:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I would like to begin by sincerely thanking the committee for inviting me to testify this afternoon on the issue of a Veterans Ombudsman. I have followed your work with great interest and I would like to commend you for your collective determination to develop the best possible Ombudsman model for Canada's veterans. This is an incredibly important initiative for our veterans who have given so much of themselves in service to Canada.
I think all Canadians would agree that we owe our veterans—at the minimum—fair, equitable and compassionate consideration when they come forward for help. And, clearly, a Veterans Ombudsman will greatly help to ensure this.
Joining me today is Mary McFadyen, our General Counsel and acting Director General of Operations. Of course, I am referring to the lady seated to my left.
[English]
At this point, Mr. Chair, and with the committee's indulgence, I would like to skip over some of the detail regarding my current role and mandates—which can be found in paragraphs 6 to 19 in your copies of my speaking notes—and focus on the issue at hand; that is, the creation of a veterans ombudsman. This begins at paragraph 20 in the document we have distributed to you.
Our own office has been an effective catalyst for positive, substantial, and long-lasting change for Canada's men and women in uniform. This is not to suggest, however, that everything is perfect. Indeed, I have been working with the Minister of National Defence on some important changes.
Most notably, we have been focused on securing a legislated mandate for our office. Our key objective is to confirm our mandate in a more secure and permanent manner, thereby protecting the independence and ensuring the continuity of our office. This, of course, takes me to the issue at hand today: what type of mandate the veterans ombudsman should have.
The veterans ombudsman must be effective; our veterans deserve no less. In order to be effective, the veterans ombudsman must be given all the tools and the resources required to produce concrete results for their constituents. To me, this means that the veterans ombudsman model should, just as our own office should, have a robust legislated mandate.
Such a legislated mandate should provide, at a minimum—and I stress “at a minimum”—for the following: security of tenure for the incumbent; complete independence from the department and agencies over which the veterans ombudsman would have jurisdiction; full ability to decide what complaint or issue to investigate; full ability to determine how any complaint will be investigated and when a file will be closed; clear and powerful investigative tools, including the power to order the timely production of all relevant files and information and the power to compel witnesses to appear before him or her; clear provisions to ensure the confidentiality of complaints handling and of the investigation process; penalties for failure to assist and cooperate, and penalties to prevent any type of retaliation; full ability to make findings and reports public without having to obtain any type of prior authorization; full authority to select and direct the staff; and finally, access to independent legal advice.
Quite clearly, Mr. Chairman, the legislation would contain many other provisions typically found in an ombudsman's mandate. I just wanted to highlight here today some of the key characteristics that should exist.
[Translation]
Let me now turn to an issue that has been of some interest for several members of this committee—to whom should the ombudsman report?
My own personal view is that there is merit in having a specialized type of ombudsman like ours and like a Veterans Ombudsman reporting to the relevant minister. This is based on my experience—now with two Ministers of National Defence, namely, Mr. Graham and the current Minister, Mr. O'Connor. In a large measure, my view is based on pragmatic considerations. I found that my direct, personal and, at times, informal contact with the minister personally and with key members of his office has allowed me to intervene on a number of issues and to cause issues to be resolved quickly and decisively.
In our business, or in the ombudsman's world, these are important considerations. And, clearly, our constituents have benefited from this. I would be concerned about establishing a more distant relationship with the sole minister who has the responsibility, the authority—and accountability—for implementing my recommendations.
Mr.Chairman, let me illustrate this with a concrete and recent example. Earlier this month, namely on November 1st, I released our report on the first combat engineer regiment veterans who deployed to Kuwait in 1991. The day before the publication of the report, I met with the minister and discussed our recommendations with him.
The day after the publication, the minister rose in the House and said that he had ordered the department and the Canadian Forces to implement all of our recommendations. Having spoken to the main complainant on this, I can tell you he was much heartened to hear that the minister had reacted so quickly and so decisively to our recommendations.
[English]
There is another very important consideration that I'd like to bring to bear on this issue. Effective steps can be taken in legislation to ensure that the mandate and status of a specialized ombudsman who reports to a minister is protected in a very effective way from what could be referred to as undue ministerial interference. I have already mentioned some of these characteristics, and I would refer you to paragraph 23 of my remarks.
I would also like to reiterate a couple of those here. The ombudsman should have the full and unrestrained freedom to make public whatever report or views he or she sees fit to publish and in whatever form he or she thinks advisable. The ombudsman should have the ability to deal with any complaint in the way that he or she deems appropriate. Finally, the ombudsman should have the full ability to launch any investigation on his or her own motion--that is, without necessarily having to wait for complaints to be filed with his or her office.
In addition to these provisions, legislation should make it absolutely clear, for example, that the minister could not issue any directions to the ombudsman unless they were issued in writing and unless they were made public. This, in my view, clarifies the lines. Though the ombudsman submits his or her reports and recommendations to the minister, the ombudsman maintains a healthy distance from ministerial power and interference. I think the approach that I am proposing, certainly based on my own personal experience, combines the virtue of swift efficiency with that of solid independence.
That being said, Mr. Chairman, there is no question that Parliament and parliamentary committees, such as this committee, of course, have an absolutely fundamental role to play in matters of this sort. The minister, as we all know here, is accountable to Parliament and can be called to appear before any committee.
Speaking from my own experience, my annual reports are tabled in Parliament. Any special report that I issue is widely distributed to parliamentarians and certainly to all members of relevant committees. In addition, I am always, as I'm sure any veteran ombudsman would be, available and pleased to appear before any parliamentary committee to discuss any of our activities or reports or to provide any information any committee may be interested in obtaining.
[Translation]
On a closing note, Mr. Chairman, I would say that a new veterans ombudsman will have a tremendously important—and challenging—road ahead. Given the significant size of the veterans' constituency, I would expect the new veterans ombudsman to receive a large number of cases and complaints in very short order.
It will be, of course, essential that the veterans ombudsman be given the full resources they will require to set the office up, and then to operate on an on-going basis: the best structure and the strongest possible mandate will not be sufficient if the appropriate level of resources to deliver on it are not made available.
Also, and this is a point that should not be overlooked, the new veterans ombudsman must be given a reasonable period of time to set up the office, recruit and train the staff, create the procedures, etc. This is not a small detail.
In short, if they are to succeed and truly serve Canada's veterans in an effective manner, the veterans ombudsman will require a clear and robust legislated mandate, a strong team, an appropriate budget and the appropriate amount of time required to establish a strong office.
At this time, Me McFadyen and I stand ready to provide any assistance that we can do this committee.
[English]
At this time, we stand ready to provide any assistance we can to this committee.
:
Indeed, Mr. Chairman, as I said in my opening remarks, this is based on my own experience and on what I refer to as pragmatic reasons. When you are in the ombudsman business, your role is to make a real difference for the people you serve. Actual results and delivering results in a timely way are two very important considerations.
My own experience with the two ministers I've served under or with has been that the fact that you report to them can be very useful. For example, from time to time I have picked up the phone and called a minister to say that we have this issue that is burning; that I think they, as minister, should be aware of it; and that I think they should take this or that step to resolve it. I can say again that, based on what I have done and what I have lived over the last year and a half almost, this has been very productive.
There are at least two other points that I'd like to make. When legislation is developed for the veterans ombudsman, you can have very strong clauses in the legislation that say, for example, that the only way the minister can direct the veterans ombudsman will be by way of written directions, and you can provide for the publication of such written directions. Right then and there, you guarantee that before any minister issues any type of direction to an ombudsman, he or she will think very carefully before doing so. I think that is something that is easily doable in any kind of legislation that you develop.
Also, as the member suggested, Mr. Chair, there's the fact that a minister is always available and is always reachable. Wherever they happen to be, you can reach them. You can reach the chief of staff and you can ask them to look into an issue and get back to you. In a way, that also works to ensure better and more timely results for the people we serve.
Lastly, that doesn't mean a committee like yours would be taken out of the equation, so to speak. For example, if the new veterans ombudsman runs into problems with the Department of Veterans Affairs on issues like the budget—for example, he had this great mandate, but he was only given half the resources he needed—I'm sure the ombudsman could ask to be heard by you, in order to share with you the fact that he has this fundamental issue that he doesn't seem to be able to move. Quite clearly, I would assume this committee would be interested in hearing about that, and that the committee would then take steps.
All of this together suggests to me that the preferred option, based again on my experience and my own view, would be what I have said.
:
Mr. Chairman, there were two or three questions, and I will answer them in the order that they were put to me.
The member said that we would be practically alone in not following the same procedure. Of course, in a military environment, this kind of thing may raise concerns. In any case, I think that there are two or three good reasons for it. First, our mandate, unlike that of provincial ombudsman, is limited. We deal with complaints that have to do with the interaction between members or former members of the Canadian armed forces and the Department of National Defence. We know that Ontario's ombudsman, Mr. André Marin, and Quebec's protector of citizens, for instance, deal with issues that cover all departments.
But they are limited to military matters.
Mr. Yves Côté: With all due respect, I must say that I do not really agree with you. In Quebec, for instance, the ombudsman covers 23 departments, commissions, administrative tribunals and so forth. Given the breath of his mandate, the ombudsman should naturally report to the National Assembly in Quebec or the Legislative Assembly in Ontario.
Moreover, as we all know, there are federal parliamentary agents, as for example the Information Commissioner, the Privacy Commissioner, the Chief Electoral Officers and the Auditor General. Given these people's mandates cover the government as a whole, it seems natural to me that they should report to a parliamentary committee or to Parliament.
As the member said, this is nonetheless an issue about which reasonable people can reasonably draw different conclusions. I am speaking from my own point of view, based on my experience and on what has worked in this environment.
With regard to the workload, I can say that in our office, on an average year, we receive about 1,400 or 1,600 complaints. They come from the 60,000 members of the regular forces, the 30,000 members of the reserves and from families.
In certain news clippings that I read, it was mentioned that about 700,000 veterans were currently negotiating with the Department of Veterans Affairs. This is a much larger base. This would lead us to believe that the number of complaints will be probably larger than ours. We must also keep in mind that veterans who can no longer work and who have financial problems probably have more opportunities to deal with their ombudsman than to members of the regular armed forces who are deployed or who are hard at work.
With regard to the budget allocated to our office, it amounts to $6.5 million. This amount was granted to us for the past fiscal year. We have spent $5.3 million of that amount. This covers a staff of about 50 persons.
:
Mr. Chair, I am certainly not recommending that the words the member has raised are found in the mandate of the veterans affairs ombudsman.
In the remarks that I haven't read, or maybe also in the parts that I have read, I think I made the point that as far as our office was concerned, there are issues that should be addressed, and certainly legislating our mandate would be one of these. That's one part.
The second part, I would also like to mention, Mr. Chair, is that since I've been ombudsman, since August 3, 2005, although these words are present in the mandate, there has been absolutely no attempt in any way, shape, or form by any minister or by his staff to interfere with our ability to do things.
Another point I would make, and it's also very important.... The member asked why the mandate would say that the minister could refer issues or questions to the ombudsman. Actually, I think this can be a very helpful tool for a minister to have, because it may be that at some point in time a minister would look at what his department was giving him or her and say, “You know what? This is not exactly what I need. I think the work that has been done here was maybe not as complete as it should have been.” Or maybe there is a risk that the work the department did will not be perceived as being independent.
One good example from the history of our own office is the Wenzel case. Mr. Wenzel, as you know, was a retired pilot from World War II, who for a number of years had been fighting to get a pension. Many ministers had tried to resolve the issue, to no avail, and at some point in time a minister said, “Okay, enough of this. We will refer this case to the ombudsman, because he is independent and he is outside, and we'll look forward to what he finds.” In fact, what we found was that there had been something wrong. In that case, I think, the end result of the minister having the power to give us a file like this was that we were in a position to accomplish a result that simply was not accomplished before when it should have been. So I think there is something useful in having that.
:
I like that, and to me it's absolutely essential that any veterans ombudsman has exactly the same power--28 days, or it could be 21 days. I do think that a minister needs some time, but 28 days is not the big thing.
The second point is the issue of budget. Yes, I did say that we had a budget of about $6.3 million. It's very difficult for me to even guesstimate what would be the right amount or the right level of resources for a veterans ombudsman, but there are at least one or two things that I would like to put on the table. One is that it seems to me that when the government decides to go ahead on this, what we want to have is an effective ombudsman. We want to have an office that can take files, can answer the mail, make a difference, and produce results. What this means to me is that this has to be properly resourced. You can have the best mandate in the world with all the bells and whistles that anyone can imagine, but if you don't have the gas to put in the engine, so to speak, you won't go very far.
It seems to me that what should happen, once the new ombudsman has been appointed, is he or she should be given some time to consider what kinds of resources they may need. Speak to people in the department. Speak to people outside of the department. For example, I know they have a toll-free line within Veterans Affairs that people can phone 24 hours a day. Well, let's get a sense of how many calls they are getting and so on. And then it would be an iterative process in which the ombudsman would say, “Well, you know what, to start for the first year I think I may need, let's say, $10 million, but after that, it may have to be adjusted upwards or perhaps downwards. I don't know.” I think the department and the ombudsman should then engage in this healthy dialogue between the two of them so that the ombudsman gets the level of resources he or she needs in order to be what I think the ombudsman should be.
And as I think I mentioned earlier today, if there were to be disputes or disagreements between the ombudsman and the minister or the department on what would be the appropriate level of resourcing, then it seems to me that this committee could be brought to bear to listen to the various points of view and then perhaps issue a report or make a recommendation as to what should be the appropriate number of resources.
:
Mr. Chairman, I was afraid, in a way, that this question would be asked, but there it is. It has been asked.
It's very difficult. When you think about it all, this person would start from scratch. There would be nothing. So first of all you have to decide what kind of organizational chart you're going to have. Do you have one DG for operations and one for something else? You have to think about this and presumably you have to consult maybe with offices like ours and provincial ombudsmen and ask to be given a sense. This takes time.
Once you've done that, we are part of the Public Service of Canada, and we have to have those jobs classified. The classification process takes some time. I don't want to bury you in bureaucratese, but I just want to emphasize the fact that it takes time.
And then you have to do the recruiting, and speaking from experience, recently we have been trying to hire good, solid investigators who have the right background and the right approach to things, and these are not easy to recruit. You have to launch a process and you get applications in. It takes time.
But the one word of caution, as I think I said earlier, that I would really leave with this committee and with the decision-makers is that the word should be given to the ombudsman that they should move quickly but also that they should get it right. Imagine if, let's say, they are up and running after six months or four months or two months and they realize that they don't have the right structure and that their people have not been trained.
That's the other thing. The veterans affairs world is a very complex world. You have the new charter that just came in. You have all kinds of programs and legislation. The people who answer the phone must be familiar with what they are talking about, so you have to train them in addition to having selected them. That takes a bit of time.
My advice would be the Latin maxim, festina lente, hurry up slowly. Well, the word to the ombudsman should be to do exactly that--festina lente. Get going, but get it right and don't waste time.
And I'm sorry that I cannot be more helpful in terms of giving you precise data, but that's the best I think I can do.
:
Mr. Chairman, if I said that in general we do not have access to documents, I did not express myself well. What I wanted to say, is that we have had cases such as the one entrusted to us by the Chief of Defence Staff where it took a long time to get all the documents.
Another aspect I would like to emphasize is that, in the case of informal inquiries, the degree of cooperation between our office and, for example, the officers of the armed forces or the Minister of Defence is very good.
As an example, I would mention the inquiry we are currently carrying out on the state of health of reservists and on the way in which they are treated when they come back from a deployment. I met with the investigators quite recently once again, and they tell me that the degree of cooperation, at every level of the chain of command in all of the bases they visited, is really very good. Therefore, yes, there are areas in which things are not going so well and there are others where things are going very well.
But there is one argument I wish to make and which is, in my opinion, extremely important. What could make a difference as far as we are concerned, is not necessarily that we report to a parliamentary committee, to Parliament or to a minister, but rather that we have a legislative mandate. If we had a legislative mandate that stipulated that the ombudsman could issue notices to appear, and orders for delivery of documents, the department would be obliged to comply with our requests within the time prescribed by the ombudsman, and we would receive the documents much more quickly.
I think we must be very careful to separate what I have just said from the issue of ultimate responsibility, that is to say to whom I report or not, because once again, with a strong legislative mandate, all of these obstacles can be overcome without any difficulty.
One thing really surprises me. I was not there at the time, but according to my friend Louise, she has been fighting since 1994 for the recognition of post-traumatic stress syndrome. I arrived in 1997 and I have been fighting for that recognition since that time. The army still states that the syndrome does not exist, that it is nonsense, that people are imagining things.
Since the Conservative Party came to power, for the first time this year I have seen a document from the Department of National Defence that recognizes the existence of this syndrome.
Reading your document, I nearly had a heart attack. On page 35 of the French version, there is a letter written on July 20, 2001 by the Vice-Admiral and Vice-Chief of Defence Staff, G.L. Garnett, and the Senior General Counsel of the Department of National Defence at that time, Mr. Mark Zazulak. In the fourth paragraph, it says: "...if a member of the Canadian Forces who has suffered from post-traumatic stress..."
We are in the year 2006. Why did we have to wait all this time before talking officially about post-traumatic stress syndrome? Why did the Department of National Defence's ombudsman not want to investigate this? Sir, I am not blaming you for that, but nevertheless the ombudsman has heard about this syndrome since 1994. Why was there never any investigation on this subject? Is it because the army or the Minister of Defence did not want an inquiry?
What I was trying to show—and I agree with Peter on this—is that very often, your hands are tied, you are sent a note and told to be quiet, to put a Band-Aid on it, and not to rock the boat, because if not, you might lose your job. This is one of the reasons why I want to protect you.
You should report to a committee or to some kind of organization, and not to the Department of National Defence or to General Hillier. Surely the general has a very great impact on the decisions as to whether or not an inquiry should be carried out. That is an informal finding, but I may be allowed to say so formally, which you perhaps cannot do.
:
Mr. Chairman, obviously, the member can issue any notices or opinions that he deems appropriate. All I can do is to talk about what I know and of my experience. There are perhaps a couple of points I would like to make.
First of all, my predecessor did table a report on the issue of post-traumatic stress syndrome. The report contained 23 recommendations, if memory serves me well. This resulted in an initial follow-up, which allowed us to see that several of Mr. André Marin's recommendations were implemented. We are in the process of completing another review of our initial recommendations, which will take into account what was done and what was not done. The report will be made public during the first quarter of 2007.
I will talk about my personal experience. Since I became the ombudsman for the Canadian Forces, that is since August 2005, there has never been, by any general, admiral, minister, political person or senior official whatsoever, any direct or indirect attempt, open or secret, discrete or not... I could even swear on the Bible. However, what ever happened in the office before I took up my position, I cannot obviously attest to. You would have to speak to the person who held the position at the time.
For myself, I can tell you that that has never happened, and were it to happen, I would make sure to take the strong and courageous steps necessary. That is the responsibility of someone who holds a position like mine.