims and families weren't even touched on for us.

I got interviewed by the flight safety officer. That was pretty comforting. My wife had one of my peers sent to accompany her for the time she was in the hospital with me. Nobody interviewed her. Nobody tried to give her any kind of counselling or anything. In the period of the second part of my recovery we were abandoned on our own. They just sent me off to Halifax and they left her in the house by herself. She had her own health problems, but it was just, well, whatever; it's not that important.

The people on the base actually did us a lot of good in the beginning. I came back from NDMC and I found a nice little wheelchair ramp had been built up to my door. They built it to the back door, which really wasn't a lot of good, because I had to get through four feet of snow to get to it, but the thought was there, and I appreciated that.

We had another problem there. One of the operations I had involved getting plastic surgery done. They took a muscle out of my back and put it into my leg, because I had lost a bunch of it. It came back as a bill for plastic surgery. It went to the base hospital and they sent it to me. They said, this is yours: $3,000 for a private room because I had an infection in my leg. I said, oh no, it's for plastic surgery. It took a face-to-face confrontation between my squadron administrative officer and the hospital administrative officer because he didn't want to pay for some master corporal “to get a private room for a nose job in Toronto”. That's exactly what he said. It took a shouting match between those officers to sort that out. That was somewhat stressful at the time.

The big thing I found too was the attitude I had during the period of my recovery, to get back to full operational status, which I ended up doing. I must mention in there that from 1995 to 1997 I was deemed fit to do a UN tour, even though I never went because I was a standby. Although I'm not fit to do my job, I was on 48-hour notice to move to go to Haiti. I have named all the other operations I've done. I've also been on field exercises I'm not fit to do.

The thing I got was the feedback from my peers. This is something that seems to me to come even more from upstairs. They thought I was nuts. They said, look at your leg; you are going to get some honking medical pension; why don't you take the money and run?

The fact that this attitude was there bothers me. They said, you know, you're just going to get yourself better and Ottawa is going to screw you, and they are going to screw you as fast as they can. I said, no, they wouldn't do that; they have to see I've tried really hard to get back here. I'm an instructor and I've done all this stuff; they are not going to get rid of me. They said, oh yes, you watch. And they were right. That scares me.

Because of that, it makes me wonder about some of the values we have. I've looked at a lot of people, especially in the air force, who have made big deals out of themselves and who were in fact injured. I guess everybody knows the story of Douglas Bader, the legless World War II ace. He wouldn't have made it with USP. He can't run ten miles with a rucksack on his back; but he ended up being a great ace of World War II.

I have a couple of recommendations. Maybe we could start looking at things we can apply to help people through situations like this one I went through: stress management counselling administered quickly to people who have been through situations like this, and not just for the people who are directly involved but their families. My wife had next to no support, as I said.

We should also have a system in place that would allow survivors of traumatic things, such as airplane crashes, to be able to get in contact soon with somebody else who has been involved. People who have been in crashes tend to talk to other people who have been there. I found that out personally through one of the Hercules guys who was here. Whit didn't talk too much about the big crash he was in at Wainright. Then when he came back to join the reserves one day he started talking to me, and it was like a dam breaking open. He could talk to me because I had been there.

We should also have a standard policy for commanding officers to take care of their own people who are in this situation, an ongoing thing. I've been in 408 Squadron for seven years, and I'm now on my seventh commanding officer. I could name them all for you, if you want. That's a pretty quick turnover. There's not a lot of continuity there.

The guy I'm going to for help now could be of the opinion, hey, it didn't happen on my watch. So what deal is it to him?

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That's pretty much it. I just wanted to touch on those things: the big deal about the forces taking care of their wounded and this universality of service principle, which is a great tool to supplement the FRP in getting us down to our 60,000 people, but it's not really fair in its application.

Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Douglas.

Are there any questions or comments? No? I will now call on Master Warrant Officer Trudel.

Master Warrant Officer J.G. Trudel (Individual Presentation): I put my name first when I first came here. I was going to talk to you about CFHA, but it's been pretty well bashed in.

The only thing I have to say about the subject is that when we first went over to CFHA my understanding was that the money that we were paying in our PMQs, instead of going to the Treasury Board, was going to be reinvested into the PMQs. If we go on that premise, here on the base if we go with the 200 PMQs, where we pay $400 to $600, we're talking about from $80,000 to $100,000. In this city if you don't have to buy a piece of land, which costs you an arm and a leg, for $100,000 you can build a damn nice house. Well, every month you can build a brand-new PMQ. Yet we have to argue and fight and get substandard living.

I went in last week to get a PMQ for one of my corporals who's coming here from Comox and I was given two options. I went and had a look at one of the options that I was given. When I walked in, the stench of mildew was terrible. The food was still on the floor of the kitchen from the past occupants. That's what was offered. They said, “Well, you can have one month's rent”. Well, that's $400. The whole PMQ needed to be painted; it needed to be fumigated and cleaned.

I don't know if it's the administration or the CFHA on this base or the system itself, but something needs to be looked into, because there's definitely a big waste of money. We don't get any return for the amount of money that's being paid in the base by the PMQs, by the renters.

That's all I've got to say. Thank you.

The Chairman: Sergeant Damstrom.

Sergeant L. Damstrom (Individual Presentation): I'm with 1ASG replenishment company. I've been with the Canadian Armed Forces for 21 years.

Twenty years ago, when I was a private just joined up, the Canadian Forces decided to do the land trials with women in the field. I was one of the first volunteers to go out and say, hey, I'm young and foolish, I'll give this a shot and prove that we can do this. Well, the army came back after I'd done my medical and everything else and they told me I couldn't go because I was too small.

So over the course of the last twenty years I have gone everywhere the army has asked me to go. I have done everything, with no questions asked.

I am a single mother and my son is 15. When the time came for me to say, no, I can't do this at this time, meaning I couldn't come to the army because I'm a single parent...and knowing the requirements that the army has: you have to be deployable at any time. My background has told me that I am too small and I'm a female and I shouldn't be doing this.

Now we are in a situation where I am 20 years older. I am not as young as I used to be; I'm not as gung-ho as I used to be. I have a 15-year-old youngster who needs my time, and the army says, tough, you'll go anyway.

Now I agonize over my career or my family. At this stage of the game my family comes first.

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I feel an injustice has been done. I volunteered to do all these things, the UN tours, the extra time on courses, and I was available wherever, but the army said no, you can't go; you are female and you are a single parent; we'll send somebody else. Now, when I use my single-parent status as a reason not to go somewhere at this time—give me three years and my son will be gone, and then I can do what the army asks of me; I'll gladly go—they are telling me no, you either play the game this way or you get out.

Well, I'm at a stage in my life where I'm going to take the 20 years of good, hard training the military has given me, some of the best in the world, and I'm going to walk out into the private sector and be much happier. I won't have to worry about packing my son off somewhere with strangers, and I won't have to worry about going on a course. I won't have to worry about all these other things. But I think it's a shame the military has put so much time, effort, and money into my training and it's willing to let it go so easily. They have taken enough people who have a lot of background in different areas and they are deciding now it's time to cross-train air force support trades in the army, and army support trades in the air force, and nobody is getting anywhere.

I think we need to re-evaluate where we are going. A lot of good people are walking out the door. You are soon going to have a very old army here, or a very young army with no experience to lead these people, because the senior NCOs at my level aren't willing to play the game any more. We need more security. We need more faith. We give of ourselves for 20 years, and at the end the army tells us it doesn't matter any more. I don't think it's right.

My other point comes back to CFHA, and ASD, because it becomes the same thing. We have gone through alternate service delivery, which is what CFHA is. Technically, what they have done by contracting out to these organizations and these city agencies...the army is paying, and we, the renters, are paying for that alternate service delivery. We are getting poor, poor quality for our money. People are talking about alternate service delivery, and it's not doing anybody any good. CFHA, if you go down through the lines, and you've probably heard it all, is your prime example. This is what we have to look forward to in our army service.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

Next is Chief Warrant Officer T. Secretan.

Chief Warrant Officer T. Secretan (Individual Presentation): Good evening. I'm from 408 Tactical Helicopter Squadron. I want to talk in generalities for a minute.

We who wear the uniform are here for one reason and one reason only, and that is to enforce the will of the federal government. They send us; we go. We sign on the dotted line. They put us in harm's way constantly. We know that when we go.

What do we want in return? We want a decent wage for a good day of work. We want decent equipment. We want good training. If you cut out the training and you cut out the equipment, you are going to pay for it with lives at the far end.

When we are gone, doing our jobs, we want our families well taken care of. We don't want to worry about our families because we have to worry about our people. More and more, our job is worrying about what's going on at home and not doing what we are supposed to be doing.

Unless you take this up with the government and get them to understand that they are mistreating their people, the people who do the dirty work for them, you end up with this.

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There is no reason for this to be happening. The economy is good, and yet we're complaining here.

Ten years ago the armed forces did the job and shut their mouth. All these people here, and all the people who were here earlier today, are here because we are being mistreated at an alarming rate. You wouldn't have seen this ten years ago. You see it now. You look at the old faces and they're all going like this, heads going up and down, not back and forth.

Take this up. You can't mistreat us like this and expect us to continue doing the job you want.

And you cannot have a standing armed force of the numbers we have. It's too small.

Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

Corporal Lebeuf.

Corporal C.F. Lebeuf (Individual Presentation): I work at 1ASG...

[Editor's Note—Inaudible].

I have a few concerns about the health system in the military. A few times I've gone to the base hospital, because we are told to do so, and I believe as a Canadian I didn't get fair treatment.

For example, at my old unit we have what we call sick bays and we have to report to sick bay between 7.30 and 10 o'clock. If you want to see a doctor after these hours, you'd better be dead, or else they don't want to see you.

I reported after 12 o'clock, because in the position I was in I could not go before then. I needed a replacement as a cashier. When I finally went to the hospital, I was told that my actions were inappropriate and I shouldn't be there, and to go back to my work and come back the next morning.

As a Canadian, don't I have the right to see a doctor whenever I feel the need to see one?

I've gone on other occasions. About a year ago I had a fractured arm. I went to the hospital and I was told that all I had was a bad bruise on my arm. I went back a couple of weeks later and was told again that all it needed was time. At that time I had requested to get a bone scan, but I was told that because of budget cuts, bone scans cost too much, so I couldn't get one.

Six months after that, after going over and over again complaining about my arm, I went over again and I told the doctor, “If you're not sending me for a bone scan, get ready to give the invoice, because I'm going right now. Something is wrong with my arm. I cannot function. I need a bone scan”. So six months later they finally agreed to send me to a specialist for a bone scan, and I came back with a broken arm. There was a fracture that had been overlooked.

It has been about a year now and I still have pain in my arm. It's probably going to stay there for the rest of my life, because the military didn't want to spend the money on me to send me through the proper channels to make sure I was taken care of.

Is there anything in our near future to tell me that something will be looked after when I have...? Why don't I have the choice to see a civilian doctor of my choice? If the military doesn't want to look at me and spend the money that I need to be healthy, why can't I have the choice to see my own civilian doctor?

The Chairman: I may be wrong, but I was under the impression that you could see your family doctor.

Cpl C.F. Lebeuf: No.

The Chairman: You have to see a military doctor?

Cpl C.F. Lebeuf: Yes.

Sgt L. Damstrom: May I interject here for a minute? It's in the same circumstances.

Over the past few years I have had situations where I felt I was not getting the medical care I required. So I applied to the provincial health care plan to see if I could get extra insurance and medicare outside of the military system. If you are in the military, there is no way on God's green earth that they will even grant you outside medicare. You cannot get it if you are a military member.

• 2300

The Chairman: Well, it's something we will be looking into. We're very appreciative that you have brought it to our attention.

Mr. Hanger.

Mr. Art Hanger: You're examined by a military doctor. Is he a military doctor? Is there a military doctor on this base?

Cpl C.F. Lebeuf: Many of them.

Mr. Art Hanger: Okay. The procedure would be like that which any doctor would perform on a complaint from any patient. Were you x-rayed?

Cpl C.F. Lebeuf: You should be, yes.

Mr. Art Hanger: Were you?

Cpl C.F. Lebeuf: Yes, I was.

Mr. Art Hanger: And nothing was detected at that point?

Cpl C.F. Lebeuf: Not at that point.

Mr. Art Hanger: So what normally would be the procedure? Would you seek referral from the military doctor to a civilian doctor, a specialist?

Cpl C.F. Lebeuf: Yes, sir.

Mr. Art Hanger: That's what you were seeking.

Cpl C.F. Lebeuf: Which I did.

Mr. Art Hanger: And you were refused.

Cpl C.F. Lebeuf: Many times.

Mr. Art Hanger: Are there other such complaints of a similar nature, besides your own, that you know of?

Cpl C.F. Lebeuf: My husband had a broken bone. He got injured at work and went to the MIR. This was not at this base, it was at a previous base. He was x-rayed and was told everything was fine. He went back a few months later and found he actually had a broken bone in his finger. Now he can't use his finger properly, and he's a vehicle tech. He can't perform his job 100% because of—

Mr. Art Hanger: A broken finger.

Cpl C.F. Lebeuf: —something overlooked again by the military doctors.

Mr. Art Hanger: Common complaint? It seems to be somewhat of a common complaint.

Doctor.

Lieutenant-Commander Rod Brittain (Edmonton Garrison Surgeon): Good evening. I'm Lieutenant Commander Rod Brittain. I'm the garrison surgeon and you might call me the health care coordinator for the garrison here. I just arrived here in July.

Complaints with the health care system we provide are nothing new. Mistakes happen, and I admit it. Sometimes it's well meant; people will x-ray something and the radiologist will tell you it's normal, but as the lady knows, it will only show up on a bone scan. I fully acknowledge that mistakes happen. The doctors who do it are human themselves and they will make mistakes.

There is one thing I will encourage people to do. If you're not satisfied with something, if you have to put it on paper and send it to me, do it. But don't just go around complaining about it. Bring it to our attention and we will look at it. We will pay for second opinions and specialists and so on. Members aren't always aware of this; people in our medical system aren't always aware of this.

I will address some of the other things that have been brought up.

Members in the military system are not given provincial medicare under the Canada Health Act. Their health care is provided by the federal government, and therefore we do it ourselves.

The introduction of universality of service as applied to medical standards has led to a number of medical releases. I know, having come from an air force base, that it has really hit the air trades a lot and hard. I do acknowledge that.

In the medical services that we provide there are always two hands. This is something you may not be aware of. On the one hand, we try to do the best we can to look after our members. You've heard some members praise our system and other people say that we screwed up. And they're both right, because both happen. On the other hand, we are also the enforcers of standards given to us. The latest standard has been to use this universality of service. It has meant that if people can't do certain things, even if they don't do them on a normal workday basis, it can lead to their medical release. That is something you also should be aware of.

The point I'd like to make is that we don't always know what's going on out there. Sometimes people in our own chains don't tell people the right things. People have to be aware that if things aren't right they should come back. If you have to put it on paper and send it to me, do it, and we'll look into it. We can't fix everything. Sometimes after the fact it's too late to do things. We will acknowledge it when we've screwed up.

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Mr. Art Hanger: That brings up another point. This young lady obviously had a complaint. It was finally dealt with some time after the fact. She indicates she continues to suffer from whatever the problem may be with her arm, even though it probably has healed to some degree, at least the bone. Some of the pain persists. What recourse does she have at this time? She has stated and continues to state that this injury is continuing to act up right through her career. Would she be eligible for some sort of pension after she retires?

Lcdr Rod Brittain: Any member who has a medical problem would be entitled to a medical pension. The unfortunate thing is if it didn't happen in a special duty area... This is the problem we face as well. If the people have a medical problem that comes up but they are not in a special duty area, they have to retire to get the medical pension benefits.

This is a problem we face. We have some members who have developed medical problems within Canada and we're trying to get them extra benefits. If they can get the Veterans Affairs pension right away they can get stuff done for them, such as the building of these ramps. If they don't have that, we spend a lot of time running around and trying to find the money to get some people things like this.

To some extent I think that is a resource problem in our entire system. Everyone's budget has been cut. No one has a big pot of money set aside now for building ramps for handicapped members. Money just isn't there in big pots. Each unit doesn't have a pot of money to look after a disabled member. At the garrison hospital we don't have a big pot of money. We can access some money out of central funds in Ottawa.

About one of the things Colonel Leslie said, he said he was concerned with the money; cut down on the money given to the centre and give it to the fighting combat units, the ships, the air force. Part of that money in the centre goes for health care support. That's another thing I'm always concerned about.

Mr. Art Hanger: She suffers from a persistent irritation. I don't know what it is precisely. Only she could describe it. Obviously others here in the room do too. What recourse does any member have to have follow-up treatment and the like, and who makes the decision whether they get it or not?

Lcdr Rod Brittain: Because they don't have any provincial care they have to come into the MIRs to see us and we have to refer them out to the appropriate specialists. That is the step we have to do. If people aren't happy with the first opinion they get, they are entitled to a second one. We have to pay for that.

There are many things I hear in this story that I'm not happy with myself.

Cpl C.F. Lebeuf: When I was called by your base hospital to cancel an appointment for the third time—I was trying to see a specialist—I got a little upset and asked one of the staff why it was that for the third time they were cancelling my appointment. I was asked by the personnel of the base garrison hospital if I was dying.

I don't think this is proper. It doesn't matter. Yes, eventually I will die. But after the third time my appointment was cancelled when I was trying to seek some help from a specialist, I don't think this was an appropriate thing to ask me.

Lcdr Rod Brittain: No, this is fair. However, this brings me to a point of my own I would like to bring up. As with a lot of people who are trying to provide support services in the military now, we've had our numbers of personnel cut and our budgets cut and we're trying to do more with less. Throughout this fall we've had a shortage of doctors. We are trying to run our clinic with doctors borrowed from the brigade. Every second week they are pulled out on an exercise or something, stuff they have to do.

• 2310

For example, now a whole pile of doctors were taken out to go to Montreal. We were still trying to keep the clinic running and looking after people, but we had to cancel over 100 appointments in about a month and a half early in the fall because for a while we just didn't have the doctors to look after people.

Partially this is a resource problem. It's a problem you can fix with money. You channel money down and I can hire two doctors full time in the clinic. It would be continuity of care, which I see as a problem. We could address that better, and the doctors would know how we want to look after the patients and they would know the patients. It would be a much better system than it is.

We're working, trying to fix things that we can fix, but one of our problems is resources.

I think I speak for a lot of people who provide support services. You probably feel that in the orderly room yourself. You must feel you go over there on some days and the place is full of people.

Cpl C.F. Lebeuf: Yes, sir. But never would I tell you, “I will not fix your pay because I'm too busy right now” or “I don't care because I've got my pay”.

The Chairman: Excuse me for a minute. I believe Mr. Price had a comment.

Mr. David Price: Doctor, are you doing mostly medical work, or are you doing a lot of administrative work as it is now?

Lcdr Rod Brittain: I do mostly administrative work now.

Mr. David Price: That's unfortunate, isn't it?

Lcdr Rod Brittain: Yes.

Cpl K.D. Atkinson: I want to make a quick comment to—I'm sorry—the gentleman in the blue suit.

My husband just came back from Bosnia, a tour of six months. He came back early because he hurt his knee. They sent him to a specialist in St. Albert and they recommended a knee brace and then surgery. In two UN tours it's the second time he's hurt a knee. He went back to the hospital here. He was told he couldn't have the brace until he had seen his MO. This was after a specialist had told him he needed the brace.

I suspect that what this base needs is a standard policy that if a medical doctor tells somebody to go see a specialist, the specialist knows what the hell they're talking about and they should be doing what the specialist says.

Unfortunately, now my husband has to wait another full month before he even sees the brace. He's going to have surgery. He's off work, out of the field, whatever you want to call it, for a minimum of a year. He's categorized, which means he doesn't get promoted. He's at the bottom of the merit list again. He's got to start from scratch. This is the second time it's happened to him in a UN tour.

Nobody in Ottawa gives a shit.

What's got to happen is a policy has to come down that says when these guys see doctors, especially specialists, some male or female corporal, master corporal, whatever their rank is, doesn't have the authority to tell these people to wait until their MO comes back from her tour.

She was still over there. She sent him back here to see a specialist. A specialist is exactly that—a specialist, not just an MD.

Thank you.

The Chairman: Were you finished, Corporal?

Cpl C.F. Lebeuf: I'd like to move on to the next point.

My second point is that I moved here because the military called me away. Every time I turn around and I try to get some facilities for my children, I cannot find facilities in their language, which is French. I've got a five-year-old who still to this date doesn't speak French to me, and I've got a four-year-old who still doesn't speak French.

I'm not talking about the town of Edmonton, and this doesn't have anything to do with separatism or anything like that, but as a French Canadian in the military I would like to know if there is any way it could be considered, when it comes to dependants, to have a little bit more support as day care, French day care, French school.

My son has to travel for two hours a day to go to school because there's no French school around the base.

A survey was done about a year ago comparing the base of Moose Jaw to Bagotville to see what was the facility offered to the other language. It was proven that in Moose Jaw only 25% of the facilities were French, whereas in Bagotville 95% of the facilities were offered for the English community.

• 2315

I would like to know if something could be done about this. It's not for me, obviously—I can speak both languages—it's for my children. Can this be brought up somewhere?

The Chairman: Yes, that is one of the reasons we are here tonight: to hear all your complaints so we can take them back and try to act on them when we're back in Ottawa.

Cpl C.F. Lebeuf: Is this going to take 25 years?

The Chairman: I hope not. No, no. In the next three or four months we should have our report out. Our recommendations should be written up by then also.

Cpl C.F. Lebeuf: Thank you very much.

The Chairman: Merci.

Sergeant Sonia Robinson (Individual Presentation): I have a response to the lady's question about having French schools on the base. I'm on the school council here at the Griesbach school and have been an advocate for having French at our school here. It's now an Edmonton public school, and they also would like to see us have French in that school. But we do not have enough funding to have both an English and a French program going in there.

I would love to see you go in and speak with the principal there and let them know your views on that...and if anybody else had any views. Letting them know it's something that is of demand in our community would really help to get that going.

Just so you're aware of it, I know we used to have French immersion here, but my understanding is that was when they were being taken care of by the military, not by the Edmonton public school system.

Mrs. L. Pepiot (Individual Presentation): I have another comment on her concern.

You said your child travels two hours each day for schooling. I live in St. Albert, and there are at least three French immersion schools and one totally French school in St. Albert that you might want to check into. There's also a French school I know of in Castle Downs. I don't know where you live, but friends of ours have their children in a French school in Castle Downs, so you might want to check into that.

In St. Albert, Leo Nickerson Elementary School is a public school. It has a French immersion program starting in kindergarten. It's about 15 minutes from here to there. That might be an option.

The Chairman: Corporal Atkinson.

Cpl K.D. Atkinson: I will just touch on Sergeant Damstrom's point about babysitting. I myself was in the military for seven years. I got out for two. I just got back in. The reason I got out was absolutely not my decision at all. We had a six-week exercise, both I and my husband at the same time, and I asked to stay behind. This was the response to me; and I will read it:

I will not entertain this request. It is the individual's responsibility to secure child care. The member will have to entertain other options: friends, relatives, shared resources with other persons in the same situation. Ten days is plenty of time to resolve this issue.

Ten days to find somebody to watch my kids for six weeks, with no parental supervision at all?

I have the whole thing here. I actually did get out. My option was: give me your 30-day release and you can stay behind and work shift work, but other than that, you get on that bus. I don't have a babysitter. It was, you get on the bus or you give me your 30-day release. That was my answer.

I phoned my member of Parliament. He phoned me back and he said he took my case to the House of Commons. He said, to be quite frank, they don't give a fuck; they want you out; it's a numbers game; they do not care.

I think that is a very good issue to be bringing up.

• 2320

The Chairman: Thank you.

The next speaker is Captain Tremblay.

Captain C.L. Tremblay (Individual Presentation): Good evening. I'm Captain Carla Tremblay, and I'm from 15 Service Battalion, which is a reserve unit here in Edmonton.

I was asked to come and bring up some general reserve issues. When I'm done that, I'd like to turn my card over and put on my angry spouse hat as well, since my husband is a regular force member. So that's just a little warning of what's to follow.

First of all, the reserves do have some problems that are general. I have been in the reserves now since 1981. I have served in three different areas of Canada, in several units from Quebec out to the Pacific. In our unit particularly I'll be bringing up some problems, but these problems are pretty well generic to the reserves.

First of all, we have a difficulty with education equivalency. For instance, in my unit I have a corporal—promoted to corporal now, she was a private and we accelerated her promotion—lacking a finance course. This woman has a business degree from NAIT, which would be suitable to qualify her to be an officer. However, we cannot get approval to write off the course to quality her for corporal. There's some drastic inequity in this matter.

With regard also to education, there's a CFAO—and I don't have it at hand because I had short notice about this meeting tonight—that allows regular force members, if they're taking a course on their own time that is deemed to be beneficial to the forces, to be reimbursed for it. However, for reservists that same policy does not apply. For instance, if one of our cooks were to go out and obtain further upgrading as a cook, he couldn't be reimbursed for that.

With regard to summer training or any training with the reserves that is full time, our reservists still experience problems if someone wants to take a couple of career courses that are only offered during the summer. Hopefully they have sufficient vacation time from their employer to take these courses. With the combat service support trades, often the courses are six weeks or longer—Borden has tried to break them down—but many of our people can't go on these courses, or if they do, they risk losing their civilian jobs because their employer does not wish to keep their position open for six weeks to three months.

When a reservist is on class B, quite often there are situations where they're working in an equivalent job to a regular force job; however, the pay is not equivalent. During summer training, for instance, you will have regular force sergeants and reserve sergeants who are doing the same job, but there's not the same pay. There has recently been an increase to 85%, but is the reservist doing 85% of the work? Does someone come up to them and say, oh, you're a reservist, I therefore expect less of you in the way you manage your platoon?

Also, there are still several problems with the reserve pay system. Recently a new pay system has come in, the RPSR, and while that is helping to regulate the problems here in LFWA, we do have a serious problem with the way pay problems are resolved with the area pay office. There are incidents going back two, three or four years in which individuals are still trying to get pay problems resolved.

Regarding disability or illness, once again there seems to be a bit of an inequity. In this, I'll be using an example of my own.

Back in the summer of 1994 I was in Quebec. I went on an exercise, Noble Lion, to Gagetown. I became ill in the field, not injured but ill, and there was another individual who also became ill with the same problem. I was reservist; he was regular force. We were both medivacked back to Quebec City, to Valcartier. We were both in hospital for a sufficient amount of time, and we were both granted three weeks of sick leave.

• 2325

The regular force member had no problem being in the hospital and having his sick leave and going back to work. As a reservist, the moment I left the field my pay was cut off. I was not paid for the time I was in the military hospital and I was not paid for the three weeks of sick leave at my unit either. This inequity has also happened with several of my troops over the years.

For a reservist who wishes to transfer to the regular force, they've now come up with a component transfer program, which takes a lot of the hurdles away. Now, it's recognized that there are certain levels where an individual can transfer straight across instead of beginning the recruiting process as a person who walks in off the street. However, we've had one significant problem in our unit this fall. With these component transfers, there are categories in which they will say they need three cooks. So as a unit we prepare the paperwork for an individual who would like to transfer to the regular force, and before we get the paperwork down there within two weeks, the classification has been closed. No notice comes from the recruiting centre to allow the units to ensure the paperwork is in on time.

Those are just some of the reserve issues. Do you have any questions before I go on to the other ones?

The Chairman: No, I guess you can go to your second point.

Capt C.L. Tremblay: Okay, now I'll take off my military hat and put on my angry wife hat.

First of all, as a spouse subject to the whims of the military, I'm very angry at the way I get treated. On all the bases we've been on so far since we were married, when you try to get something when your husband's away you're treated like a second-class citizen. You're patted on the head and told, “There, there, dear, wait until your husband gets home”. This is not acceptable.

It happened to me recently when we changed our coverage. What had been GSMIP with one company had changed names when the company was changed. When I tried to get my new health care number from the orderly room, since I was going into hospital, I ran into some problems with that. My husband was away in Gagetown, so I walked into the orderly room and said, “Hi, I'm Mrs. Tremblay. Could you tell me what my number is so that I can at least get my benefits while in hospital?” “Well, I'm sorry, Mrs. Tremblay, we're busy right now. The troops are away, the clerks are away, we can't handle all this.” Okay. “Hi, I'm Captain Tremblay. I want to talk to the FINO right now.” Now I get the action. Most spouses can't do that.

What I'd like to see is some consideration given to having an ombudsman or an advocate somewhere on the base where spouses can bring their problems. A lot of problems that have been brought up here tonight were a surprise to some of the staff here on base. Well, they shouldn't be a surprise. The family resource centre doesn't have enough clout to walk into the base commander's office and say, “Sir, you've got people living in slums. You have people who aren't getting medically treated”. We need to have some ombudsman or some service like this for spouses so they can have action on their problems.

The other thing I'd like to bring up is that at one point we were posted to Quebec, a lovely province. However, for an anglophone walking into Quebec...things were in absolute turmoil for me and my husband. He fortunately is from Quebec. We got there on a Monday and he left for Gagetown on Thursday. In the meantime, speaking English only, I was not able to get any assistance from the family resource centre in handling the problems I had, such as sorting out telephones, driver's licences, insurance. This stuff wasn't available. When I went in with the problems I was told, “Gee, it sounds like you have some problems. We'll send you to the social worker.” Well, excuse me, I don't need the social worker to hook up my telephone.

Other than that, a small point is that we took possession of our house—because we weren't going to live in a PMQ; not a chance, not with that level of living—on, I believe, a Monday afternoon at 3 o'clock, and so we had the moving trucks come in on the Tuesday. Well, we had to fight like the dickens, first of all, not to be charged for the overnight storage and, secondly, not to be charged for the hotel for that evening. It was said, “You were able to have that house on that date, therefore any costs incurred from that date on are your responsibility.”

• 2330

There has to be some common sense on this issue as well, because we're not treating the families right.

I was also asked to bring up one point from a woman who is single and in the service. She mentioned to me that if a family with a husband and wife and a couple of children have a problem on a posting—if the husband, for instance, has an imposed restriction and the wife stays at home because there's some issue with her children—that's all well and good. However, if you're a single parent and you have problems with your children, you don't get to stay. All of you go, no matter what the problems are. You're posted out, and that's it.

Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

Captain Roach.

Captain B.P. Roach (Individual Presentation): Sir, I am Captain Roach, the garrison adjutant.

I'd like to start with a comment, if I could, to add to Mr. Hanger's comment on what prisoners get in this country. I served in a regiment where, three weeks before we came home, one of our members was shot and lost the use of his legs. It's a comment from him.

He wonders why someone like himself or even a soldier injured here in Canada during a flood or during an ice storm or while on training, or even a soldier who spent 20 years being a fine ambassador, as was said on the floor earlier, who didn't have the time to do this while he was serving his country—why do these people, on release, have to pay for their education, when, if they'd robbed a bank and gone to prison for the right amount of time, the taxpayer and the government would pay for the prisoner's university education?

There are fiscal realities, and we've been hearing a lot of personal realities. I think there's a recognition from those of us who are in uniform that these comments are going to go to the government for some action, and that's also going to require action from us to do the right thing. I've been a captain for a long time, which is not a bad thing, because I've spent a lot of time working with and for very capable senior NCOs and officers who have been trying to do the right thing, and they can't any more. They can't do the things we used to do to take care of the family, they can't do the things they used to do to take care of the soldiers, because everyone's concerned that doing the right thing is actually going to get them into some sort of trouble. Is it going to cost us too much? Is it going to pass the Globe and Mail test?

Can we stand up in the public eye and convince the public that it's the right thing to do to take soldiers on rear party, to go to Fort Saskatchewan, which is 45 minutes from here, to shovel the driveways for wives—and in some cases husbands—who are home with two or three kids or pregnant or working so they can make ends meet? What is wrong with doing that? What is wrong with our taking care of our families? Why can't we do this? Why do we have to pass this test? Is it easier for us to rip people off? Why are we fighting to do the right thing?

Thank you.

• 2335

Sergeant D.M. Thorlakson (Individual Presentation): Mr. Chairman, distinguished panel, my name is Sergeant Thorlakson. I am a reservist with the Loyal Edmonton Regiment.

My quality of life issue is attrition within the reserves, which I see as being the number one problem.

We're paying upwards of $20,000 to train these people who walk out the door within six months of completing that training. I see this as a problem because they're budgeted for 30 training days over an eight-month period. The reserve training year is from September until April. They've budgeted those 30 days to make ends meet. Basically it's a part-time job and during the summer you can be employed as full-time.

When I was a student I took full advantage of this. I was working six to seven days per month during the training year, making ends meet, going to reserve training all summer, and I graduated without any student loans. I was quite happy seeing that figure of $25,000 today, which is the average load.

My problem with the attrition is that we don't employ our reservists enough. They're budgeted only three and a half days per month to make ends meet. They come in; they're told they must attend all training. After that, they find out that they don't work all the time, like every week-end. As a result, they take another part-time job that is in direct conflict with this part-time job. Oddly enough, their other part-time job wonders, why do you have another part-time job when you're supposed to be working for me?

So these people come to be in terrible conflict, and as a result they leave the reserves.

They should be budgeted up to 60 days per year. Most probably would not even take advantage of that, but in my case if I'd been limited to 30 days when I was in school, I definitely would not be standing here today, sir.

The $20,000 that we waste on these recruits going through is just a travesty, because we employ them during the summer and within that first six-month period they're all walking out the door because we're not employing them.

That's my point, sir.

Captain Pruden (Individual Presentation): Excuse me, sir. I'm Captain Pruden. I'd like to respond to the last comment concerning the reserves.

I've had about 11 years of experience with the reserves. I find there are usually three types of people in the reserve world: the first are students; the second are underemployed or unemployed who take B and C class contracts; and the third are dedicated professionals who can balance jobs and family and other concerns with a full-time commitment for the reserve world.

My concern with attrition as I see it is especially true for the students, who find it very hard. They join the reserves to fit in with their school work, with their university work, with the training in the summer, and they also have to carry student loans to make ends meet while going to school. On top of that, I've seen some of them having one or two other part-time jobs to carry it through, and it makes it very difficult for them.

I was wondering if it would be possible to make a bursary for students who are involved in the reserves, something that would be going not directly to the student but, say, against the student loan, say at least $1,000 a year for somebody who is regularly parading while in school.

Also, the problem I see is that when they finish their school, they're fully trained, usually with three or four years of experience, and they might have to choose between different types of jobs. One of those jobs may exclude them from carrying on in their career as a part-time soldier. I'd like that to be considered.

Thank you, sir.

• 2340

Sergeant B.A. Deegan (Individual Presentation): Mr. Chairman, members, I'm also a reservist with the Loyal Edmonton Regiment. I just have a quick statement I would like to make.

My point is that right now there is no priority on support manning levels in the reserve units. There seems to be a misconception within the armed forces that it takes less time to administer the part-time soldiers, and that doesn't seem to be the case. A lot of the time with the part-time soldiers we have to do some of the administration of equipment for them because they can't go out and get it themselves during the week.

At this time our unit has a strength of 250 personnel, which is supplied by one full-time storeman and one part-time storeman. In a regular force infantry formation of that size, which would be approximately two companies, you would have something like two CQs, two assistants, and six storeman drivers, for a total of about twelve full-time staff. Additionally, my unit is tasked to the vehicle pool, which in itself would have some full-time positions.

Before 1995 this same position we now have was staffed with a full-time storeman and a full-time storeman driver, for two people. Since that time the storeman driver position has been eliminated and the unit has increased by over 100 persons. This affects the quality of life for the person in that job. They have very limited time off. It's generally a fight to take off any of the days you earn. The troops also suffer, since some of these responsibilities that are tasked to that position are impossible to complete to a high standard, and they lose out on the equipment.

Mrs. C.E. Stevens (Individual Presentation): Good evening. I would like to talk about an issue concerning our posting allowance.

In the mid-1980s the posting allowance was introduced in the Canadian Armed Forces and other government agencies to help families get over the turmoil of posting. By the end of the 1980s the RCMP and other agencies fought the fact that the posting allowance was classed as taxable income. For those people it is no longer. In 1998 it is still taxable income for the Canadian Armed Forces and it affects our families widely.

We moved here last year. We're a family on a corporal's pay, with four children. For the following year it affects my child tax credit and also my GST.

For some people this may be extra income, but for us it's what we need to run our home. Those systems are set up so low-income families are paid a little more to help with the quality of life.

At this time I am now paying back to the tune of almost $100 a month. I no longer have a posting allowance. Neither I nor my husband is in a position to turn down a posting allowance, but I'm in a position now where if we ever get posted again, I have a choice: either hurt for a couple of months or hurt for another year. I would like you to take this into consideration.

Posting allowance is the equivalent of the member's pay, but because it's taxable income, in the case of, for example, a corporal... Corporal's pay is $3,000, and that comes down to $1,500, but when we do our income taxes at the end of the year what happens is that extra money is tacked on and we have to pay it back through our child tax credit, because it lowers and our GST lowers.

At this point you don't just have a federal child tax credit, you also have a provincial one. For example, in my case, where I came from, B.C., the provincial tax credit, because of the size of my family, was $185 a month. I don't receive it here, because I don't qualify, because the posting allowance has put us over the maximum limit. So my federal child tax credit also goes down.

• 2345

I used to get GST to the rate of about $102 every three months. Coming here, I got one cheque for $92. So when you add all of this up, plus the taxation, in the long run I'm paying for another year.

Now, the RCMP don't pay this. They see that full month's pay. I guess all I'm saying is that if one organization in the Canadian government receives this, why don't we?

A voice:

[Editor's Note—Inaudible]

Mrs. C.E. Stevens: I understand that.

Mr. Art Hanger: I can't answer that, but I want to get the whole issue clear in my own mind so that I will understand it even better.

Mrs. C.E. Stevens: Okay.

Mr. Art Hanger: To whom does posting allowance apply?

Mrs. C.E. Stevens: Posting allowance applies to every member in the Canadian Armed Forces, everybody who is posted.

Mr. Art Hanger: Say you're posted to a location. Is it a lump sum?

Mrs. C.E. Stevens: Yes, it's a lump sum, and it's supposed to help you with whatever you need to get over the things that come...

Cpl M.L. Fleck: I'm what used to be called an administrative person, and I was in Calgary so I moved everyone up here. A posting allowance is depending on whom you're moving.

I'll give you an example. I am a single member, so I'm going to receive half of a month's lump sum on my pay as a posting allowance. Her husband, once he moves his dependants—so you have to move your family—receives a full month's lump sum. It's all taxed. It gets added to your yearly income, and that's what she is trying to explain. So now it has bumped her up into a different tax bracket, because that's added to her husband's income.

Mr. Art Hanger: What is the intention of this posting allowance? Is it to assist you in the move?

Cpl M.L. Fleck: It's supposed to help you with any costs.

For example, the moving company wouldn't move my propane barbecue tank. Once you get up there and have to buy all these new things—new curtains, whatever you had that you have to change for your new residence—this is supposed to help you, to sort of subsidize your move, and any of the other things that aren't paid for, like our mileage and so on. That's another point.

I believe that in a government move you get 34¢ per kilometre when you're moved, but we get 9.5¢ per kilometre. That's another issue, that the RCMP get this rate... I believe you get 34¢, but we get only 9.5¢.

So there are really big differences in a lot of our benefits, and that's one of the issues that she is trying to bring out, the posting allowance and its being taxed.

Mr. Art Hanger: I don't know if you can answer this question at all.

There was a support program, I understand, that was designated for military personnel, families, members, who were moved from one location to another, and at one point in time the fund sat at around $12 million. Since the last round of cuts, it's been reduced to $6 million. This support program was designated for families that are moved. Is that what we're talking about? Is a posting allowance the same thing?

Chief Warrant Officer D. Gardner (Individual Presentation): No. The money you're talking about is the money to post us around the country, the cost of the actual move. It's not part of the allowance. That is the reduction that has taken place in the number of postings. They are two different costs.

Mr. Art Hanger: Two different things, then.

CWO D. Gardner: Two different things, yes, sir. You get a grant and an allowance. They're all taxed, which of course increases your taxable income. But it's supposed to take care of those things that, if you didn't have to move, you wouldn't have to pay for: the phone bill, the hook-up to cable...

One thing that has never made sense to me is why I can't choose a province and put a set of plates on my car and leave those plates there. Why do I have to buy plates every time I move? My birthday is in May; I get posted in June. Twice in one year I have to buy plates for my car.

• 2350

Mr. Art Hanger: So you would have to pay the cost of the plates, the registration, the driver's licence, and most likely a differential on insurance?

CWO D. Gardner: Yes. This posting allowance is supposed to take care of those costs. Well, it doesn't.

Mr. Art Hanger: No. Thank you.

Mrs. C.E. Stevens: I would like to make one more point. Obviously we need this money so we can move around, because the costs add up, but the other point is that because it's taxable, my family pays for that for another year after.

The Chairman: Corporal Gould.

Corporal R.J.A. Gould (Individual Presentation): Good evening, members of the panel. I have a few points to make very briefly.

We're talking about the concerns about CFHA. From what I understand, CFHA is only concerned about safety and health. That's what they say. In my situation, I guess my wife, my three kids, and I myself have to be found dead in our house before they consider it a health or safety violation.

Our gas furnace has leaked five times since I moved in here in May of last year. They came and repaired it, yes, but instead of repairing it, why don't they just exchange it for a brand-new one? It's pretty bad when I have to go out and come home and walk into a house that has completely filled up with gas fumes, so much so that we have to get back out right away.

As for repairs, since the summertime we've been after them to come to check the windows. Right now I have plastic on them. Before the plastic it was colder in the house than it was outside. My plastic is separated from the window, just from the draft, I would say a good eight inches right now.

Water must be leaking in the walls, because I have water stains on my walls. They don't care.

When my wife calls, she's treated like a piece of trash. They don't give a damn.

As for salary, we all know about salary. We all consider ourselves underpaid, because right now the way we're living is not acceptable. We have to struggle to survive. It's pretty bad when I know members back home in Ottawa, regular force personnel, have to go to welfare and get some money from them just to survive. That is unacceptable also.

Mrs. Rebecca Muise: I would like to say that people on welfare make more money than a private. We're below the poverty line. At the end of the year, when we do our taxes, we get back so much because we are so far below the poverty line it's unbelievable. It shouldn't be acceptable in this kind of an organization.

You guys are the government, for crying out load. You have money you spend on things that basically don't need to be done—new helicopters, someone says; I don't know about that one—or things that don't need to be spent on, but everybody says, oh, it's such a good thing, when five or ten years ago they just did it. Why don't they just increase pay so people aren't living in poverty? It's not acceptable.

Cpl R.J.A. Gould: There was a mention of postings. I'm not familiar with postings. This is my first posting. But as far as I'm concerned, it was unacceptable.

I used to be a reservist. I was eight years in the reserves. I was involved in one of the component transfers mentioned earlier. This is my first year in regular force. When I had completed my course in Borden, I was sent here first, without my wife and children. They were back in Ottawa. The understanding I have, which I found out after the fact, is that I should have been allowed to go from Borden to home, get my wife and kids, pack up the house and then come here, not have my family come here four months later.

• 2355

The other items I have have already been mentioned so I'm not going to bother. But there is one other thing I'm really upset about.

We all talk about how the Canadian Armed Forces are supposed to be all as one—a total force, as they put it. As I mentioned, I used to be a reservist—six years as a corporal. When I got my acceptance to regular force I was put down to a private. I took the loss; it didn't bother me so much. What bothers me now is this. If you're familiar with the trade courses, you have certain levels. To get into regular force I had to do my QL3. That was my third time doing QL3. I am fours qualified. Now I've been told that I have to do my fours over again. I've had all this training, and all my training has been from regular force personnel at Valcartier and Petawawa. And this is the way I'm being treated. As new regular force personnel coming from the reserves, this is the way we are treated. I don't think that's acceptable.

That's all I have to say.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

Corporal Couture.

Corporal M.J. Couture (Individual Presentation): Good evening. You wanted to know what ASD was doing to the system. You have a perfect example here with the families living in Qs. The minute CFHA took over from CE nothing was being done any more. If you do not take the money out of your pocket to pay your own repairs, too bad, so sad; that's what it means.

I'm a flight tech. You heard this afternoon from one of the firefighters. I am in the same situation right now as they are going through. They are trying to get rid of their jobs, and they're trying to get rid of ours.

I'm sorry, but you have a lot of good people in this room alone, and a lot of us are working as hard as possible to be good Canadians. But to be told, as we heard all day today, that we are nothing, that we are numbers, that there is a price on what we're learning—I'm sorry, that's not acceptable. We are raising our kids to be honest, to know what the difference is...to be good to your neighbour, not to hate. But our government is doing exactly that.

I was told when I first joined—and that was ten years ago—that I had three strikes against me. I was female, I was Indian, and on top of that I was born in Quebec. Right from the start, this is what I was told. I'm sorry, maybe I was born in Quebec, but I did take English education for 12 years. When I tried joining the service, I was told, “Oh, you were in Quebec; you don't have your grade 12 education.” I said, “Yes, I do.” “Oh no, you don't; that doesn't exist in Quebec.” I said, “Listen, buddy, I did my grade 12 in Quebec before grade 12 disappeared. I do have all my papers from schooling.” He said, “Well, if you want to join the service, madam, you'll have to redo the equivalency.” I asked how much time they would give me and I was told four months. A month later I brought him the certificate and I said, “Now, what else do you want?”

This is the kind of problem we go through every day. If it's not our social life, it is where we live, where we work. It's all the time. We have one door after another closed to us for whatever reason. I lived in Qs too, so I know. We are told we have to go see housing for this. You go to see them and they turn you around and say no, see your base commander.

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We are being told, if you have any problems, that's why you have padres. Well, I'm sorry, but it comes to the point where you do not believe in them either.

It comes to this. Why is there such hatred in our own country that they have to send us out of our country to serve and try to help other people? Why can't we just turn around and say, okay, we'll help our own people here and then we'll start looking around? We don't even look on our back roads any more to see who is dying in a corner by a garbage can. We don't care. People will walk beside an accident scene: oh, hurry up and run away.

We are not trained in this way. We are trained to help. This is what we are about.

If they need us... Right now, as I heard on the news tonight, with the conflict with Iraq, we don't know if we are going to be called on tonight, tomorrow, next week, but we're ready to go. All we want is help for our families—help somewhere.

I have two kids. They are in Montreal with my ex-husband. Every time I want to see my kids, I have to pay my own plane fare, because the military doesn't have the budget any more to fly my own kids to see me, or me to see them. It is like that all the time.

This is all I have to say. Thank you.

The Chairman: Corporal Couture, I would like to thank you very much. Let me assure you there's nothing wrong with being born in Quebec. I speak from experience.

We got to the bottom of our list. I want to thank everybody for coming out tonight. I know it has been a very long evening. Believe me, I think all the members here have had a good earful of the problems you encounter, whether with the Canadian Forces Housing Agency or with the pay or everything else that was brought up tonight.

I have just a personal comment on the Canadian Forces Housing Agency. Since I come from a small business background, it seems strange to me that you give business to private enterprise and they don't do the job. If you have your own business and people are not doing the job, well, you change them. You go to somebody better. That's the way the system works. Let me assure you we will be looking into that.

Thank you very much. The meeting is ended. Good night.