Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
National Finance
Issue 2 - Evidence - Afternoon Sitting
OTTAWA, Thursday, June 16, 2011
The Standing Senate Committee on National Finance met this day at 3:30 p.m. to examine the Main Estimates for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2012.
Sen. Joseph A. Day (Chair) in the chair.
[Translation]
The Chair: Welcome to the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance. Honourable senators, this afternoon, we are going to continue our review of the 2011-12 estimates before our committee.
[English]
This will be our final meeting on the Main Estimates before the summer adjournment, but we will of course continue to study them over the course of the fiscal year. That is one of the peculiar items. We have a reference on these Main Estimates, and we will continue to inquire from time to time on different aspects of them.
This past Tuesday we had heard from the Office of the National Defence and Canadian Forces Ombudsman. Unfortunately, the Veterans Ombudsman was not able to attend at that time but has kindly made himself available this afternoon, and I would like very much to welcome the new Veterans Ombudsman, Mr. Guy Parent.
Senators, we have one hour for this session, so your cooperation with respect to questions and answers will be very much appreciated.
Mr. Parent, the floor is yours.
Guy Parent, Veterans Ombudsman, Office of the Veterans Ombudsman: Honourable senators, it is a pleasure to be here. I thank you for the invitation and this opportunity to give you an insight as to how my office, the Office of the Veterans Ombudsman, works for veterans.
I would like to offer my apologies for not answering the first call of duty from the committee, but there was a previous engagement that allowed me to meet most of the people who represent veterans groups from across Canada. I felt it important that my presence be there. However, I am here today to answer any of your questions.
We have distributed some decks in French and English, to which I will speak. There are also some fact sheets that explain in more detail the issues that I will bring forward.
[Translation]
Although my presentation will be mainly in English, I would be happy to answer your questions or provide clarification in French or English.
[English]
Let us start with the first slide, which has to do with the background of the office. I will not elaborate too much on that because it is pretty well public knowledge.
The office started in 2007. This is important for the fact that it is a brand new organization, and there was only one term of three years under the first ombudsman. I took over on November 11, 2010, as the new ombudsman, with different terms as far as mandate is concerned. My appointment is for a non-renewable term of five years.
I work as an independent officer, but I report directly to the Minister of Veterans Affairs Canada. In fact, the mandate makes a distinction between two roles, one as a special adviser to the minister and the other as the ombudsman representative of veterans. It is important to realize that there is a distinction between the two.
As a special adviser to the minister, I have direct access to him and his staff to inform him of critical and emergency issues that he should be aware of without me or my team having to go through a process of investigation and research. That is a very important role, and I use that as a way into the minister's office to actually handle hot issues.
The mandate is quite similar to what you would expect from the offices of all ombudsmen. We are there, first, to inform the constituency, to provide information and referral to the programs that are available for them. Our first level of intervention at the office is staff who answer the phone and direct people to where they can get help, whether at the provincial level or the DND ombudsman, for instance. That is how we look at whether they are constituents or not. That is the first level.
Second, we assist people by addressing their complaints. Later on I will mention how many complaints we receive in a year and the type of complaints we get. Basically, that is the same as most ombudsmen.
Often, the personal complaints lead us to identify systemic issues. We have in our mandate the possibility to look at what are the systemic issues, to review them, to provide recommendations to the department and the minister, and eventually to make those recommendations public if action is not taken on those issues.
You will notice that for my mandate, in particular, there is a point that has to do with the Veterans Review and Appeal Board. As an independent tribunal, I do not have the mandate to review their decisions because their decisions are final. However, we do have a mandate to look at systemic issues related to the Veterans Review and Appeal Board, like processes, for instance, procedural fairness and those types of subjects. Basically that is the mandate.
It is also important to realize that we are an office of last resort, which means that constituents, veterans and their families must first use the appeal mechanisms that are available to the clients. However, the mandate is also very specific: Under compelling circumstances, we can come in and help people with their complaints and address their issues if there is an immediate danger to them, or their families, whether financial, health or wellness, or otherwise. That is also to be considered in the mandate.
The next slide, number 4, looks at the constituency of the office. This is where there might be a bit of a grey area. In fact, it probably makes sense that the bubble we have in here is grey, which is the biggest one. It is important to realize the difference between the Veterans Ombudsman and the National Defence Ombudsman, because there is a distinction between the two.
In this constituency slide we have four sub-constituencies. The biggest one, on the left, is the Canadian Forces veterans. The big grey bubble represents our constituency, but there are VAC clients and they are our potential clients as well.
Attached to that is a bubble showing the serving members of the Canadian Forces. Since 2005, they now have access to benefits programs from Veterans Affairs Canada while still serving. In fact, so have the RCMP.
In that particular area, if there are complaints from serving members that have to do with the administration of their benefits under Veterans Affairs Canada, it becomes my responsibility and that of my team to look after these issues.
You will notice two sub-constituencies in the big grey bubble. Out of the 91,000 serving veterans and the 593,000 former members, there are 66,000 clients of Veterans Affairs Canada. That is important.
On the right-hand side of the slide, at the top, we have the population who are veterans of World War II and the Korean War. Out of that portion of 155,000 veterans, 64,000 are VAC clients. You can relate that to age and health conditions, because it is a much older population.
The bubble in the middle has to do with the RCMP. My mandate calls for me to look after the RCMP. Again, I indicated that former members are constituents, but also serving members who are in receipt of Veterans Affairs Canada benefits. Out of those groups, about 9,000 are clients of Veterans Affairs Canada.
The last bubble on the left, at the bottom, shows you the survivor clients. These are people who have looked after veterans all their lives, like widows and spouses, and in this case mostly the traditional war veterans from the Second World War and the Korean War.
In relation to our constituency, if you go to the Canadian Forces side, out of that little blue bubble, approximately 6,000 people transfer every year from National Defence to the civilian community through retirement. That increases. I say that because it is sometimes mentioned that the clients of Veterans Affairs will be reduced over time, but in fact that is not necessarily true. Every year 5,000 to 6,000 people retire from the Armed Forces that could potentially become VAC clients. It is important to realize that as well.
The World War II veterans, for instance, now disappear at the rate of about 1,400 a month, which is a significant number. That also hits a warning button that maybe we should ensure that all the programs for World War II veterans are up to date and easily accessible. That is very important as well.
We will move to the office structure.
[Translation]
We have offices in two locations, Charlottetown and Ottawa.
[English]
The reason we have two different geographic locations is that I have to be co-located to the minister as a special adviser, but in fact for early resolutions of our complaints it is easy for the team that does the intervention to handle the cases with the people in Charlottetown, where the headquarters of Veterans Affairs Canada is located. It is working very well that way.
We have about 37 employees, and that varies depending on how many students we employ. We provide, as indicated in that slide, three areas of operations: communications; early intervention, which are the people at the front lines; and then research and investigation, which is located here in Ottawa.
You will notice that as the Veterans Ombudsman I am independent from operations. There are a few reasons for that. One of the main ones is to ensure the transportability of the office. If I were to leave tomorrow, operations would carry on. I am not involved in any of the operations other than, of course, budget planning, resource planning and strategic operational planning. Once this is decided, then the operation runs itself, which allows me the flexibility to be the voice for the office and the voice for veterans.
The next slide is a little complicated, but it gives you an idea of our operations. I draw your attention to the middle of the slide, where we show the number of calls that we receive. The statistics are approximate, but they are real numbers. In this case, to date we have received approximately 26,000 contacts. I want to make the distinction here that these are contacts with the office. They are not complaints. Some of them might be telephone calls, emails, or just where to call to get information. They might be quickly resolved.
Out of those cases, since 2007, we have opened over 5,900 cases. At this point, 120 cases are active and we are working on them on a regular basis.
You can see that as the cases come out of the active bubble they go into the early intervention side because that is where the first intervention is made. As I mentioned before, we have four levels of intervention for veterans at the ombudsman's office. We have the first level, which is information and referral. The second level is personal complaints assistance, where we resolve the issue in conjunction with Veterans Affairs Canada, at the lowest level possible. The third level concerns complex and sensitive cases that take a fair amount of time to resolve because of problems with regulations, policies and procedures. Those are handled with the research and investigation team in Ottawa. I will talk about standards later, but basically this is what happens.
Our tracking system from the early intervention allows us to detect trends. Those trends are one of the valuable sources of information to map out the systemic issues we will be looking at, whether it is a geographic trend, a policy-driven trend or a benefit-driven trend. In the previous fiscal year, this allowed us to see what issues we will deal with in the year to come. That is a good indication of that.
Of course, the other source of information we rely heavily on is our own staff. Often it is not just a matter of detecting statistics in the system. I think people who work in that domain all the time have a sense of trends and are able to recognize and identify them.
On the research and investigation side, you can see we have investigations under way right now. Some of you might have people who have contacted your offices with some of these particular issues. They are certainly issues of importance and we are looking at them this year. One is the VIP program, the Veterans Independence Program. We are looking at the review process of the Veterans Review and Appeal Board. Again, we cannot question its decisions, but we are looking at the review process and, in particular, how they handle decisions of the federal court.
We have planned investigations for the future that have to do with long-term care, mental health and families. I have adopted a theme for my five-year mandate, which is One Veteran. I am a firm believer that it does not matter where or when you serve. If you put your life on the line for the country and are injured in the process, mentally or physically, you are owed a debt that should be repaid by the citizens of Canada. It is important to recognize that everyone is the same, whether World War II, Korea, Tanzania, Somalia or Haiti. We should not segregate what benefits one receives, because it was not the choice of the military person to serve in that particular area. That is important.
It is not indicated on this slide, but we are presently working on reinstituting an advisory committee that will be representative of the veterans community, on one side, and representative of health professionals, on the other. I am trying to group these two types of expertise together to provide a good point of debate to look at issues coming from VAC, whether they are new or whether they are an interpretation of policies.
Slide 8 deals with service standards. I mentioned at the start that we are a new office. The first three years of information were used as benchmarking to see how long our processes take. If you have never worked with a department, what is the normal response time? How do you figure out what is a reasonable time? It takes a few years to do that. We did that the first three years. Now we are pretty satisfied with the level one, two and three type of intervention. We have implemented the service standards that you see here. The service standard for requests for information and referrals is five days. The service standard is 30 business days for complaints when no in-depth research is required, such as for non-sensitive and non-complex cases. The standard is five months for other complaints, which is about the time it takes for us to do a systemic investigation or review. That is pretty well straightforward.
We will introduce the standards for the systemic issues and complex cases as soon as we have the results of our customer satisfaction survey, which is coming up in September. That is the intent of the office.
The office client profile is the next slide. This is mostly for information. There is more detailed information in the fact sheet. It provides an indication of where our complaints come from mainly. You can see that the majority come from former service members or post-war veterans. There is a mix of everything, and again it depends on the issue.
The top seven issues are listed there. I think they are no surprise to anyone. I will be happy to answer questions on that list.
Complaints concerning health care benefits are frequent, because people want access and they want the best treatment possible. That is an important area to look at. The Veterans Independence Program is also an important one.
Although there is a lot of New Veterans Charter media hype and veterans advocacy hype about the charter, surprisingly enough, we do not get that many complaints relating to the New Veterans Charter and, of course, long-term care.
The last slide has to do with finance. I expect I am here only for this slide. This is the funding that we receive — $6 million and some a year. However, a lot of that money is retained by Veterans Affairs Canada because our funding comes from them. For example, $1 million-plus is retained for the provision of corporate services, for accommodations and that sort of thing. Basically, our operating budget is about $4 million. You can see here how it is broken down into the different compartments.
Mr. Chair, ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the introduction of the Office of the Veterans Ombudsman. I am happy at this time to respond to any questions you may have.
The Chair: Mr. Parent, thank you very much for your overview. I should tell you that this committee is National Finance, but we are also responsible for the machinery of government. We are interested in all pages of your presentation, not just the finance page at the end, which is of interest to us.
I am looking at page 343 of the Main Estimates. It shows the Veterans Ombudsman with $5.874 million in its operating budget. How does that compare to the figures you have just given us?
Mr. Parent: The total figure I have for the fiscal year is $5,269,230. If there is a need to clarify those numbers, I can certainly provide that to the committee.
The Chair: We are looking at is the money that you anticipate you will need to run your shop for the next year. We have $5,874,000, which is similar to last year.
Mr. Parent: Yes.
The Chair: I wanted to confirm that you do need that money in order to perform the services you have been doing.
Mr. Parent: Yes. It was very close this year. The only difference was in the use of the money. We had to switch money from the operating budget to actual salaries and wages.
The co-location of the early intervention with Veterans Affairs Canada in Charlottetown saved a lot of operational money, but we needed more people to process more quickly. We have done a shift from within to salary expenses, but the money is about where it should be right now. We do not have any difficulty with that. The only difficulty or question I might have is what we get from Veterans Affairs Canada for the money that is withdrawn from our budget. That is always a question: Do we actually get enough for our services?
There is also a difficulty with the perception of independence. If your services come from the organization that you oversee, are you independent from that organization? Personally, I can assure you that our director general has full responsibility for human resources and is delegated full authority for finance and human resources. I think the numbers are at the right place.
The Chair: How do you determine what your budget will be? Who tells you, or do you ask and then there is a debate as to how much you will have for the next year for operating expenses?
Mr. Parent: Yes. We work with the chief financial officer at Veterans Affairs Canada. Based on the operations of the last year, we look at whether it was sufficient or not.
The Chair: How many employees do you have?
Mr. Parent: Thirty-seven.
The Chair: Have you gone through any strategic review of your expenses up to the present time?
Mr. Parent: As a new ombudsman since November, that was one of my first concerns. Where are we with the budget and with the people? We have done the human resources integrated business plan to forecast for the future. I dare say that in the first three years of an organization there is a lot of up and down because you change the structure and create positions. It was a little bit unstable, if I can say.
My first concern was whether there was enough funding to do the work that we are expected to do, and then whether the money was used wisely. This year, with this integrated business HR plan, I think we are there. In our annual report in September we will be able to outline exactly where the monies were used and if there were problems anywhere.
The Chair: Will you show as well any increase in the number of employees?
Mr. Parent: Yes, that is right.
Senator Marshall: When you work on individual cases, are your decisions binding or are they in the form of recommendations?
Mr. Parent: There is a distinction between private complaints of individuals and systemic reviews with our recommendations to the minister.
On the personal complaint side, our recommendations are recommendations, but they are in the form of mediation. The front-line officer discusses the case with the staff officer from VAC who is involved with the case, and they come to an understanding. The basic role of an ombudsman is to ensure people understand the situation and that they recognize that there are exceptional circumstances. The bureaucracy and people who administer services after a while have a tendency to put everyone in the same bag. Our job is to ensure the people understand that there are distinctions and that those distinctions should be looked at. There are not necessarily recommendations at that point, but it is an engagement of mediation to find a resolution.
In contrast, on the systemic side, the reports are written for the department and for the minister's consideration. They are only recommendations, but we do give the department a chance to address those recommendations before they are sent to the minister. We send them a copy of the draft recommendations. Some recommendations might not be timely or relevant or even implementable because of things we do not know, and the department will inform us of that. They are only recommendations.
Of course, as for any ombudsman, the power is in the public. If no one moves on the recommendations, then in the interests of the public, we have the mandate to make the recommendations and the issue public.
Senator Marshall: When you went through your opening remarks you made reference to response times. We have had other witnesses here. They may have been representatives from Veterans Affairs Canada. One of the issues they raised was improving their response times. The information they provided to the committee indicated that the response times still had a long way to go to be acceptable.
Mr. Parent: Yes.
Senator Marshall: Could you give us some reaction to what the response times are with Veterans Affairs Canada and the Veterans Review and Appeal Board?
Mr. Parent: I can certainly give you detailed information at a later time.
Senator Marshall: Also, whether you think the response times now are acceptable or if you think further improvements should be made.
Mr. Parent: Maybe we can take note of that and send you some information.
Veterans Affairs Canada has undergone a big transformation effort, as we all know, as have all departments. In this case, they have been able to reduce the time from 22 weeks to 16 weeks, which is a fair difference. This is what they indicate.
We are concerned that it is fine to say 22 to 16 weeks, but what have you actually done? Changed the calculation? Have you brought efficiency to the process? We are looking at that right now. It is about how you calculate the time.
Senator Marshall: I think that is the information that was provided to us. My reaction was that four months is still too long. I would be interested in your views. Do you think that four months is too long? They felt they had made significant improvement and were proud of it, but I thought they still had a ways to go.
Mr. Parent: It is circumstantial. The first thing that has to happen when people apply for benefits to Veterans Affairs Canada is proof of service. The proof of service is important and is not always easy to get.
The second part is the injury, the diagnosis of an injury and the causality to your service. Is it really related to service? These are the things that take time. There is also the certification of service at a certain time, such as, "Were you in fact in Somalia at such-and-such a time?"
If the individual provides all the information and it is accurate, and they have witnesses and sources that Veterans Affairs can go to, I think we have to make a distinction about how long it takes for a simple case and one that is more complex. The standard should not be 16, 12 or 11 weeks. It should be as fast as possible to provide the benefits. That is the important part.
Senator Marshall: What is the response time with the appeals board? Is that satisfactory to you?
Mr. Parent: At the Veterans Review and Appeal Board the scheduling is a problem. There is a long wait. I have my legal counsel here, Ms. Diane Guilmet-Harris, who deals with a lot of those cases.
The Chair: Would you like her to join you at the table? That would be fine. We are quite an informal lot here.
Mr. Parent: If you want a good answer.
Senator Marshall: Some of the complaints are with regard to how long it takes to get a decision. Getting the decision is one thing, but the time period that you have to wait to get it is another issue. From what you are saying now, the appeals board meets periodically. They are not meeting all the time.
Are people who have an appeal with the appeals board being responded to in a timely fashion, or do they have to wait for unreasonable periods of time?
Mr. Parent: You are talking about the appeals side, not the review?
Senator Marshall: Right, the appeals side.
Diane Guilmet-Harris, Legal Advisor, Office of the Veterans Ombudsman: One of the things to keep in mind with the review board is they are also caught in the availability of the lawyer for the Bureau of Pensions Advocate . Some portion is the availability of the client, as well as the BPA, as well as the board members. At the review level, if the client wishes to appear, then they need to accommodate that, as well as where they have the hearing and what they are doing. I think all of those factors together are important.
When they do have a hearing, they have a service standard of six weeks to render a decision.
Senator Marshall: Do they usually meet that standard?
Ms. Guilmet-Harris: I believe they do. They are fairly accurate in meeting that.
Senator Callbeck: You mentioned the Veterans Independence Program. That is a program that many people complain to me about, the way in which it is delivered. There are two programs there, the groundskeeping and the housekeeping. If a veteran and his wife are receiving both services and the veteran dies, can the wife continue receiving those two programs?
Mr. Parent: Yes.
Senator Callbeck: If they were not receiving either service and the veteran dies, then she can apply. If she has low income, she is eligible. If they receive only one service, what happens then?
Mr. Parent: I see where you are going.
Senator Callbeck: After the death of the veteran, she cannot apply for the second service, and that seems to me to be very unfair. There are women who say to me, "Look, my next-door neighbour can get these two benefits, why can I not get them?" I would like you to explain that.
Mr. Parent: That is a good question. In fact, we are engaged with the department at this time to get that issue resolved. We are referring to section 16.1 of the Veterans Health Care Regulations. Ms. Guilmet-Harris can clarify that.
Ms. Guilmet-Harris: That was one of the issues. I started with the Veterans Ombudsman in April 2009, and one of the first issues I dealt with was the interpretation of section 16 of the Veterans Health Care Regulations that provides for the Veterans Independence Program. As a result of the situation you are describing, the department enacted section 16.1 to deal with the situation of widows who did not have any programs while the veteran was alive.
I made the argument that the interpretation they are giving to section 16.1 to deny access to widows for the second service they do not receive is a restrictive interpretation. We have taken this up on a number of occasions with the department, and they still have not wanted to move on creating a more liberal interpretation of that section. The ombudsman's office agrees that the interpretation the department is giving currently does not make any sense.
Mr. Parent: We have a new minister.
Ms. Guilmet-Harris: Yes.
The Chair: You have a Finance Committee in the Senate that is very sympathetic to that point. Do not hesitate to keep us informed on developments.
Ms. Guilmet-Harris: In my opinion, it does not require a regulatory amendment; it simply requires a change in policy.
Senator Callbeck: I am glad to hear you are working on it, and hopefully you will be successful.
I am sure you are aware of what has happened on Prince Edward Island recently where Mr. Fabien Melanson has been on a hunger strike for 10 days in front of Veterans Affairs. I know you cannot comment on specific cases because of privacy. However, he was saying that because of a clerical error made by Veterans Affairs, his cheque was not deposited into his account for four months and he ended up declaring bankruptcy and losing his house.
Yesterday, Veterans Affairs Canada apologized, but according to the press release I have here, they say that they have no way or mechanism to assist people who get into situations like Mr. Melanson because of an error that Veterans Affairs Canada has made. If they do make an error, it can have serious consequences, as it had with Mr. Melanson.
What are your thoughts on that? Should there be a mechanism or a way to assist him because the problem was caused by Veterans Affairs?
Mr. Parent: As you said, I cannot comment on the specifics of the case because our hands are tied and so are our mouths.
The problem in this case is that if there were immediate consequences, I am sure the department would have probably reacted differently. At this point in time — it has been six years — where does one draw the line on liability? It is always a matter that if we are responsible for doing something wrong, we correct it and apologize. We fix what we can at the time, but the consequences after that are sometimes out of our hands.
Every case must be dealt with independently according to the circumstances, and we need to convince Veterans Affairs Canada that when a case like this comes up, it must be looked at not based on similar previous cases but according to that particular situation.
Senator Callbeck: There is no mechanism. There is no way of dealing with it.
Mr. Parent: Not within Veterans Affairs Canada at this point, no.
Senator Callbeck: Do you think there should be?
Mr. Parent: I said there is not at this point. There are funds available to Veterans Affairs Canada to deal with emergencies. In fact, they use those funds to look after homeless veterans. They have introduced programs to fix that situation. That issue was lacking within Veterans Affairs Canada. There are now emergency funds available for situations where people are in dire straits. However, in this case, that did not apply. The situation did not require emergency funds, so it is one of those things that I cannot comment on for the department.
Senator Callbeck: I am not asking you about the specific case. I am just asking you about these types of situations. There must be all kinds of people who find themselves in serious situations. Does the department have any obligation here?
Mr. Parent: I cannot say what will happen six years down the road. As I said before, how long does the responsibility remain with the department? It is difficult to answer without going into specifics.
Senator Callbeck: I meant generally for people that find themselves in that position. My understanding is that he had been sick and was unable to do anything about pressing the department.
Senator Runciman: Another story was in the media today. I will not get into the specifics, but it was about a double amputee, someone who lost both legs in Afghanistan. He was retrained by the Canadian Forces in an intelligence analysis role and was then told that he was losing his job because, as I understand it from the press report, anyone who serves in the Canadian Forces must be capable of serving on the battlefield. That was the rationale.
If someone feels they have been wronged and cannot understand the rationale for a decision that has been taken, is that something they can come to your office with?
Mr. Parent: That is a very good question because it is one that specifically relates to the DND ombudsman's office. As I said earlier, anything that concerns release from the Canadian Forces and circumstances and benefits surrounding release are all within the jurisdiction of the National Defence and Canadian Forces Ombudsman.
The care that the individual would receive after release, when he does the transition to Veterans Affairs Canada, any complaints related to that would then become our responsibility.
Senator Runciman: You mentioned earlier that the programs available for any veteran, whether they served in World War II or Afghanistan, should essentially be the same. I thought that was not the case in that World War II veterans were receiving benefits that were on a higher plane, if you will, than the folks coming out of Afghanistan. Is that the case, or was that the case and it has been remedied?
Mr. Parent: What changed was moving over to a new concept of benefits, which was the New Veterans Charter. The traditional war veterans, from World Wars I, II and Korea, were on the dependency program and were given a pension for life. However, we must realize that people that volunteered to go to war were not trained or educated and did not have a pension fund. When they came back, they were pretty well destitute or unable to integrate into the civilian community and earn a living. That was the type of program there.
The New Veterans Charter brought in a concept of reintegration to civilian society as opposed to lifetime dependency. The same benefits are available now. Sometimes the New Veterans Charter is not well understood. You would almost need someone to appear before the committee just on the New Veterans Charter to explain it clearly.
Senator Runciman: That program does not have an impact on the World War II vets, for example. Do they stay under the same program?
Mr. Parent: The act came in during 2005 and started in 2006 with the new effective programs.
Senator Runciman: You also talked about RCMP serving members still using the services of your office. What sorts of things would they be contacting you about?
Mr. Parent: For instance, a police officer injured on duty while serving in an international peacekeeping mission overseas who sustains an injury there might qualify for some benefits from Veterans Affairs Canada. The RCMP, as opposed to the Canadian Forces, does not have a universality of service. They have a duty to accommodate, which is quite different. A person could continue to serve with the RCMP with some injury that is recognized by Veterans Affairs Canada.
Senator Runciman: As you mentioned, the Canadian Forces have their own ombudsman, but you also said some serving members use your services as well. Can you explain that?
Mr. Parent: That is under the same circumstances. It would be someone who suffers an injury that does not necessarily limit him as far as deployment or universality of service is concerned. However, that injury is recognized by Veterans Affairs Canada because something in his life has changed as far as the injury, but it does not harm him.
That created a little controversy. Sometimes people have a tendency not to declare injuries to the service due to the clause concerning universality of service. Even when I was in the service, I could see there was a tendency not to tell people you were injured because it could jeopardize your career. That does not mean that you cannot go to Veterans Affairs Canada and get a pension for it. That started in 2004, I believe.
The Chair: That point about the ombudsman for National Defence and you, the ombudsman for Veterans Affairs, created some confusion when we had the other ombudsman here. You explained it, and it sounds logical. However, from the point of view of the veteran or the person serving now — a former employee or a serving person — either one can go to you or to the other ombudsman, and a person who is no longer serving, a veteran, can go to you or to the other ombudsman?
Mr. Parent: That is only on certain issues.
The Chair: I understand. Is it seamless for them? Do you have a protocol so that the people we want to serve are the veterans and the people currently serving who need some help? They are not getting their problems sorted out, so they are going to you.
Mr. Parent: We have a mutual agreement to "hot transfer" files. Everyone signs a waiver of confidentiality. If people give us their permission, their authorization, we will transfer the file to the DND ombudsman or they will transfer a file to us.
It is important to distinguish between the two because the principles of operation are the same, but the constituency is quite different. The ombudsman for National Defence is an institutional, organizational ombudsman. He works within the organization. All the complaints are within the organization; they involve both parties that are inside the organization.
On my side, the Veterans Ombudsman deals with the administration of services from a government department to a certain clientele. However, there is no relationship between the client and the department, other than administering benefits, whereas there is a relationship on the National Defence side. Often the complaint is against a superior concerning the evaluation report for the year not being adequate, but it comes from a superior. It is quite different in the resolution of complaints. You have to preserve that relationship in the hierarchy of ranks while at the same time that you are trying to resolve the complaint. It is two different worlds. However, in some cases we work together.
The only other area is the transition piece when people are moving from National Defence to civilian life and our clients at Veterans Affairs Canada. I was recently speaking with Pierre Daigle, the ombudsman for National Defence, and we are looking at doing a joint systemic review of the transition process.
The Chair: It is that grey area we are wondering about. Someone who is no longer an employee of National Defence, no longer subject to the chain of command and no longer worrying or complaining about a boss could go to the National Defence Ombudsman or could go to you as the Veterans Ombudsman.
Mr. Parent: Again, that depends on the issue.
The Chair: Exactly, and that is the point we are trying to make. We would like to be reassured that you have it sorted out so that the client is not being shuffled around and told, "We do not handle that; go to the other one."
Mr. Parent: Our website and most of our publications indicate exactly what we can do and what the National Defence Ombudsman can do. Also, we have a duty to inform and educate, according to both of our mandates. Presently, the ombudsman for National Defence is doing that through outreach, and I intend to do the same; that is, go to serving members and veterans' organizations and say, "Here is the difference." That must be understood by everyone.
Sometimes the media has a tendency to mix up the two. Often they quote me as saying something, and they say the "military ombudsman." Well, that does not help, either.
The Chair: Do you keep any statistics on how many former employees of DND you have sent to the DND ombudsman or how many they have sent to you because the client is in the wrong place?
Mr. Parent: We can provide that to the committee.
The Chair: If you could, that would be helpful. The material you undertake to provide to the clerk will be circulated to all members of the committee.
Mr. Parent: I will do that.
[Translation]
Senator Mitchell: Mr. Parent, I would like to ask you a few questions about the information you requested from the federal government. I have notes that indicate that the veterans ombudsman does not have the power to force the federal government to give him the information that you are requesting.
Also, unlike the ombudsman for National Defence and the Canadian Forces, you have not received departmental directives clarifying the department's obligations to communicate this information. Why and what is the problem?
Mr. Parent: If I understand correctly, your question is about the cooperation of the Department of Veterans Affairs in providing us with the information required to resolve individual complaints or systemic investigations. There is no problem obtaining the information for individual complaints. We have had a little trouble in the past getting information from the department when the documents involved were written by the department itself and were part of certain files that we wanted access to. Since then, we have reached an agreement with the department to obtain letters of agreement to rectify the problem, but there is still some difficulty in that area.
There are also a few challenges surrounding access to information when citizens make requests to obtain private information.
Ms. Guilmet-Harris: We are still engaged in discussion with the department to clarify and reach an information sharing agreement that would be acceptable to both parties. We have been in negotiations for two years, and we dare hope that we will be able to reach an information sharing agreement. If the department refuses to give us some information, this would be handled in the same way as if it was a request for access to information, for example. The department would inform us that the document is confidential Cabinet document. This would at least let us know that the document exists, without revealing the document's content. It remains to be concluded this year.
Senator Mitchell: Thank you. I have a second question.
[English]
I would like to follow up on what Senator Callbeck was asking about, namely, section 16.1. It is interesting that that disadvantage would affect women much more than men. It is probably not a coincidence, but there is no way of knowing for sure.
How many people do you think that actually affects? How many widows or widowers are in the predicament that their spouse or partner has died and they still would be eligible for this if it were available?
Mr. Parent: We can provide the committee statistics about complaints that we receive on that issue. However, that would not be a true figure of how many people are affected. One of the big weaknesses of Veterans Affairs Canada is their communications. I am sure that some people are not aware that they would be entitled to that.
On that issue, we learned that we need to approach the department on those types of issues working on the fairness side rather than the regulation side. As soon as you enter the regulations mode, you get an army of lawyers that provide interpretation. I mean no disrespect to my colleague. However, if we can go to the department and explain the unfairness of one widow being eligible for something while another one is not, and if they agree, we can work from the legislation and the point of view of unfairness. That is why we are still engaged and hope to come to a successful arrangement with the department on that issue.
Senator Mitchell: The number of people it might affect is probably a critical indicator of the government's reluctance to respond. If you have only a handful of complaints but there are hundreds of people it could affect, I will bet that they would be assessing the actual costs incurred if they had to tell people about their eligibility. However, it is not fair.
You have said that you have been at this for two years and that you now have a new minister. Is this strictly a ministerial decision or are there structural impediments within the department? Is it a cultural issue?
Mr. Parent: I said that because it is new ground. We can re-explain and it is not seen from an old perspective. Sometimes the department sees it one way and the minister sees it a different way. You need to know those people to engage them properly and to be fair to the veterans' community. In order to do your job you need to know the people, and that takes time.
As we said, we are now approaching it from a different direction rather than from the legal aspect. We might fare better in that way.
Ms. Harris: The heart of the argument with the department, and where I disagree with the department, is that they say that in order to provide this additional benefit they require regulatory amendments. It is my position that this is simply a policy interpretation and that no regulatory amendments are required. Therefore, the minister can have significant influence in changing that policy.
Senator Mitchell: Of course, they want to jam the mega crime bill through in one day, but this has been ongoing for two years.
The Chair: I will have to cut you off now, Senator Mitchell. You prompted some other senators to ask questions. We have four minutes left, and Senator Nancy Ruth and Senator Seidman want to ask questions.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Is there a means test to determine what Widows A, B and C get?
Ms. Harris: Yes.
Senator Nancy Ruth: Are Widows A, B and C all in the same income test?
Ms. Harris: Yes.
Senator Nancy Ruth: So not every widow is entitled to every benefit; it is all income tested?
Ms. Harris: Yes.
Senator Seidman: I am looking at your communications and outreach chart under operations where you say that you have received about 26,000 letters, calls and emails from November 2007 until June 2011; is that correct?
Mr. Parent: Yes.
Senator Seidman: About 25 per cent of them actually become cases.
Mr. Parent: Yes.
Senator Seidman: I am trying to understand what the rest of them could be. If someone requests information, that is classified as a case. How do you classify the remainder of the communications, the other three quarters?
Mr. Parent: It could be information to the client or a referral. When we get a contact, we open a file, but not necessarily a case file. We keep the information and the name of the client for statistics of what is coming in, but not every one of those calls results in an open case file. An open case file is created when there is interaction between the client, the department and us, whereas with the others we simply direct the client toward the right mechanism. They may be asking about a program provided by a municipality or the province. Our frontline officers do that as well. It might be a reference to the ombudsman of National Defence, for instance. It might be referring someone to a provincial ombudsman if it has to do with long-term care or quality of care, for instance.
We answer and register all calls, but not all of them end up in a case file. Also, an individual could have more than one case file because the case files are based on issues. If you have three complaints on three different issues, we will open three case files. If we did not do that, we could not use our trend-detecting system as everything would be lumped into one case file. That is a way of detecting trends.
Senator Seidman: Of those that are not active cases but are simply information or referral, how many are not resolved and come back as cases?
Mr. Parent: I do not have the figures on that, but I can assure you that the last line of our frontline officers is, "If that does not work for you, call us back." There is always follow-up, and that is true of all of our interventions. We do not simply provide the information; there is always a loop-back to make sure that the people have the information.
The Chair: Senator Marshall, I promised you a question on round two. If you would like to put your question on the record, perhaps Mr. Parent could reply in writing.
Senator Marshall: Does this apply to all active or former RCMP members or only those who have served in Haiti, for example, or in peacekeeping missions?
Mr. Parent: It applies to all RCMP members and former members.
Senator Marshall: I did not know that.
The Chair: Senator Callbeck, if you want to put your question on the record, we will get a written answer to it.
Senator Callbeck: My question pertains to the heading "Geographic Profile" on your website where we see that you have 1,431 individual clients. Twenty per cent of those are from Atlantic Canada, which is high when you look at our population. I would like to know why that is the situation.
The Chair: It would be appreciated if you could answer that in writing.
Senator Mitchell: On your balance sheet page, I see that the budget for the "Veterans Ombudsman" line goes down from 2010-11 to 2011-12, but the budget for "VAC Internal Services" goes up. Why would that be?
Secondly, there is more and more evidence that once we have removed our forces from combat missions, there is the chance that many more post-traumatic stress syndrome disorder cases will emerge. There are technical or medical reasons for why that will occur. Have you anticipated that that will be translated into an increased workload for you? With this reduction in your budget, does that make sense?
The Chair: Regretfully, honourable senators, we have run out of time. If you can provide answers in writing to these outstanding questions, that would be appreciated.
I thank Mr. Parent for being here and Ms. Guilmet-Harris for subbing on short notice. We appreciate that. We had the National Defence Ombudsman appear before us, and they sent a lawyer along as well, so you are matching them lawyer for lawyer. Thank you for helping us out. Good luck to you in this very important service you are providing to Canadian veterans.
Mr. Parent: Thank you. It was a pleasure to be here.
(The committee adjourned.)