Proceedings of the Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs
Issue 6 - Evidence - May 30, 2012
OTTAWA, Wednesday, May 30, 2012
The Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs of the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence met this day at 12:07 p.m. to study the services and benefits provided to members of the Canadian Forces, to veterans, to members and former members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and their families.
Senator Roméo Antonius Dallaire (Chair) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Chair: Good afternoon and welcome to this meeting of the Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs of the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence.
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We are continuing our study on the services and benefits provided to members of the Canadian Forces, veterans, members and former members of the RCMP and their families. Today we have two groups who are on the front lines of providing those capabilities. As such, we look forward to the presentations of the British Columbia Institute of Technology, Legion Military Skills Conversion Program, which is in itself an interesting program. We have Mr. Kevin Wainwright, Program Head, and Ms. Natalie Condrashoff, Project Manager. From Prospect Human Services we have Ms. Melanie Mitra, Chief Executive Officer.
I am glad both groups have been able to come all this way to show us how the West is sorting out things for the rest of this country.
Senator Plett: Hear, hear.
Senator Wallin: Let us put that on the record.
The Chair: This exceptional situation will certainly be well presented.
Please remember that we are limited in time so we want to have an exchange, but we want to know who you are. Thank you for the information you provided to us.
Kevin Wainwright, Program Head, British Columbia Institute of Technology, Legion Military Skills Conversion Program: Thank you.
As introduced I am Mr. Wainwright and Ms. Condrashoff is my colleague, and we are the pair that founded this program. To give you background, Honour House Society was formed in 2006 in Vancouver to deal with families of soldiers coming back who were injured. Many of the individuals involved with that are also business people who deal with BCIT. In 2008 we were invited to come down and see if we could give assistance in helping veterans and reservists redo their resumés and get job skills for going into civilian life.
At that point, we realized from talking with the training officers that there was a lot more there than we knew about. We started a pilot project where we would give advanced placement for soldiers, reservists and veterans into our programs at BCIT.
In our 2010 pilot, we took in our first cohort of reservists who went into the business management program. All of the soldiers that came in exceeded expectation, graduated from that program in one year and went on to enter the degree completion program. As of June 16, we will have the first three members of this program graduating with their bachelor's degree and they did it in two years. That is our summary.
BCIT is the second biggest school this British Columbia with 48,000 students, specializing in trades, business, health, engineering from the certificate to masters degrees.
Our model is modular in the sense that you can do a two-year engineering diploma and then an engineering degree. You can also do an engineering diploma and transfer across and do a business degree as a completion with some bridging. This is the key characteristic of what we have taken advantage of for the military.
In our program — what we call the Legion model — reservists and veterans can come to BCIT and we help them in one of three ways. One is resumé writing and skills and converting their military background into civilian equivalencies so they can do a better job at an interview. If they want to start their own business we have been running a project with our student teams called Students in Free Enterprise, or SIFE. We have had about nine veterans and reservists who have developed their own businesses at various stages right now. The rest can go in and get advanced placement. Based on what their background is from our assessment — which Ms. Condrashoff will go through this detail — and what their desired path is, we can set them up on a program that may give them as much as a full year of advanced placement into a program; they can get a two-year diploma in one year which lets them ladder into a degree program.
The program now has funding from the Canadian Legion — which came in this year — and funding from BCIT, but we primarily rely on a lot of volunteers. We have about 70 students from the SIFE program who help us with info sessions, go out and take the message out to various regiments along with Ms. Condrashoff. There are also a lot of faculty and volunteers from the community. We are up and running but we are still in the growth stage.
We started down in the Seaforth regiment in Vancouver and started asking questions about the soldiers coming back from Afghanistan. I do not have a military background, so I came in from bare bones and I said, "Explain to me the process from someone entering the Armed Forces to being deployed. " When they went through the training modules, I said, "This looks like a technical diploma program. It is intense, multi-faceted and modular. "
We have programs where people with technical diplomas get advanced placement into other programs. We started researching. The military gave us a lot of their training modules. We did a lot of focus group interviews with veterans and reservists — and we realized there was a lot there that we could systematically map — and then essentially someone who has gone to Afghanistan or been deployed and has a minimum threshold. It is not limited to those, but that is a nice easy cut-off.
We know there is a certain level of training for guys who have deployed and they get advanced placement. They are given the equivalent of a two-year diploma for being in the military. It is not a credential they walk out the door with; it is a credential for admission requirements to advanced programs. Once they have completed advanced program they can move on to further and higher programs. As of this year we have three reservists who will be graduating with their bachelor in business administration. That is the crux of how our program has worked. I will turn it over to Ms. Condrashoff to discuss the details of running the program.
Natalie Condrashoff, Project Manager, British Columbia Institute of Technology, Legion Military Skills Conversion Program: A little background about the participants in our program: We work with any current and former serving military member regardless if they are regular force or reservist, regardless of rank or trade in the military. The average age is about 33 years. Our youngest and 20 our oldest is 55. They are likely to be a corporal, master corporal or equivalent, but we have a lot of warrant officers and petty officers looking to retire and come to our program in advance to get going on their civilian work.
Seventy-three per cent of them have high school or some post-secondary education but they do not have a credential, and 63 per cent of them have deployment experience in Afghanistan, Bosnia or other places in the world.
When an individual contacts us, they contact us through phone, email or a Web contact form. The first thing we get them to do is a 40-minute informational interview. We go deep into their military background, understand what trade they are, if they have had multiple trades, their roles, tasks and deployments. We also want know their career goals, needs and what the limitations are.
They then complete an online career assessment test called the World of Work Inventory, or WOWI, and this lets us know their aptitudes, work interests and preferences. From this, we also ask them to provide their military personal readiness record — their MPRR — to verify what they have done in the military, and sometimes we ask for a resumé.
After that, we create an individually tailored profile for them that outlines their knowledge, skills and abilities that are transferable to the equivalent in the world, potential career paths and educational opportunities to achieve them. Next we follow up with the military member and chat about what was on their profile, answer their questions and develop a plan that they can then execute to get what they need to get or go where they need to go.
Some of the challenges we noticed that military members have is a difficulty distinguishing between "me " versus "we " statements. Teamwork is an important part of being in the Canadian Forces and we recognize that, but civilian employers want to know what they have done as an individual. It is part of our job to identify what you specifically did in that team.
They are overwhelmed by the options available to them. There are many great services through Veterans Affairs and their units, but sometimes when you have so much information it is hard to know what fits your needs. We help them narrow their focus and follow that path.
They also have an issue with not having an identifiable contact person or structure to the program. At BCIT they have a dedicated staff member who is there to support their unique needs and commitments, especially for reservists who may have to go on exercise and leave during the middle of classes.
Starting this year we had a BCIT mentor who is a military participant. He worked with new students to tell them what to expect and how it is different from the military. He is there to support, liaison, do a little bit of culture initiation, and give them a sense of community while they are at BCIT.
We also identify a clear pathway from beginning to end of how they can achieve their goal. Often, when we give them an objective, they want to know how to do it and then they are self-propelled. Then we have a special orientation to help them adjust to academic life. It is just for the military members across BCIT. It allows them to meet each other; then they have identifiable contacts on campus in that they know a particular person knows exactly what members are talking about and going through.
Some challenges for the program are that we are currently mostly in B.C. and involved with 39 Canadian Brigade Group. However, we recognize there are reservists and regular force members across the country, and we want to work with them all.
We have even had interest from military members who are currently on deployment; they have emailed us and said they want to get involved, which is great because I know they do not have a lot of Internet access time sometimes.
We would also like to get more involved with the navy and air force. Due to our location, we are mostly army reserve. However, CFB Comox and Maritime Forces Pacific are there. We want to ensure anybody who is moving on, wanting to upgrade their skills, or become an officer can get the education and support needed.
Our final challenge is that, previously, you had to be in the greater Vancouver region to partake of our program, but we have worked hard to ensure that a number of our programs are available online so that, regardless of where you are in Canada, you can take the courses. We also accept transfer credits from most post-secondary institutions in Canada, so if they need or have had previous educational experience, they can bring it back to BCIT.
In summation, the results from what we have so far are that there is no clear indication that military members choose programs specifically based on what their trade was in the military. Often, they want to go into something different because they are ready for a new challenge.
There is a big interest in health sciences, which is often disproportionate to the training experience they may have. Based on conversations I have had with individuals, it seems to be that health sciences is a good fit for them because they can continue to give back to the community and make a difference, which is very important for them.
We have also noticed that the skill set of military members is a lot greater than what their Military Personal Record Résumé — or MPRR — states, and they have difficulty verbalizing that, because they have been doing the same job for years and it seems like no big deal to them. However, when you dig down to the nitty-gritty and explore what they actually did, they are working with multi-million-dollar budgets and massive supply chains that extend halfway across the globe. They are useful and important to civilian employers, but they need the help to say, "I did that. It is a big deal and it is worthwhile. "
That concludes our presentation.
The Chair: I am pumped up, so I do not know whether this was a briefing to enhance my morale or get information.
Melanie Mitra, Chief Executive Officer, Prospect Human Services: Mr. Chair and members of the committee, I am pleased to provide you with an overview of an employment initiative underway in Alberta called Forces@WORK. The initiative involves our organization, Prospect Human Services; the Joint Personnel Support Unit; and the Department of National Defence.
I would like to begin by giving you a sense of Prospect's history and expertise in employment placement services, specifically for transitioning in harder-to-serve populations. Prospect is a non-profit employment organization. We are backed by 50 years of experience in managing workforce transitions. We started in the 1950s by offering veterans of World War II and the Korean War a place to connect to the workforce and the community. Over time, the demand for employment support shifted to other populations, and Prospect developed a reputation as a leader in achieving employment outcomes. We get people who want to be in the workforce into the workforce, and we ensure employers have the capacity to attract and retain labour from diverse populations and backgrounds.
We are aware of the challenges that the Canadian Forces personnel and veterans are facing as they transition to employment, and we believe we have a solution that will add value to the existing service offering. We are demonstrating that our model could fill a critical gap in current transition services, specifically the absence of direct employment placement, retention services and employer engagement strategies.
Therefore, we designed the Forces@WORK program, we engaged the Joint Personnel Support Unit in a pilot project and started serving Canadian Forces personnel and veterans in both Calgary and Edmonton. In Calgary, individuals are served through Prospect's existing employment services. In Edmonton, Prospect agreed to fund a pilot prospect for up to 60 employment placements.
I will comment on the challenges with workforce integration for Canadian Forces personnel and veterans.
We know that roughly 35 per cent of the individuals transitioning from the military to civilian life and work report that their transition experience is difficult. During the course of our research, the Canadian Forces personnel and veterans identified the need for direct employment placement and retention services. Yet funding for current employment transition supports aligns and is limited to employment preparation and vocational rehabilitation.
We know that the number of medically releasing individuals has more than doubled since Afghanistan. We also understand that Afghanistan is not the only reason why people need to release medically from the military. We suspect that more individuals will develop PTSD or an operational stress injury after their return to civilian life, and that more individuals are currently in the military living with an operational stress injury but are not reporting that.
In this context, employment placement and retention solutions that address physical and mental health limitations in the workplace are critical for both individuals and employers. These types of solutions are based on the relationship between employment, one's standard of living, one's quality of life and one's mental health. They are vital elements in presenting chronic cycles of unemployment, deteriorating mental health and dependency on formal supports.
The aforementioned challenges are further exacerbated by some fundamental gaps that exist within current transition services. First, there is an absence of direct hands-on placement and retention supports for both individuals and employers. Second, employers need help in understanding how to attract and retain this population, including attitudinal and cultural barriers. For example, an employer might have an inaccurate picture of how PTSD manifests in the workplace. Conversely, they could be star-struck about hiring a hero and might completely overlook some of the requirements for a successful transition.
Finally, the current service offering is based on a pre-employment model and emphasizes employment preparation and vocational rehabilitation. These services are aimed at only the individual. Although well intentioned, these services elongate the employment intervention and address only half the equation in employment — the individual.
In contrast, Prospect recognizes that there is a direct correlation between an individual's standard of living and their ability to retain meaningful employment. We believe in reducing the time to employment, and that barriers to employment are best overcome in the workplace with the employer through a model of rapid placement and stabilization or retention supports. Furthermore, these services need to focus equally on the individual and the employer.
I will now outline the project objectives and how the services are delivered. The primary objective of our pilot project is to demonstrate that our model will result in more individuals successfully transitioning to civilian work. Our objective with employers is to market and communicate the potential of this labour pool, and our objective with CF personnel and veterans is simply the transition to meaningful employment.
Over the last year, we conducted six focus groups with individuals and employers to inform the service design, which is characterized by one-to-one support; accessible, flexible services that consider a range of accommodations; rapid placement and retention supports for the individual and the employer; and an understanding of the transferable skills and value that an individual brings to the workforce, as well as a way to communicate that to an employer.
The services are offered at no cost to the individuals or the employer. Forces@WORK and JPSU developed a set of standard operating procedures for the project. The program activity and service utilization is timelined, measured and reported on a biweekly and monthly basis.
I will comment on the clients who access our service, in cooperation with the Department of National Defence and Veterans Affairs Canada.
Based on the parameters that DND set for the pilot phase of the project, our services are focused on medically releasing personnel and veterans. Recently, the Department of National Defence requested that we also include a number of non- medically releasing personnel and veterans.
Communication between Forces@WORK, JPSU and DND has been open, frank and honest and has been that way since the start of the project. We have collaborated effectively on developing a service to meet the needs of individuals and employers. Due to the scope of the project, we have not yet engaged with Veterans Affairs Canada.
I am pleased to report that we are working closely with Colonel Blais and the JPSU. Based on early success, they fully support the program and would like to see the program move forward.
Finally, I will comment on our successes, challenges and the results to date. The initiative is in early stages. Successes to date include our collaboration and support with JPSU and from JPSU and service partners like SISIP, the level of trust and confidence that our program has established with Canadian Forces personnel and veterans, and the commitment we secured from employers to work with the project. Most important, we placed 30 per cent of the individuals referred to our Edmonton program since April 23, and we are sitting at an overall placement rate of 38 per cent.
Our challenges are related to the following: Although various transition programs exist through VAC, SISIP and the JPSU, there is no program or mandate for direct job placement or retention services to continue on beyond this pilot. Also, it is difficult to access resources to translate the Canadian Forces trade, skills and course equivalencies into civilian equivalencies.
Our results to date are as follows. The program was launched in Edmonton on April 23. As of May 23, we have 11 referrals. Eight are from the IPSC and three are from SISIP. We have accepted 91 per cent of these referrals into service; 75 are regular forces and 25 per cent are veterans; 100 per cent are medical releases. We have placed 30 per cent of these individuals in competitive employment, and of that 30 per cent, 10 per cent are accessing retention supports. Our average time to placement in Edmonton is eight days.
Our combined outcomes in Calgary and Edmonton are as follows: We have received 34 referrals; 50 per cent are from the IPSC, 12 per cent are from SISIP and 38 per cent are from other sources. Forty-one per cent are regular forces; 15 per cent are reserve forces and 44 per cent are veterans. Again, 100 per cent are medical releases. Thirty-eight per cent have been placed in competitive employment and 20 per cent of these individuals are accessing the retention supports. The average time to placement overall is 40 business days.
In Edmonton, we are in the process of confirming five more placements that will be completed by the end of June 2012. We are averaging four referrals a week and are working with JPSU to increase this to five per week.
In conclusion, early indications from the pilot suggest that the program design is well suited to individuals transitioning to employment. All current service partners and the Department of National Defence deem the program to be of value and meeting the mandate of JPSU and the Department of National Defence to provide transition services for releasing soldiers. We are confident that the outcomes will demonstrate that the pilot project between Forces@WORK, the JPSU and the Department of National Defence is the best way to fill a critical gap in employment transition services.
The Chair: I have had the pleasure of being briefed by you previously. You have reinforced the information with some interesting statistics. The chair will defer first to colleagues for the question period.
Senator Plett: I want to echo the chair's comments. I am pumped as well. I think you are running great programs and I want to commend you on those.
The question will be to both organizations. Mr. Wainwright, you spoke about having some funding coming from the Legion. I read some of the notes and it looks like it is $240,000 over a four-year period of time. Am I correct in that?
Mr. Wainwright: Yes, that is correct.
Senator Plett: Where does the rest of your funding come from? Is it all from the provincial education department?
Mr. Wainwright: The funding is pretty much matched internally by the school of business, essentially from industry development surpluses we have built up from programs we run. We run cost-recovery programs. I am in charge of the degree program. We have had high enrolments and we have been lucky enough to accumulate some reserves. Whenever we have a surplus in our budget, we roll it back into curriculum development. We have targeted this program as part of that. We have pretty much matched 50/50 with what the legion gave us.
Senator Plett: Who funds Prospect? I know Prospect funds Forces@WORK, but with who funds Prospect?
Ms. Mitra: We have a range of funders. We have provincial and federal funders. As is the case with my colleagues here, at times when we achieve a surplus our board will earmark dollars that we put into a reserve fund. We use those dollars towards program development, when we need bridge funding between funding cycles or, in this case, when we identify a gap in service and we want to pilot something and prove that the outcomes will work. That is where the dollars for this particular project are coming from.
Senator Plett: I want to talk a bit about the pilot project in just a second.
Having spoken to veterans and people still in the forces, one of the concerns that have been raised most often is the knowledge of programs available. You are running great programs and it seems with a lot of success, but how do people make themselves aware? Ms. Condrashoff spoke about what people do when they are aware of it. They call in and so on. How are individuals made aware and, in the case of Forces@WORK, how are employers made aware of the programs? Where do they go? Is there something on the Web? Do you advertise?
Mr. Wainwright: We have a Web presence. We have a dedicated website for the program on the BCIT page. We also have other social media, such as Facebook. Right now, to be honest, we are relying a lot on word of mouth. We have had veterans and reservists who have come to BCIT. We have counted on them and we have made sure that we have done a good job. They will spread the word, so to speak, locally.
We have had the opportunity to get some press. CTV ran a national story on us about a year ago. Whenever we have an opportunity, we try to promote it that way. We do info sessions. The site students are quite good at helping us promote it. That is basically how we do it.
Ms. Condrashoff: We make presentations at units. We have been to most of the Lower Mainland's 39 brigade units as well as made connections with the SCAN seminars, as well as the BPSOs and the JPSUs.
The Chair: SCAN is the second career program provided by the Canadian Forces to inform members who are about to retire about opportunities for employment.
Senator Plett: How are employers made aware, Ms. Mitra, of your program that they can come and work with you?
Ms. Mitra: We have a range of ways where we are increasing the awareness of employers about the program. In some cases this can take the form of effective strategy forums that we host for employers on a quarterly basis or different events that we offer for employers. We have individuals who are working strictly with employers, building those relationships and ensuring that they are aware of the labour pool, understanding the needs of the employers and what those needs are projected to look like in the next three to five years.
We have a number of traditional and non-traditional referral sources that we work with. It a multi-pronged strategy.
Senator Plett: I wish to ask one further question of Ms. Mitra on the pilot project.
From what you have said, it looks like a great project. How will you determine the success of it? If you feel it is successful, how will you turn it into a full-time program versus a pilot project?
Ms. Mitra: The way we will understand whether the program is being successful is, first, we are clear on the gap that we have identified; we have been able to design a service that fills that gap; the service is informed by the people who will use it, both employers and individuals, and what they are getting aligns with their expectations of the service; we have a group of employers who have the capacity to make the cultural and the physical workplace accommodations to support the transition of these individuals into their workplaces so that people can be successful in the job that they were hired to do; individuals have a positive transition experience and feel that it is unique to them and about them, and they feel they have support all the way through from identifying that they actually do want to go to work to now successfully being with an employer.
Senator Plett: Is there a possibility of this just simply continuing on to something permanent from a pilot project?
Ms. Mitra: As I stated before, based on the early success of the program, from our perspective and from the perspective of Colonel Blais and the JPSU, I think there is support to move the program forward beyond a pilot phase.
Senator Wallin: Following up on this, I have a couple of technical points. When you talked, Ms. Mitra, about federal funding, did I miss what the sources are?
Ms. Mitra: Service Canada.
Senator Wallin: Again, about the Legion funding, do you anticipate that that will continue into the future?
Mr. Wainwright: Hopefully, it will. We are hoping for a long-term relationship with them.
Senator Wallin: They are waiting to see outcomes?
Mr. Wainwright: Yes, because we are fairly new. However, we have had growth in enrolment every year. It has gone up dramatically in the three years that we have been doing it. Any money left over from our program development is automatically rolled into scholarships for soldiers. If everything goes according to plan, years from now, we are hoping to keep the Legion but have their role become more of a fellowship or scholarship program. Running the program is not a high cost, but the development of the program is very expensive. Once we get it built, we hope that the funding stays in place, and we would convert it into scholarships. We have already started creating scholarships. We have given out four this year from the Legion funding.
Senator Wallin: Are either of your organizations accessing existing funds like the CDS-supported charities, the Support Our Troops? Are they contributing, in any way, to these programs?
Ms. Mitra: In our organization, not at this point.
Mr. Wainwright: No, not at this point.
Senator Wallin: Have employers that have benefited from this found some mechanism for additional funding other than hiring? If this is working for them, are they encouraged, in any way, to support the program? Is there a mechanism?
Ms. Mitra: We do not have something like that in place with any of the employers that we are working with.
I see the words "meaningful employment " referenced a lot in reports around this particular issue. We want that to mean that an individual is able to maintain their standard of living, that they value the work they will be doing and see it as a contribution. From the employer's perspective, they need to be getting a solid return on the investment that they are making in that individual. We want the employer to hire the person because they are the right person for the job and leave it at that.
Senator Wallin: I agree with that totally, but lots of companies and organizations have earmarked charitable funds with which they might support the environment or cancer research or something. Are you pursuing that with employers that have benefited and that, therefore, understand the purpose and the outcome of the program? Are you trying to create, from the private sector, some other stream of funding on this, too? I would throw in the question of big unions. Have they shown any interests in funding this?
Mr. Wainwright: In our situation, we have a complex dynamic in that BCIT has a strong mandate to the B.C. economy. We have a large number of businesses — many of which, in their past lives, have been military — with which we have worked closely on independent projects. Many of these business leaders are the drivers behind Honour House. We have been very collaborative. We supported many of their efforts in terms of what we could do to help Honour House, and Honour House, in turn, has done a lot to help us. We also have another partner, the UBC Veterans Transition Program, and the three of us work together. We go back and forth in that sense.
For the entrepreneurship component, for people who want to try to start their own business, we are getting some funding from some of the local businesses. We have a project where, if they do well in developing their business plan, they can apply for seed capital, micro-funding. The educational side, as it stands right now, is funded through the Legion and BCIT.
Ms. Condrashoff: We have had a number of private industries and companies make offers for the employment of students after they graduate. We had one company in Alberta sponsor a military member to go through our geomatics program. The individual going through will receive scholarship money for tuition and paid employment during the summer, on the expectation that he will work with the company for four to five years upon completion.
Senator Plett: Forty-five years?
The Chair: Four to five years.
Senator Plett: Four to five years. I understood 45 years.
Ms. Condrashoff: No, not 45 years, sorry; four to five years. It is similar to a regular force contract. If it goes well this first year, there is an expectation that they will have additional funding, each year, for another individual to go through, until they decide that they are good to go.
Senator Wallin: You have all touched, in one way or another, on some of the attitudinal and psychological issues that the force members have to deal with in terms of transitioning out of the CF and into civilian life. You have talked about this from the employer's point of view. This is still, for reasons that always puzzle me, relatively new in Canada. The Americans have done a better job of sort of embracing their ex-military people and integrating them into the workforce.
Is there a real understanding? My colleague was asking about educating the employers. Do you just sit down and say, "Look, this is the stuff you need to think about? They are part of a team, and they do not stand up and say, `Pick me because I am really great at this.' That is not how they are trained to be, particularly if they have been in the military for a while. "
I was curious about the, as you say, disproportionate interest in health services. Could you expand on that?
Mr. Wainwright: I will touch on the first part, and Ms. Condrashoff can touch on health.
This captures something that I think is a bigger problem. First, the United States has approached us to model our model.
Senator Wallin: Really, for the school?
Mr. Wainwright: Yes. In 2010, a delegation from the University of Washington and the Washington State National Guard came to Vancouver, and we presented this program to them. They subsequently invited us down to join a consortium of universities across the United States that receives federal defence funding to develop some kind of program. The Americans have 4.9 million veterans since the Gulf War and a very big problem is that they are not engaging and using their skill sets. They are looking for a mechanism to bring their veterans into education, especially in the fields of engineering. They came up, and they want to copy our model. We have been invited, as a non-American school, to join the consortium. We will be actually trying to do some joint research on this topic with the University of Washington, funded, hopefully, by the National Science Foundation in the United States.
What we are touching on is a bigger issue than what we have been able to or been trying to address. Essentially, we have gone to a credential-based society, where everyone has a tag after their name. They are missing the fact that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. If you look back throughout history, we educated people in a general way, and they were able to do many things because of the critical skills and the transferable skills that they learned. Now, what we are trying to do is revisit a very old idea, which is that here is a group of people who have a composite of skills. Do not worry about whether they have BBA, BM, DA or whatever after their name; it is the package and the experience that has value. The way we have designed BCIT, because of its applied focus, fits that. We have developed a history of trying to recognize people's experience and skills, and we have a very strong what we call prior learning assessment model. We are one of the few schools in a position to go in and say, "I will look at the whole last two years of this guy's life, and I will be willing to stamp it and say that this guy has enough stuff that he should be in the advanced class, regardless of adding up the credits. " We do not do that. That is what everyone is looking for, and the Americans are looking for the same idea because military training does not fit the transfer credit model used around the world. It is easier for someone from Russia to come here with their transcript than it is for a Canadian military member to get into BCIT, SFU, UBC or Queen's. That is what we are trying to do.
Senator Wallin: That is just what I wanted to hear.
Ms. Condrashoff: Could you repeat your question about health sciences, please?
Senator Wallin: One of you indicated that we should not assume that they want to come out and do what they were doing in the military. For example, they drove a truck but that is not what they want to do when they get out. You mentioned that there was a disproportionate interest in the health sciences area. What does that mean? What do they want to do?
Ms. Condrashoff: It means that from conversations I have had with military members, I found that one of the biggest things they are really interested in is nursing or supporting other medical professions. Nursing is a big one for them because it is tangible.
Senator Wallin: Is that for both men and women?
Ms. Condrashoff: Men and women. Nursing is very tangible, is an employment sector that is in dire need of professionals and has a sense of community. Those are all things that I think military members find important in work. They want to feel a part of the family and that their actions are contributing to a greater good somehow. The health sciences, particularly nursing, is an area that is an easy fit for them.
The Chair: Your insights into the military ethos are most surprising and quite accurate.
Ms. Condrashoff: Thank you.
Ms. Mitra: In terms of employers and their attitudes toward military personnel, I think there are many of the same issues that we are dealing with in the attitudes of the general population toward mental health or disability. In our experience, we have been more successful when we can work with an employer to understand how they think about disability or mental health in the workplace and what makes them nervous about it.
Most employers, in our experience, want to do a good job of this but they do not know how to do it yet. They need to have a conversation with someone where they can relax about this. It is mostly about understanding what they know how to do, what their experience has been, what help they need, where the resources exist to connect them to that, and whether there is a concrete solution. Employers hear a lot of talk all over the place about mental health and disability in the workplace, but they are looking for concrete solutions. That is where we have been more successful.
Senator Day: Thank you for being here and briefing us on your very important projects. We have heard from a number of witnesses and have learned that many different attempts and efforts have been made to help personnel retiring from the Armed Forces, whether injured or not injured, to transition to the private sector.
Some companies recognize the value — as all of us do because we work in this area — of Armed Forces personnel and the courses that they have taken, some of which are very advanced. It is good that you are doing what you are doing.
I will start with Ms. Mitra from Prospect Human Services. Could you confirm my understanding that you are focusing on ill and injured personnel?
Ms. Mitra: Yes. For the purpose of the pilot, that is so.
Senator Day: You had a program in Calgary and now you are piloting a project in Edmonton. Is the Edmonton pilot the same as the one in Calgary or are you doing something different?
Ms. Mitra: When we designed the program, we offered it in Calgary first. We were able to do that because Prospect is already funded to provide a range of services in Calgary for employment. A number of the individuals fit with the eligibility criteria for those programs. At the time, we were not funded to provide any services in Edmonton. That is how we decided to fund that piece ourselves in a pilot project.
Senator Day: That is what makes it a pilot project.
Ms. Mitra: Yes.
Senator Day: I understand. You have a long history in vocational training. I have been reading some of the background material that the Library of Parliament provided to us as well as the material you provided to us. Certainly, you have a long history, which is wonderful.
Senator Wallin was asking you about employers paying for the service and other possible sources of revenue. Essentially, you are a placement service for a specific type of potential employee. In effect, that is what you are doing, and industry pays for it. Why have you not tapped into that source?
Ms. Mitra: Can you repeat that question for me?
Senator Day: Why have you not tapped into industry — the companies you are helping by presenting this individual who has some very good skills — for funds by asking them to pay you for this service you offer?
Ms. Mitra: I think there are two reasons. We would have to make a conscious decision do operate on a fee-for-service basis, and that is not in our business model right now. Our current business model is based on the funding that we secure from different funders; and because of that, the services are available to employers or to individuals at no cost. If we were going to enter into fee-for-service work, that would be a slightly different business model. We would have to think about that and how that aligns with our mandate. Certainly, it is optional; we could do that.
In consideration for us as well, Prospect has established a network of about 700 employers and 25 industry associations. We collaborate with them all the time. I agree that there are certainly ways that we could engage the employer in the business community. We want to ensure that we are working with the right employers for this particular population.
The labour market in Alberta is booming again, and we want to ensure that when employers are doing this, they are doing it for the right reasons. The business case is there, but they want to ensure that the transition supports are in place on their end so that the individual is successful in moving over. If we get into fee-for-service work, we have to ensure that the quality in those areas is in place.
Senator Day: I understand your answer. How long after you have made a placement do you follow that individual to ensure that things are working well?
Ms. Mitra: In our programs we have a range of follow-ups. It will be anywhere from one month, three months, six months, nine months and twelve months. With other individuals, it can go into two or three years at a follow-up rate.
Senator Day: What is the determining factor, from one month to two years?
Ms. Mitra: It depends on the level of retention support that the individual and the employer have required.
Senator Day: Is that is a matter of negotiating with the employer?
Ms. Mitra: Yes. When we provide retention services, we create a plan for that. We understand what the employer will do, what the individual will do and what we will do. It is timelined and measured; and we go back and follow up. When we get to the point that we feel we have achieved what we need to achieve and the outcomes are in place, we will continue to follow up based on the timelines I gave you.
Senator Day: I have questions for the other witnesses, Mr. Wainwright and Ms. Condrashoff, but I will go on the second round.
Senator Plett: On the question that Senator Day asked about why you have not asked employers or industry to help, I appreciated your answer. My question further to that is this: Has this been an impediment at all in placing people? Are you meeting the demands of, first, the individuals and, second, the employers with the business model that you have, or would you be able to do more if industry were paying?
Ms. Mitra: From Prospect's experience with our other services and based on the success that we have had in the program to date, I would say that we are meeting the needs of the employers and the individuals. Whether employers are being charged for that does not seem to impact that. It is not an issue at this time.
Senator Plett: It is not an issue.
Ms. Mitra: No.
The Chair: I have a supplemental to the supplemental, if I may. You are opening doors for people that employers would normally not employ. You are providing a new capability to them, but you have to get them to want to do it, because they have to accommodate some of these people in different ways than they would normal employees. You will have to provide them with a business case that will give them with a positive outlook.
What would you like National Defence and Veterans Affairs Canada to provide you with in order that you can implement this for the entire forces as a permanent capability?
Ms. Mitra: In our conversations with DND and the JPSU, they have recognized that job placement and retention, focusing on employers, is a big piece that is currently missing. They have been very supportive in helping us to get our model out there. We need them to ensure that the appropriate referrals are being driven to the program on a timely basis and that we have consistent communication and information management between us.
The Chair: Do you require funding for your services?
Ms. Mitra: Based on the early successes of the program, we will continue to provide information on the outcomes and the results as well as demonstrating what the retention services are about. That will help us put forward a case for funding.
The Chair: That is exactly it.
Senator Day: Ms. Condrashoff and Mr. Wainwright, you have a very valuable program that is being developed in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia. The University of Washington is interested in your project. Do you have collaboration with other institutions in this country? We are blessed with some good academic intuitions.
You mentioned the University of British Columbia and Queen's University. Is there collaboration going on with them?
Mr. Wainwright: UBC's Veteran's Transition Program for post-traumatic stress disorder is our backup. We are on the skills and education side, but we are not psychologists, so we need their help to ensure that we are well informed to deal with situations that arise. They have been very helpful to us.
We are trying to scale out across Canada. We have had to revisit our model. The University of Lethbridge was the first school we had conversations with, and they said that they would like to do what we were doing in Alberta. We were pleased and said that we would send them the blueprint. We ran into problems with legislation. Every institution has a mandate from its provincial ministry of education that allows them to do certain things and disallows them from doing other things.
Alberta was running into a problem in setting up our program. BCIT has a unique provincial mandate. We have revisited our model and decided to partner with local institutes in Alberta. The students can be registered online through BCIT but stay in Alberta. Because we are allowed to do what we do, we can do it for people in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. We can give them recognition and advanced placement. The local schools will deliver the courses and we will transfer them back into BCIT.
The Chair: That is not even distance learning. They would actually take the courses in situ.
Mr. Wainwright: The idea was to be a hybrid of both, yes.
Our program is three-pronged: education, job placement or resumé writing, and entrepreneurship. Students in a group called SIFE at universities across Canada, including BCIT, Queen's and Memorial, interact, and that is where many of the entrepreneurial-type programs are launched. Those students compete against each other in Toronto each year, but they share a lot of information and therefore build on each other's programs, and we see things happening across Canada.
It is an outreach program, and if one team discovers something good that can help society, it starts to appear across Canada through the other student groups. They are very good at collaborating and sharing information. The entrepreneurship side is spreading across campuses throughout Canada.
It is our education model that is unique in that we take blocks of military training and experience and place them at a high level in educational institutions. We are trying to work around the constraints by being the hub. Institutes can deliver it and we can supply the paperwork to make it work.
Senator Day: You can give certificate level accreditation for engineering technologies and then, if an individual so chooses, you can move him or her up to a bachelor level degree in the same institution.
Mr. Wainwright: We can now move them up to master's degree.
Senator Day: In some provinces, community colleges can do the first part and then, using New Brunswick as an example, the University of New Brunswick could take those students who want to continue with their education and give them credit for two years of engineering. That makes this work better.
Mr. Wainwright: That is part of our unique nature. The Americans have the same problem. They have associate degrees taught at the community college level that feed into the universities. In order for us to be able to coordinate this in another province, we would have to work with the community colleges and universities the students would move on to in order to figure out how to make it work. The more players there are, the more complicated it becomes. We have it internalized since we were granted this provincial mandate to deliver everything from certificates all the way up to master's degrees.
The Chair: We are talking about knowledge, skills, experience, training and education. It is a complex matrix. You are covering all five bases in trying to bring the equivalencies and competencies, which is unique in itself because academic institutions essentially work on knowledge and a bit of skill, except for universities like Sherbrooke that have co-op programs.
Senator Nolin: Ms. Mitra, you are receiving some financial support from the Government of Canada. Are you getting requests from other areas of the country for explanations of your project?
Ms. Mitra: The JPSU is very interested in understanding how the project could be rolled out in other parts of the country.
Senator Nolin: They are interested, but what is next? What have they asked you to provide?
Ms. Mitra: It is currently a pilot project with clear parameters. We will move forward with the success that we are having. We will use that information to establish a basis for a request for funding so that we can make the service available in other parts of the country and continue beyond the pilot phase of the project.
Senator Nolin: You will not face the problem Mr. Wainwright just explained of interfacing with the provincial authorities in each provinces. You are mainly dealing with employers.
Ms. Mitra: That is right.
Senator Nolin: He is dealing with degrees and is trying to put a label on an individual. Your programs are complementary.
The provincial factor is insurmountable. You have to work with it. I would be interested in knowing if someone in Quebec wants to operate or to have similar services. What is the answer? Who will give the answer?
The Chair: The pilot project is funded by DND now to look at whether this thing works, and then we suspect that Colonel Blais and DND will take another decision beyond that.
Ms. Mitra: I will clarify. First of all, Prospect's funding comes from a diverse range of funders, largely provincial and federal funding. We have a reserve fund that is achieved through our work. It is the dollars from that fund that our board has earmarked to put towards things like pilot projects in the case of program development. DND is not funding this pilot program; we are.
Senator Nolin: You created the need. Now they discovered what you have worked on, and now they will want that to be built all around the country.
Ms. Mitra: Yes. We identified a gap in service that is completely in accordance with our mandate and mission. We learned about it and designed a solution. We engaged them in a pilot project. We are showing the results. At this point, we will continue to show the results. The program is complete. It is there. The model is there. Everything behind it is there. For this be rolled out into other areas simply requires a decision on funding and somebody to give the mandate to go forward with job placement services.
Senator Nolin: Mr. Wainwright, when you started your exposé, I am trying to quote you imperfectly, but basically you said that when you started that, you discovered much more than you thought at first. Those skills are not obvious, but you are discovering them. For all kinds of bad reasons, the individuals are not there to help you because they do not know they have those skills. You are there to help them.
I am quite surprised about an area like Alberta, where every day we are told they need employees. There are job offers for many people. In other provinces, I am sure that the demand for such skills exists, but probably they do not know that former military can provide such a service or such an expertise. That is why I am curious to understand the link you have developed with other provinces. I understand your idea to go through B.C. and to go over the other provinces' problems, but it will not work in Quebec. You will need someone from Quebec to build their own set of structures to go through the provincial barriers. Have you received any requests from the Province of Quebec?
Mr. Wainwright: At this stage, no.
Senator Nolin: After three years?
Mr. Wainwright: Yes, after three years. We have been growing locally. This is a homegrown project that we have done. In my ideal model, I do not want to see us as the Canadian hub. I would like to see 10 of these.
Senator Nolin: You are doing it because no one else is doing it.
Mr. Wainwright: Ideally, it would be to find a partner institute in every province and say, "Here is what we did. Learn from us and improve on it, if you can, and take it over. " Each province should have something like what we are doing.
It is one of those things that have fallen through the cracks. When we present this program to various groups, academics and professional people, they are surprised that it did not exist before. That has been the thing. We have a lot of great things in this country, and sometimes we just assume that we have all the stuff covered because we do so many things, so it is getting the message out that there is a gap. We found the gap.
Senator Nolin: Even the Americans are looking to you for the answers. We are very good at keeping secrets. We need to spread the knowledge. We thank you for accepting our invitation.
The Chair: On Sunday I spoke at the Association of Canadian Community Colleges. There were a thousand people there, representing all of the Canadian community colleges, including Quebec. Are you linked into that? National Defence was there. Veterans Canada was not, but National Defence was. Are you selling your product throughout that network?
Mr. Wainwright: No.
The Chair: We want people to know.
Senator Plett: Mr. Wainwright, you do have a relationship, as you said, with the Legion. Have you pursued a relationship with the Commissionaires to determine whether they would be interested in also providing some funding?
Mr. Wainwright: Not at this point.
Ms. Condrashoff: The Commissionaires have spoken to us, informing us about their services. From what I understand, they are not very active in British Columbia simply because there is not the same supply of veterans as in places like Ontario. We are aware of them, but we have not pursued anything past information exchange.
Senator Plett: I would encourage you to continue with that. Senator Nolin commented about Quebec having some unique situations. There are lots of commissionaires in Ontario and Quebec. We could get programs started in other parts of the country.
Senator Nolin: It is not that Quebec is unique. What is unique there is the provincial responsibility. We cannot forget that hurdle.
Senator Plett: Thank you very much for your presentations.
Senator Day: I would like to confirm one point, and that is this reference to a pilot project. You had already told me you were doing this in Calgary, and the pilot is just to move what you were doing in Calgary up to Edmonton; correct?
Ms. Mitra: Yes.
Senator Day: That is just an expansion. I would encourage you to go to Vancouver Island and Comox. Lots of air force are retiring there and down at the navy base in Victoria. There are lots of commissionaires and veterans who have elected to stay. I would encourage you to do that.
Could you expand on this interview process? You indicated it is 40 minutes long. Can it be done online? Is it done person to person? Do you use volunteers for that? Do you have a template for that?
Ms. Condrashoff: We developed a template back in 2009. We wanted to ensure it was tested and that it accurately gathered the information that we wanted.
Interviews are either done by myself or, depending on my schedule, a volunteer interviewer who has been trained to be knowledgeable in the basics of the structure and culture of the military. We prefer to do them either in person or on the phone, simply because we find that having that layer of verbal and physical queues allows us to investigate and probe further into areas where we might not be able to understand if it was simply done over email or through any other kind of electronic means. That has been the best for us in order to discover these extra cases. Otherwise, we may have not picked up on them.
Senator Day: I am reading the notes that you provided to us, and two things jump out. One is that the assessment process requires a significant amount of time devoted by assessors both in their own training and the actual assessment process, so that highlights how important this assessment process is. You go on to say advisers during this assessment process will mine for transferable knowledge, skills and abilities that could be used by both education equivalency credits and bolstering resumés. That is an important part of your model that you just explained to us that I think everyone should be aware of.
Ms. Condrashoff: Thank you.
The Chair: In closing, the Canadian Forces 20-40 system, three years before these people retire, is supposed to have a program of equivalencies that is evolving and people are given the opportunity of doing that, and this is supposed to be maturing to the extent of creating equivalencies in academic institutions. We are surprised that that has not made its way significantly into the workplace or places like yourself. That is a deficiency that should be raised.
VAC does not seem to be anywhere in all of this, and that is also a concern.
My last point is about the tuition for the students. Who pays for that? Are the students paying for that? Is SISIP paying for that? How is that being done in your institution?
Mr. Wainwright: Individual students pay their own tuition. If they can get funding from somewhere, if we can give them a scholarship or bursary, we will. If they qualify for any funding available to them, they can use that. Once they have been accredited and accepted in, then they are like any other student. They have to pay their tuition.
The Chair: It is interesting that serving reservists get 50 per cent of that tuition paid by the reserves. Some veterans do not have access to that right now. We have to sort that out.
You have been magnificent. Thank you for coming here. These are very innovative programs. We hope they will followed up on. They will be significant in our report.
(The committee adjourned.)