“VAC Minister Lawrence MacAulay secured a $139 million budget supplement”
by Michael Blais CD
Problems with backlogged applications at Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) have been a long standing issue for our veterans. They certainly predate the Afghanistan War but they have recently been exacerbated through a surge in applications by veterans of that conflict.
Many veterans are now reaching out to VAC due to the mental and physical trauma they have experienced as a result of their deployments in the “Stan” and elsewhere around the globe.
The Liberal Party made significant promises to resolve these issues during the 2015 federal election. Trudeau vowed to reverse conservative decisions which mandated closures of several district offices across Canada and streamlined hundreds of front line VAC positions into redundancy.
The Liberals also made significant pledges to implement policy changes aimed at simplifying the complexities of the application process and they promised to hire additional staff in order to focus on the adjudication of thousands of backlogged applications.
To date the district offices have indeed been reopened and hundreds of front line staff have been rehired, trained and deployed.
There have also been reforms and improvements to existing policies and eli- gibility standards, thereby creating another wave of applications as veterans of all eras have applied or reapplied for benefits and programs to which they now qualify.
As a result, mental and physical disability applications have increased by 40 percent since 2016. Over 75% of these applications were submitted by veterans who were not previously registered clients of VAC.
Not surprisingly, these statistics have adversely impacted an adjudication system that was already under siege. Failure to attain the government’s stated performance standard of 16 weeks to process a claim became endemic. It has also become abundantly evident that critical reforms within the decision-making component were required and additional staff are needed to address the deteriorating situation.
By 2020, the backlog of applications had ballooned to over 23,000 claims. To rectify this, VAC was granted authority to hire up to 350 new employees with the specific goal of reducing this backlog.
Important policy revisions were concur- rently implemented with a focus on reduc- ing the complexities of the application process in order to expedite the formal decisions required before VAC can provide support.
Unfortunately, the COVID virus erupted across Canada during this same period. Subsequent federal and provincial public health mandates imposed severe re- strictions and pandemic-related delays were incurred as VAC adapted to the situation.
Scheduled in-person appointments with veterans across the nation were postponed, often re-booked weeks or even months later as successive waves of COVID variants dictated further delays.
Despite COVID, those additional staff which VAC hired to reduce delays in appli- cation adjudication have had a successful impact; the backlog has been reduced by 44%, and over ten thousand veterans’ claims have been adjudicated. Waiting times for non complex, ‘common’ military service related disabilities have also been greatly reduced.
There were some fears that the depart- ment’s efforts would falter at the end of March 2022 once the hundreds of temporary employment contracts expired. However such an eventuality was averted when VAC Minister Lawrence MacAulay secured a $139 million budget supplement from Treasury Board to extend the program for the next two years.
The department’s current objective is to halve the 13,000 backlogged files which do not conform to the 16 week processing standard by this spring.
In another important development, VAC has now formally acknowledged the necessity to provide expedient care to those veterans who have endured mental trauma related to their service.
