- Member of Parliament
- NDP
- North Island—Powell River
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 65%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $145,542.18
- Government Page
- Nov/9/23 2:50:22 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, when women were invited into all military operations in 1989 and submarine services in 2001, they entered an environment not made for them. Trailblazers, these women endured through discrimination and lack of support, and the physical and mental outcomes they dealt with were not documented. Now, as veterans, they are often underserved because of the lack of documentation.
When will the government honour servicewomen and make it right?
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- Nov/6/23 3:15:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, women veterans will be attending commemoration services this week. Many of them will be asked if the medals they are wearing belonged to their husband, or their son or their father. Too often, they feel invisible and diminished when they should feel acknowledged and respected for their service. This must change.
Will the minister commit today to ensuring the participation of women veterans in Remembrance Day commemorations this year?
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- Nov/6/23 2:13:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, as we enter Veterans' Week, I want to take this opportunity to thank the members, past and present, for their dedicated service. We know both from history and today that the cost of conflict is far too high. All too often, we, as Canadians, think of their service during this time of year, rather than recognizing it every day. After years of working for both serving members and veterans, I understand that the dedication to service is high. Their thoughts always focus on the “us” rather than the “I”.
This year, I am particularly thinking of service women and veterans who are women. I know they have served and that those realities, both past and present, are all too often left invisible. They participate in Remembrance Day services wearing their medals and civilian gear, and are asked, “Are those your father's, husband's or son's medals?”
This year, let Canadians recommit to seeing veterans, all of them, and to acknowledging and appreciating their service. I thank all the women who have served or are serving. I see them. Lest we forget.
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- May/15/23 2:51:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, women veterans feel invisible. The Liberal government does not hear their experiences, stories or pain. Virtually no research is being funded about military women's health issues, including mental health. While New Democrats welcome the recently announced mood and anxiety treatment guidelines, the unique challenges of female veterans must be considered.
Will the minister commit, today, to including women veterans in creating these guidelines so that women who bravely served our country could finally be seen?
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- Apr/20/23 2:44:42 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Canadian families are worried about accessing services during the PSAC strike. The union is ready to work with the departments to ensure that veterans can maintain that access, but the minister refuses to talk to them. In fact, the minister has not met with the union president for over two years. This is disrespectful and puts our public servants and veterans at risk. What is he scared of? Will the minister do his job by talking to the union or will he continue to ignore his responsibilities to both veterans and the union?
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- Mar/27/23 3:09:04 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Veterans Affairs has been clawing back pensions from women RCMP veterans. These women experienced extreme brutality while protecting our country, and the government is denying what they are owed as directed by the Merlo Davidson lawsuit.
The New Democrats have been calling for these clawbacks to stop and, after months, finally the minister agrees. These women deserve action.
Will the minister apologize to these women, stop the clawback and reimburse the money they are rightfully owed from their pensions?
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- Mar/9/23 3:10:20 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, when veterans, advocates and VAC workers come together to say the same thing, the minister must listen. They want the contract of $560 million given to a company owned by Loblaws cancelled, because it is not working. It has been delayed, service providers are still unable to provide services, and veterans and their loved ones are being left behind.
Will the minister stop ignoring veterans' concerns and cancel this botched contract?
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- Mar/7/23 3:19:21 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, for decades, women in the RCMP suffered a shocking amount of sexual harassment and discrimination. Now Veterans Affairs is clawing back their disability pensions. Months ago, following the Merlo Davidson lawsuit, the ombud recommended the clawbacks stop. However, the minister has done nothing. He is making these women who served their country suffer all over again. When will he fix this and make it right?
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- Feb/13/23 3:05:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Veterans Affairs gave $560 million to a company owned by Loblaws to deliver services for veterans. Now the contract rollout is paused for the second time. Why? It is because the company was not ready. Veterans who gave everything to this country see their treatments on hold, their services delayed and providers confused.
Will the minister admit that outsourcing to a greedy for-profit company is not working for veterans and their families, and cancel the contract?
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- Feb/9/23 2:31:21 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, veterans and their families are concerned about the outsourcing of essential services to Loblaws.
My office has been hearing about treatments on hold while contractors re-evaluate veterans' injuries, significant delays in services and trusted providers blocked from delivering services to veterans who desperately need them. This contract is costing taxpayers 25% more and delivering less. Veterans deserve better.
When will the Liberals actually start serving veterans instead of greedy for-profit companies?
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- Nov/30/22 2:18:20 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it was just over 30 years ago that women were first allowed to participate in all military workplace settings, including combat by land, sea and air.
How these environments impact their fertility and pregnancy, and even the epigenetics of their offspring, remains largely medically unknown. Many military members delay their pregnancies to support their military careers, but then some find themselves with PTSD upon release and facing a lack of health care providers familiar with PTSD treatments and medications that are safe to continue when pregnant or breastfeeding.
Perinatal and mental health services for veterans and military women appears in three mandate letters for the Minister of National Defence, the Minister of Veterans Affairs, and the Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, but nothing is moving forward. I challenge those ministers to get to work on this important issue. Military and veteran women deserve to have equitable research and knowledge about the risks of the unique workplace exposures possible from the military.
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- Nov/24/22 3:14:08 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberals have been failing veterans for years. The minister has refused to hire permanent staff to support veterans, has suspended services for over a month and is now delegating tasks to a private company owned by Loblaws for hundreds of millions of dollars. Meanwhile, VAC has delayed the contract rollout because workers have not been properly trained.
This is a crisis. Veterans deserve so much better. Why is the minister putting profits ahead of care for our veterans and their families, and will he stop this botched contract?
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- Nov/4/22 12:06:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the union of veterans affairs employees has been raising the alarm about service delivery at Veterans Affairs Canada. They have serious concerns about the minister's ability to eliminate the backlog and manage human resources and his plan to outsource service delivery to a private contractor. Veterans tell me that VAC's quality of service has been slipping and that they and their families are the ones paying the price.
Does the minister understand that veterans need him to step up or step out?
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- Nov/3/22 11:58:55 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, very briefly, the NDP has again recommended that we need more non-market housing. At the end of the day, what we need to deal with the housing crisis across the country is housing that is actually affordable, not defined by corporations but defined by people's incomes.
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- Nov/3/22 11:56:45 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I did note the organization and what its name was earlier. What was so important is that the stakeholders and the municipality came together to say it was an issue they wanted to address. By bringing everyone together within that community, they identified I believe about 20 veterans in their area who were homeless. They then actively created strategies collectively.
One of the things we know, especially when we sit here in a federal seat, is that we are big and we cover a huge country, but local solutions make the most sense because local people know how to work collaboratively, so it is important that, as the federal level of government, we always look at ways we can support the people on the ground. If those resources are not given to those organizations, then the actions cannot be taken in a meaningful way.
I am glad London could do this, but I think it is very important that the federal government steps up, supports these kinds of programs and looks at models that work so we can do what we must do, which is get veterans into homes.
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- Nov/3/22 11:54:52 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, one of the key things we have heard from veterans repeatedly is that the transition period moving from service into their role as veterans is fraught with problems. The information back and forth is fragmented. They often carry the large load of trying to figure out how to make the system work. Therefore, the orientation of what services are available is not clear and is not done the way they need.
When we think about serving people, one of the best and important things we can do, especially when we are in a seat of government, is to listen to people who go through those transition processes, hear where the problems are and fix them. It is not to blame veterans for not being able to ask for help, but to understand that we need to provide better help. That transition period is absolutely key. If the trust is not built there, then veterans will not feel comfortable to come forward to say they need assistance.
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- Nov/3/22 11:43:38 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the amazing member for Edmonton Griesbach.
When I reflect upon this report, I remember back to 2019 when it was initially tabled. There was a sense of urgency from all parties in the House that this needed to be a priority for the government and action needed to be taken, so it is frustrating to be having this discussion again, knowing this report from 2019 was retabled by the committee, which had been waiting for a response from the government. The committee has now received that response. However, it still does not address the key issues. When we retabled this, I wrote clearly in the supplementary report that it has been a full three years, yet very little action has been taken on this critical issue.
I think also of how many veterans I have spoken to, how many veterans have come to the House of Commons to be a witness for us and how many veterans have sat at the table at the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs. Many times they are asked if they would serve again, and they always say yes. What surprises me as well is how many of them, when asked if they would encourage their own children or relatives to serve, say yes.
When we look at the reality of it, about 5,000 veterans are homeless now, without a safe place to live and dealing with things most of us cannot imagine, and they are still there. Even though they are there, they would still serve our country again. Their commitment to service runs that deep. It is important we remember that when we have these discussions.
Their dedication to service is so profound, and our dedication to serve should, at the very least, match theirs. Our service to veterans, as parliamentarians, is to make sure they have the best services they can, that they are accessible and that they are not waiting a long, long time for them. We have to make sure that 5,000 veterans are not going to bed tonight without a safe home to live in.
When I think of this, I think of recommendation 3 of the report, which reads, “That Veterans Affairs Canada, in cooperation with Employment and Social Development Canada and organizations supporting academic research, continue its efforts to better understand veterans’ homelessness, taking into account the overrepresentation of women and Indigenous peoples.”
It is important to research this, but at the same time, we need to figure out what is going on and do actions. I talked earlier today about the work being done in London, Ontario, to collectively identify veterans in the community who are homeless and make sure they have a safe place to live. It is important we recognize this.
We know, sadly, that of those veterans who are homeless, the number of women and indigenous people in this population is really high, when all of us in this place know that are they are still a very small part of the forces who serve us. Why is that? We need to figure out why that is. We also need to acknowledge that sometimes these groups are marginalized groups within a larger group who are even more marginalized by our systems. It is important that research is done, and that we honour that.
I come back to something else I also mentioned earlier today, which is the fact the Auditor General, in their report, was very clear that Veterans Affairs Canada does not collect data in a way that allows it to identify where the problems are. When we have veterans who do not have a home, who are waiting for the services they need and falling through the cracks, and who feel a great deal of distrust for the ministry, the department and the people who work there, we also need to look at the fact that the data is not there to provide the information to correct the problem.
What we see continuously is money being poured in, but we do not know if that money is being spent effectively because we do not know where there are bottlenecks. We do not know where the blockages are that veterans just simply cannot get through. We do not know that, and that is on the government. It is on the government to fix this core problem.
I know that we can talk about a lot of exciting things that get people really upset, but having good data means better services to veterans. I am very firm that we cannot stop talking about how important this is because a lack of data means veterans are not getting the services they deserve.
Recommendation 4 specifically talks about a “partnership with other federal, provincial/territorial and municipal organizations concerned, and with the community agencies”. In my riding, I have 11 Legions across some of the smallest communities we will ever see. The Legions are cornerstones to those communities because they provide support and services, and they create a place where a community to get together.
Those organizations want to do the work. We asked the government to take all of those stakeholders and make sure to work with them to implement an action plan, such as the national housing strategy, to actually get to the core and eradicate homelessness for veterans.
What we do know is that there are piecemeal investments under the national housing strategy in 2021. It really focuses on Edmonton and Ottawa, but it does not have any concrete plan to address this. That is a concern, and we know it can be done. Strategies can help veterans get into homes.
In fact, and I will say it again, on February 16, 2021, in London, Ontario they did just that. They did it. Built for Zero Canada, working with the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness on the national effort to address the problem, monitors the progress of 12 participating cities. It endorsed London's claim that the city had the first Canadian community to attain the status of functional zero for veteran homelessness because the groups focused on the issue, gathered the relevant data, looked at community-focused solutions and did it.
This is a model that we could be implementing by working with communities, regions, organizations and municipalities to identify what is happening in their community and which veterans are falling through the cracks. This is important because veterans do not often complain if they are homeless. They are ashamed that they are homeless, as though it is their fault, and they do not step up to disclose it.
So many witnesses have come before us to say that often, when veterans are homeless, they will not disclose that they are veterans, so they do not even know how to connect them with those resources. They have shame and also a feeling that the department will not do anything for them. Those things need to be addressed. They need to be taken seriously, and we need to demonstrate for veterans that there are solutions and that, if they reach out for help, they are actually going to receive it.
Not too long ago, I had a family member come to speak to me about a veteran in their family. She is an indigenous woman. She spent many, many years serving this country, and now she is couch surfing. She is living on the edge because how she left was not a good way to leave. I do not have permission to share what happened to her, but it was not a good thing. She left in desperation for her own safety from the military.
Now she is sleeping on couches, and she has so much need, but no matter how much her family loves her and no matter how much they reach out to her, they cannot get her to ask for the services because she no longer trusts the system. We need to look at that. We need to own that in the House and stop pointing fingers. We need to start saying we are going to stop doing that and we are going to start serving veterans.
In closing, I want to talk about recommendation 7, “That Veterans Affairs Canada and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police...sign a memorandum of understanding to make RCMP veterans eligible for the Veterans Emergency Fund under the same terms and conditions as Canadian Armed Forces veterans.” We have heard from the president of the RCMP Veterans' Association that this has not gone into place. However people have served this country, we have to show them that, on the other side of their service, they will be respected enough to get the support they deserve. I am here in the House asking for that to be a reality because veterans have served us. We had best serve them back.
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- Nov/3/22 11:25:17 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his very important speech. We have worked together on the veterans committee for years and I really appreciate his dedication, especially to francophone veterans.
Earlier this year, we were honoured to go with the minister to some important places. We went to Vimy Ridge and we went to Menin Gate. Those are places where there is such a deep respect for the men and women who served Canada and who served in those places during times that none of us can imagine. What concerns me is that we hear this long-standing history of Canada failing veterans. We continue to have over 5,000 veterans today who are without homes.
Why do we appreciate their sacrifice, but we do not see the government, or the past Conservative government, recognizing what needs to happen for veterans?
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- Nov/3/22 11:03:10 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I serve with the member on the veterans affairs committee, on which I have served for many years. I was there when the first report was tabled and then retabled to get a response from the government because it did not get a response due to the election in 2019.
It is too bad that we are not seeing the numbers change. There are 5,000 veterans, it is estimated, who are still without a home or a safe place to be, and those are the people who served our country.
The Auditor General was very clear in her report. One of the biggest challenges is that there is no correct data to identify the places where there are shutdowns of services. When we look at the system, services are not being delivered and we do not know why because the data does not tell us why. That seems like a big concern.
Will the government invest in making sure that the data is there so we can identify the bottlenecks and serve veterans much more effectively?
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- Nov/3/22 10:39:43 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for mentioning so many local organizations that are working so hard to keep our veterans in a safe place.
I wonder if the member would comment on the fact that London, Ontario is the first city in Canada to attain functional zero veterans homelessness status and how important it is for all levels of government to work closely with communities and organizations that are getting the work done, so whatever process is put forward actually works.
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