VAC in the News

[brihard]

Who, exactly, gets appointed to keep the chair warm at this point doesn't matter. As of the cabinet shuffle, VAC became a functionally autonomous bureaucracy under Walt Natynczyk. There's little that a new, uninitiated minister can or should be doing that has any real significance. And realistically I don't expect us to see much from either of the major contenders leading into this next election. VAC's gonna be tucked back away in the closet now that the NVC rewrite has been achieved and implemented.

The pressing issue in VAC for the next government is going to be wait times, but even that's primarily bureaucratic and the minister will be more a figurehead than anything.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

There has been a lot of push from Veterans, this year, demanding a stop to the political football status that has plagued us all along. I'm seeing people being more vocal, over the issue, to the candidates.

 

[brihard]

There has been a lot of push from Veterans, this year, demanding a stop to the political football status that has plagued us all along. I'm seeing people being more vocal, over the issue, to the candidates.

Yup. Let's call it what it is: VAC is a minor portfolio whether we like it or not. It simply is. At best it's a distracting side show for the government that occasionally produces some embarassing stories.

Pick a suitably middling important member of the government, give them the portfolio, and tell them to expect to stay there. Then friggin' let them be so they can get familiar with the department, and can actually meaningfully work issues. MVA is actually one of the narrowest portfolios; a single governmental department that focus on a very small range of services and programs, though with a large client base. It's a portfolio that someone with adequate knowledge of how the government bureaucracy works) could get legitimately good at if left to do so. Ideally find someone with enough military experience to understand the culture they're coming into. O'Toole was a really good choice (I view his limitations as primarily having been the part in power and the economic times, not his capabilities, insight, or determination to do the job). McCrimmon could be as well.

Then once you have someone credible, someone with thick enough skin to deal with vets (because we eat our ministers alive given the chance), someone who knows the system well enough to do meaningful work within it, set them loose and let them work.

 

[Navy_Pete]

I think if they really want to change, they need to put someone in charge who gives a damn, and probably shuffle off a number of the senior executives (and supporting peons).  They are running it like a drive through with service time targets and 'optimized outcomes' rather than a complex department with a ton of baggage.

VAC, PWGSC and INAC almost need to be burnt to the ground and restarted.

Glad the Minister resigned rather than marking time; she seems like she might be a rare politician with integrity.

 

[brihard]

Harjit Sajjan has been appointed as 'Acting' Minister of Veterans Affairs. I would read that to mean in addition to his MND portfolio. So yeah, placeholder.

Further thoughts: Sajjan is a key cabinet minister in defense. They've appointed someone who can duck into VAC as necessary to put out fires based on existing subject matter knowledge, but it will not be the chair he warms day to day.

 

[Navy_Pete]

Harjit Sajjan has been appointed as 'Acting' Minister of Veterans Affairs. I would read that to mean in addition to his MND portfolio. So yeah, placeholder.

Further thoughts: Sajjan is a key cabinet minister in defense. They've appointed someone who can duck into VAC as necessary to put out fires based on existing subject matter knowledge, but it will not be the chair he warms day to day.

Honestly I think VAC should be a juniour minister that reports to MND (Vice Deputy MND?).  It's ridiculous that there is no common reporting on the two when they are so intertwined, and that way the polis always have skin in the game for the whole lifecycle of active/retired members.  Right now they can each pass the buck as things come up because there is no overlapping responsibility.

 

[brihard]

Honestly I think VAC should be a juniour minister that reports to MND (Vice Deputy MND?).  It's ridiculous that there is no common reporting on the two when they are so intertwined, and that way the polis always have skin in the game for the whole lifecycle of active/retired members.  Right now they can each pass the buck as things come up because there is no overlapping responsibility.

That's precisely why they moved to have MVA as the Associate Minister of National Defense. It's part of the strategy of interfacing the two departments for the 'closing the seam' initiative, likewise the whole shift in language from 'release' to 'transition'. There's a lot more work between the two departments than is immediately visible.

 

[Rifleman62]

Seems that other agree with you.

https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2019/02/12/revolving-door-of-ministers-in-the-veterans-affairs-department-causing-worry.html

‘Revolving door’ of ministers in the veterans affairs department causing worry - 12 Feb 19

OTTAWA—In the political controversy engulfing Justin Trudeau’s government, advocates fear that the revolving door atop the veterans affairs department means that veterans and their priorities are getting short shrift. Jody Wilson-Raybould on Tuesday announced her resignation from cabinet after serving barely a month as veterans affairs minister.

She quit cabinet amidst allegations that Trudeau’s office had pressured her in her former role as attorney general to mediate a settlement with SNC-Lavalin rather than pursue criminal charges. In the wake of her announcement, Trudeau said that Harjit Sajjan, who is the defence minister, would take on the role of veterans affairs minister too. He becomes the eighth minister to hold the position since 2010 and the fourth since the Liberals took office in 2015.

“It’s extremely frustrating,” said Scott Maxwell, executive director of Wounded Warriors Canada. “Who can possibly effect the real substantive reforms needed in any ministry under these time frames. The answer, of course, is nobody,” he said. “Our message is that veterans and their families deserve better,” said Maxwell.

In the wake of Tuesday’s resignation, the Royal Canadian Legion called on the government to create one department to merge Veterans Affairs Canada and the Department of National Defence to ensure seamless oversight of military personnel “from recruitment into retirement.

“We have witnessed several puzzling changes to VAC’s leadership in recent years, and we now question just how committed government is to Canada’s veterans,” the legion said in a statement. “On their behalf, we ask that the veteran portfolio overall be treated as a vital one, and that government take swift action so that critical issues related to our veterans’ well-being are dealt with immediately,” the statement said. Successive governments have faced criticism that the benefits provided to veterans fall short at the very time that government is faced with a wave of veterans suffering the mental and physical wounds from Canada’s extended mission in Afghanistan.

Kent Hehr was the first politician to hold the post in Trudeau’s government, followed by Seamus O’Regan, then Wilson-Raybould and now Sajjan. Each change means a steep learning curve for the minister and their staff as they get up to speed on the issues facing the department, the complex array of veterans benefits and get acquainted with stakeholders. That inevitably means delays. Sajjan at least comes into the portfolio with some familiarity with the issues, thanks to his time as defence minister and a veteran of the Armed Forces himself. But it still means that the job of veteran affairs minister is now a part-time role, held by a minister juggling two departments. Maxwell noted that a few ministers have stayed in their portfolios for a prolonged period, including Finance Minister Bill Morneau and Sajjan and questioned why veteran affairs doesn’t merit the same stability. “It’s time that it did and it needs to,” he said.

NDP MP Gord Johns, the party’s critic for veterans affairs, said that veterans have grown frustrated with “revolving door” of ministers for the department. He praised Wilson-Raybould as a “capable” minister and said expectations were running high that she could make headway on the issues facing the department. “I think a lot of veterans were very excited of her stature and her CV,” said Johns (Courtenay—Alberni). He met with Wilson-Raybould just last week and agreed to meet again to work together on veterans issues. “She was open and willing to work on issues with me,” Johns said. “Veterans are tired of rhetoric. They want a minister that is committed to working on their issues,” he said in an interview. “Veterans are really being lost in all of this.”

Even when she took on the post in a January cabinet shuffle, Wilson-Raybould had to push back on suggestions that the veterans affairs role was a demotion in the hierarchy of cabinet positions. “I can think of no world in which I would consider working for our veterans in Canada as a demotion,” Wilson-Raybould told reporters on the day of the shuffle. Trudeau himself declared that day that serving as veterans affairs minister is a “deep and awesome responsibility.”

 

[daftandbarmy]

Even when she took on the post in a January cabinet shuffle, Wilson-Raybould had to push back on suggestions that the veterans affairs role was a demotion in the hierarchy of cabinet positions. “I can think of no world in which I would consider working for our veterans in Canada as a demotion,” Wilson-Raybould told reporters on the day of the shuffle. Trudeau himself declared that day that serving as veterans affairs minister is a “deep and awesome responsibility.”

The Veterans

By Rudyard Kipling


TO-DAY, across our fathers’ graves, 
  The astonished years reveal 
The remnant of that desperate host 
  Which cleansed our East with steel. 
 
Hail and farewell! We greet you here,       
  With tears that none will scorn— 
O Keepers of the House of old, 
  Or ever we were born! 
 
One service more we dare to ask— 
  Pray for us, heroes, pray,       
That when Fate lays on us our task 
  We do not shame the Day!

For shame.....  :tsktsk:

 

[Rifleman62]

Assuming anyone here who is pending Release is aware of this. Headline is a bit misleading. All VAC is proposing is delaying your application.

Note the other VAC articles at link:

- Veterans Affairs $165M gaffe headed to Federal Court in proposed class-action lawsuit
- Anatomy of a blunder: How Veterans Affairs quietly buried a $165M accounting error
- Ottawa short-changed more than 270,000 veterans on pensions, disability payments
- Veteran launches proposed class-action lawsuit over disability benefit formula
- Legal disputes involving veterans cost federal government almost $40 million over two years

IMO, seems VAC is thoroughly confused, disordered, damaged, or to use the slang vice the definition, ****ed-up.


https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/veterans-lifetime-pension-disability-lump-sum-1.5020335

Veterans get new option on pensions — and Veterans Affairs gets out of a cash crunch - 15 Feb 19
    Giving veterans the option of postponing disability claims helps VA cope with a deep backlog of applications

Wounded and injured soldiers — both serving and retired — have been given the option of postponing the filing of disability claims until after the Liberal government's pension-for-life plan is implemented on April 1, CBC News has learned. Those who file a disability claim before April 1 do not get to opt for a pension-for-life. They're entitled only to lump sum compensation. Holding off until the new budget year begins gives them that choice between the pension and the lump sum. And it turns out the delay also helps Veterans Affairs out of a budget jam, according to leaked Department of National Defence documents.


Deep backlog, shallow funds

One of those documents — an email dated Feb. 4, 2019 — stated there is a shortage of disability award funds "within VAC due to [the] increase of awards from [the application] backlog clean up." (So is VAC declining applications due to lack of funds and and/or declining for a later Appeal process by the Applicant? Article opens that distrust)

The bigger problem, according to a veterans watchdog group, is that the option to delay filing has not been communicated to the wider veterans community. According to the documents, the process change has been passed along to those still in uniform through the military chain of command and support centres. It's another example of a double standard at work within Veterans Affairs, said Mike Blais, president of Canadian Veterans Advocacy. "There'd be many who would want to avail themselves" of the pension option, Blais told CBC News. "I'm very disappointed. It's supposed to be one veteran, one standard."

Blais praised National Defence for being proactive but said Veterans Affairs is missing in action. "It's not fair for Veterans Affairs Canada to come forward with a program that benefits those who are serving while excluding and denying veterans in the wider community," he said. A spokeswoman for Veterans Affairs, Emily Gauthier, said in an email there have been "communications" with the veterans community and the department has "designed a process so a current application could be suspended and transitioned" to the new system.

National Defence, it seems, went to extraordinary lengths to get the word out among those still serving. A spokesman, Maj. Travis Smyth, said late Thursday that 3,500 letters were sent in December to members who were scheduled to retire in the near future. Those letters were followed up with telephone calls and in-person interviews.  All of it, Smyth said, was supported by Veterans Affairs.

During the 2015 election campaign, the Liberals promised to give injured military members the option of receiving either a lifetime pension or a lump sum disability award. The plan, which involved a complex redrawing of the benefits system, was unveiled in December 2017 with a scheduled implementation date of April 1, 2019. At the moment, military remembers are only eligible for a lump sum award to compensate for pain and suffering due to injuries. Those veterans whose applications are now in the system — and processed before March 31 — do not have the pension option.

"Please note that the VAC (service delivery) team has just released a new directive to deal with those (Canadian Armed Forces) members (who are) applying for a (disability award/disability benefit) but wish to wait (hold) on their approval until after 1 Apr 19 in order to receive a monthly payment vs. lump sum award," reads a Feb. 4, 2019 email obtained by CBC News, written by Lt.-Col. Trevor Campbell, a liaison officer to Veterans Affairs. "There has also been a lot of discussion here lately on temporary shutdowns and delaying of adjudication decisions until post [pension for life] implementation."

Veterans Affairs asked for more money

Part of the reason for offering veterans the option of delaying disability claims is the administrative and information technology changes the new pension-for-life will require. But the other — and more significant — reason for the policy shift is the budgetary crunch at Veterans Affairs created by an enormous backlog of disability applications.

As of last December, Veterans Affairs had 27,107 disability claims registered in the system. Of those, 15,421 — 57 per cent of the total — had been waiting in the queue for more than four months.

Veterans Affairs officials recently went before Parliament to ask for a budget top-up of $323.2 million. "The requested funds are to support increases in some programs which stem mainly from an increased number of veterans accessing support, such as the Disability Award and the Earnings Loss grant," say the supplementary budget estimates tabled Jan. 29, 2019.

Blais said the department should have had a better handle on the numbers. "I think they underestimated the ability of the community to get veterans to come forward, particularly on mental health (claims), and that their projections were woefully inadequate," he said. Gauthier insisted the department "has sufficient funds to meet disability award demands" in the current budget year.

 

[meni0n]

I guess that's why I got an application sitting at Step 1 for about 3 1/2 months now.

 

[Rifleman62]

It is an option. Did you request deferral?

 

[The Bread Guy]

... Veterans Affairs officials recently went before Parliament to ask for a budget top-up of $323.2 million. "The requested funds are to support increases in some programs which stem mainly from an increased number of veterans accessing support, such as the Disability Award and the Earnings Loss grant," say the supplementary budget estimates tabled Jan. 29, 2019 ...

More on that ask on page 10 here (16 pg PDF)

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Perhaps it's just me. I have a sense of foreboding coming from that last paragraph. It sounds like this may be a sticking point when it comes to the budget and they are laying the ground work for a decision that might be unpopular.

 

[meni0n]

It is an option. Did you request deferral?

I did not

Sent from my LG-H873 using Tapatalk

 

[brihard]

Disability claims are a 'must pay'. VAC cannot 'run out of money' in such a manner as to result in those not getting paid out- statutorily they have to pay the claims if entitlement exists. Going to Parliament for a top up basically just means they didn't anticipate a surge of claims, but it should be a pretty routine thing to get the funds allocated.

Frankly this story gives me a bit of hope in that it means a lot of people who've been sitting there suffering for a long time are coming forward.

 

[Rifleman62]

To add to milnews.ca graphic:

https://www.pbo-dpb.gc.ca/en/blog/news/veterans%20benefits

The cost differential between three regimes of Veterans Benefits - 21 Feb 19

Posted by: Yves Giroux Posted in: Upcoming Reports
To be published.

 

[brihard]

To add to milnews.ca graphic:

https://www.pbo-dpb.gc.ca/en/blog/news/veterans%20benefits

The cost differential between three regimes of Veterans Benefits - 21 Feb 19

Posted by: Yves Giroux Posted in: Upcoming Reports
To be published.

Thanks, I'll be interested to watch for that. I hope they show a comparison both of 'yearly' as well as 'lifetime' costs. I was annoyed a few weeks back when the stories were being spun about how VAC was 'saving money off the backs of vets' due to the move to PFL over the lump sum disability awards. It was simple accounting of 'smaller amount, all at once now' versus 'larger amount spread over time'. E.g. buying a home cash or getting a mortgage. Obviously moving to a 'spread over lifetime' system would mean less outlay in the near term five years, but I want to see honest numbers of 'dollars in pockets' over different spans of time.

Once a couple years pass I'd be interested to see who is electing up front lump sums versus monthly payments for life. I could definitely see both being advantageous for different people in different circumstances. I also wonder if the system will allow people to make a decision about monthly vs lump sum *after* eligibility for IRB and APSC is determined. Having that certainty on monthly cash flow woul dbe a big deal for deciding whether to take it all at once or monthly.

 

[blackberet17]

Disability claims are a 'must pay'. VAC cannot 'run out of money' in such a manner as to result in those not getting paid out- statutorily they have to pay the claims if entitlement exists. Going to Parliament for a top up basically just means they didn't anticipate a surge of claims, but it should be a pretty routine thing to get the funds allocated.

Frankly this story gives me a bit of hope in that it means a lot of people who've been sitting there suffering for a long time are coming forward.

Hi folks,

Apologies for the lengthy silence.

FSA, the request to TB for a "top-up" is SOP. It's not that different from a unit allocating funds in its Op Plan per its allotment from higher, and then needing to go back to Bde/Div for more funds when it forecasts as shortfall in, ex., Cl A pay, O&M, etc., due to new pressures not forecast the year prior in developing said Op Plan.

In this case, as already in the media, VAC went through a number of steps to streamline adjudication processes, which resulted in faster processing times for certain claim types. This in turn led to more money going out the door in paid disability benefits, leading to the need to request a "top-up".

I'll block off some time over the coming weeks to go back through posts to see where I can help with info, etc. If there are any outstanding items folks think are within my wheelhouse, please feel free to PM me with a link to the post, and I'll do my best to respond to it as quickly as possible.

Cheers.

 

[brihard]

Hi folks,

Apologies for the lengthy silence.

FSA, the request to TB for a "top-up" is SOP. It's not that different from a unit allocating funds in its Op Plan per its allotment from higher, and then needing to go back to Bde/Div for more funds when it forecasts as shortfall in, ex., Cl A pay, O&M, etc., due to new pressures not forecast the year prior in developing said Op Plan.

In this case, as already in the media, VAC went through a number of steps to streamline adjudication processes, which resulted in faster processing times for certain claim types. This in turn led to more money going out the door in paid disability benefits, leading to the need to request a "top-up".

I'll block off some time over the coming weeks to go back through posts to see where I can help with info, etc. If there are any outstanding items folks think are within my wheelhouse, please feel free to PM me with a link to the post, and I'll do my best to respond to it as quickly as possible.

Cheers.

Offhand (eg anecdote vs data), what are you guys seeing internally with regards to backlogs and processing times? It has seemed to be slowly trending in the right direction from what I'm piecing together- though with a long way yet to go. What's it look like at the coal face?