QUESTION PERIOD — Ministry of Veterans Affairs
Gender-Based Analysis
February 15, 2024
Thank you. I will go back to our Gender-based Analysis Plus, or GBA Plus, conversation. We often hear from veterans about their inability to access benefits that they feel they need. Again, I will focus on veterans who are women, who come from equity-seeking groups and certainly who are from our 2SLGBTQI+ community, because their needs are distinct.
We know we need data. However, in order to acquire it, we must ask the right research questions to begin with. Can you please tell me what Veterans Affairs is doing to create a specific GBA Plus sex-and-gender-based analysis tool that works for veterans so that we can capture things such as occupational exposures and reproductive issues, et cetera?
Thank you so much. Once again, this is certainly an area of great interest to me and to the department. We want to make sure that veterans get the help and support they need when they are accessing benefits.
Earlier today, a senator had asked about the delays that were happening with respect to applications for benefits. Not only were francophones affected by the delays in treatment but also women veterans — I will use that term, apologies. We saw that there was a delay in those applications as well.
Why is that? History has shown us that we have a lot more men who were in the Canadian Armed Forces who became veterans. Assessing and evaluating those files came naturally. They knew that if you jump out of a plane, your knees will probably be impacted. When it comes to women veterans, I think we all can agree that our anatomy is very different and the injuries that we sustain in our bodies are very different.
As a result, Veterans Affairs Canada put in place a dedicated team of individuals who adjudicate the files for women veterans. Again, we have to ensure that gender-based analysis is done, but also that we think about those different types of medical conditions.
That is just one example of the work being done at the department. There is still much work that needs to be done, but we are well on our way to ensuring that we can properly provide services to our female veterans.
