Introduction
Decades of institutional neglect have left today’s veterans with a patchwork of benefits and solutions that often fail to meet their needs despite many years of calling for reform.
Veterans with similar service-related injuries or illnesses are still being compensated differently based on where and when they served. The current system is still not meeting the needs of veterans from equity-denied groups (women and gender-diverse people, 2SLGBTQ+ people, racialized people, Indigenous Peoples, francophones, etc.). It is still failing to address the disproportionate number of homeless veterans.
Veterans’ family members continue to face mental health problems related to frequent postings, long and multiple absences, and the inherent risks of military service. For four years, the Office of the Veterans Ombudsman has called for investments to provide mental health treatment benefits for family members of Canadian Armed Forces veterans in their own right.1Office of the Veterans Ombudsman, “2024 Spotlight,” Government of Canada, April 24, 2025, https://www.ombudsman-Veterans.gc.ca/en/publications/report-cards/spotlight-progress-update-on-ovo-recommendations-to-vac-2024.
With increased attention and spending on national defence, now is the time to take a more holistic approach and remember that active service members eventually become veterans. We cannot fund one part of people’s lives and then leave them to languish for the remainder.
Overview
A long overdue inquiry into programs and services for veterans
The last time that the federal government undertook a comprehensive independent review of veterans’ benefits and services was in the 1960s. Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) programs and services that provide care and support to ill and injured veterans and their families are still based on programs that were established to meet the needs of aging World War II and Korean War Veterans. As of 2023, those veterans represented just 4,162 of VAC’s more than 194,098 clients.
The New Veterans Charter of 2006 brought dozens of legislative changes, new benefits, and “enhancements” to programs and services for veterans. Rather than meeting veterans’ needs in a straightforward way, these layers of regulations, policies, and eligibility criteria led to duplication, complexity, confusion, frustration, and feelings of institutional betrayal.
The Office of the Veterans Ombudsman2Office of the Veterans Ombudsman, Financial Compensation for Canadian Veterans: A Comparative Analysis of Benefit Regimes, 2020, https://ombudsman-Veterans.gc.ca/en/publications/systemic-reviews/financial-compensation-analysis. has called for a national conversation to identify a clear vision and clear outcomes for Canada’s veterans and their families. It is time to hold an independent inquiry to ensure that ill and injured veterans, their families, and the larger, diverse community of veterans all receive the care they need and deserve.
Medical care that truly meets the needs of veterans and their families
Veterans continue to experience issues in transitioning to provincial “civilian” medical systems. They need medical professionals who are trained to care for them properly—physicians and other care providers who understand military sexual trauma, operational stress injuries, chronic pain, post-traumatic stress disorder, and moral injuries, among others.
This type of care may need to be delivered in person to be most effective. The 2024 budget included $9.3 million over five years to fund telemedicine for veterans and their families, but there continue to be questions about its efficacy. Veterans using telemedicine reported3Deanna L Walker, M.S. Nouri, R.A. Plouffe, J.J. W. Liu, T. Le, C.A. Forchuk, D. Garlaga, K. St-Cyr, A. Nazarov, and J.D. Richardson, “Telehealth experiences in Canadian veterans: associations, strengths and barriers to care during the COVID-19 pandemic,” BMJ Military Health, May 12, 2023, https://militaryhealth.bmj.com/content/early/2023/05/11/military-2022-002249. they felt rushed, were concerned about limited privacy in their homes, had difficulty concentrating, had to deal with long wait times, found only limited accommodations for hearing and visual impairments, and experienced miscommunications that led to errors. In general, treatment via telemedicine is less effective for substance use problems, chronic pain, and many women’s health needs.
Veterans experiencing homelessness
Veterans are two to three times more likely to experience homelessness than the general population. The estimated number of unhoused veterans in Canada is somewhere between 2,400 to more than 10,000.4Taylor Chase, Alison Clement, Sandrine Desforges and Anmol Gupta, Addressing Veteran Homelessness in Canada, McGill, July 2023, https://www.mcgill.cVeteranllschool/files/maxbellschool/ofha_veteran_homelessness_policy_brief_-_2023.pdf.
Women veterans represent 30 per cent of veterans experiencing homelessness.5Homelessness here includes individuals who reside in emergency shelters, provisional accommodations, or unsafe housing situations. They are also more likely to have dependents, to have experienced intimate partner violence, and to have experienced military sexual trauma (MST).6Michael Short, Stephanie Felder, Lisa Veteran Baird and Brenda Gamble, “Female veterans’ risk factors for homelessness: Veterans review,” Journal of Military, Veteran and Family Health, 2023. The services currently available from VAC and city-run homeless shelters often focus on supports for veterans who are men, and do not necessarily meet the needs of women and gender-diverse individuals. Women with multiple intersectionalities are more likely to be at risk (i.e., racialized, Indigenous, 2SLGBT+, people with disabilities, etc.).
Investments must be made to address these gaps. They must include a prevention focus—many “downstream” cases of housing insecurity and homelessness have hinge moments where, if needed help or supports were made available at the time, could have been prevented.
Addressing backlogs
All of the issues identified in this chapter are compounded by the unwillingness of previous governments to properly fund staffing to address backlogs, wait times, and overburdened case manager workloads. VAC is still not meeting most of its service targets. Decisions are still often taking significantly longer than they should, with wait times for disability benefit decisions remaining the number one complaint received by the Office of the Veterans Ombudsman.
The ratio of veterans to case managers has reached 31:1; some case managers have as many as 50 veterans in their caseloads. Many case managers also lack appropriate training, with some veterans reporting inconsistent levels of knowledge among case managers.
Investments in staff resources must be made to ensure that issues are dealt with in a reasonable amount of time.
Less reliance on privatization
We are now several years into the contract VAC issued (valued at $560 million over an initial five-and-a-half-year term) to Partners in Canadian Rehabilitation Services (PCVRS), a private venture between Lifemark Health Group (owned by Loblaw Companies Limited) and WCG International, to administer VAC’s rehabilitation program (previously administered by Medavie Blue Cross).
The Union of Veterans’ Affairs Employees (UVAE) condemned the lack of consultation taken and information given around this decision, expressing concerns that the contract would not provide quality services to veterans.7Emmanuel Dubourg, “New Contract for the Administration of Veterans Affairs Canada’s Rehabilitation Program,” Report of the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs, June 2023, https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/441/ACVA/Reports/RP12515046/acvarp11/acvarp11-e.pdf The union also calculated that the contract would cost 25 per cent more than it would to provide the same services by the public service.
Veterans’ groups, such as the Minister’s Advisory Group on Service Excellence, felt they had not been adequately consulted on the decision.8Ibid. Individual veterans have also been critical of the decision. One veteran told the Ottawa Citizen that privatization has led to traumatizing experiences: “I was treated not so much like a veteran or a client, but more as someone to get in, get paid and then push out the door.”9Catherine Morrison, “Unions and veterans decry privatization of rehabilitation services,” Ottawa Citizen, March 2, 2023, https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/unions-and-Veterans-decry-privatization-of-rehabilitation-services.
Health care providers have also been critical of the arrangement, releasing an open letter outlining numerous red flags, including Lifemark’s failure to consider the complex nature of the client population and failures to mention trauma or post-traumatic stress disorder in documents sent to practitioners.10Lee Berthiaume, “Rehab contract sparks new fight between veterans and the Liberal government,” The Canadian Press, February 12, 2023, https://www.thecanadianpressnews.ca/health/rehab-contract-sparks-fresh-battle-between-Veterans-and-the-liberal-government/article_afccf23a-c02b-5f51-a1b2-595155408ecc.html.
A Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs study11Emmanuel Dubourg, New Contract for the Administration of Veterans Affairs Canada’s Rehabilitation Program, Report of the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs, June 2023, https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/441/ACVA/Reports/RP12515046/acvarp11/acvarp11-e.pdf. also outlined several issues with the new rehabilitation program: a risk of disengagement on the part of professionals with long experience working with veterans; a lack of oversight (PCVRS is responsible for its own performance evaluation); and lack of information provided to case managers, veterans, and care providers.
In short, this contract is providing lower-quality service than an experienced public service could provide, and at a higher cost. It’s time for it to end.
Ensuring equity for women veterans
Sex and gender invisibility in military and veteran systems, including in health care, have created a number of problems for women service members and veterans. These include systemic biases, research gaps, and increased rates of injury and illness that result in unnecessarily high rates of medical releases for women. Up to 47 per cent of women’s releases from the military are medical,12Ibid. with the number one reason for women’s release being musculoskeletal injuries.
This invisibility also creates barriers in women13The AFB recognizes that the term “women’’ includes intersectionality of Indigenous, 2SLGBTQ+, and racialized people. veterans’ access to VAC benefits and programs, as documented in a 2024 Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs report14Emmanuel Dubourg, “Invisible No More. The Experiences of Canadian Women Veterans,” Report of the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs, June 2024, https://www.ourcommons.ca/documentviewer/en/44-1/ACVA/report-15. that identified several areas that could improve outcomes for women veterans: research, addressing specific medical and health needs, recognition and commemoration, and removing barriers to services and support. The committee’s recommendations should be implemented in a way that meaningfully reflects the perspectives of women veterans.
If we are to fully analyze and assess the impacts of veterans’ programs on sex, gender and diversity, and ensure equitable outcomes and change,15Maya Eichler, “Equity in Military and Veteran Health Research: Why It Is Essential to Integrate a Sex and Gender Lens,” Journal of Military, Veteran and Family Health, 2021. there needs to be a consistent and transparent application of Sex and Gender Equity in Research (SAGER), Sex and Gender-based Analysis (SGBA), and Gender-Based Analysis Plus (GBA+) lenses within Veteran Affairs Canada and the Canadian Armed Forces/Department of Defence.
The specific impacts of military service on the health and well-being of women veterans and their families must be acknowledged and addressed within the Canadian Armed Forces and through compensation and support services from VAC. For example, VAC has committed to updating its tools and guidelines for assessing disability benefits and to applying a GBA+ lens. While some work is being done, the meaningful implementation of this initiative is still pending. It is also unclear at this time what role SGBA will play in this update, although we note Dr. Barbara Clow’s 2019 internal report entitled “SGBA and Disability Benefits” made a number of findings and recommendations.
Actions
The AFB will launch an independent inquiry to ensure that all veterans, loved ones, caregivers and surviving family members receive the benefits and support they need, when and where they need it. The inquiry will produce a report with tangible and measurable recommendations.
The AFB will register all unregistered veterans. To date, VAC has taken a limited, reactive approach to service delivery that focuses on those who actively seek out their services. Registering all veterans with VAC would enable a better understanding of the veteran population, fostering a more preventative approach and facilitating the design of targeted benefits.16Ibid.
The AFB will ensure that caregivers and family members, including spouses, former spouses, survivors, and dependent children, have access, independent of the veteran’s treatment plan, to mental health treatment in their own right when their mental health issues are related to conditions of military service experienced by their family member.
The AFB will provide funds for occupational medicine (particularly for veterans without a family doctor), and civilian physicians accepting veterans as patients. It will give these practitioners barrier-free access to educational resources and training on military sexual trauma, operational stress injuries, chronic pain, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance use, VAC documentation, occupational hazard exposures, and other pertinent areas.
The AFB will fund mandatory, in-person sessions for all VAC personnel, offering in-depth training on trauma-informed and violence-informed best practices.
The AFB will not renew the private contract with Partners in Canadian Rehabilitation Services. It will move the administration of the Veterans Affairs Rehabilitation Program to the public service as of June 30th, 2027.
The AFB will increase funding for more indeterminate staff and case managers, and review location of staff (a large number currently work out of Prince Edward Island) and possible decentralization.
The AFB will consolidate and enhance existing Canadian Armed Forces–Veterans Affairs Canada transition programs, including programming to target risk factors for homelessness. Funding will be used to increase the number of case managers, collect data on risk factors, and provide pre-release counselling along with a transition curriculum that includes career transition services, community reintegration, and mental health literacy.
The AFB will fund and implement a long-term research program on servicewomen and women veterans, as well as multi-departmental, women-specific research to include the Canadian Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Canada.
The AFB will expedite the update of the Entitlement Eligibility Guidelines and the Table of Disabilities for medical conditions that affect women, applying transparent SAGER, SGBA, and GBA+ process to address gender biases and research gaps to achieve data equity.
The AFB will onboard veteran-serving organizations onto homeless management information systems to better capture data on veterans who are experiencing homelessness and provide them with services.
The AFB will establish a housing certificate program providing individualized rent supplements to veterans experiencing homelessness.
The AFB will direct the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation to develop veteran-specific streams of National Housing Strategy funds for housing projects and to provide capital through low-interest and forgivable loans (see the Affordable Housing and Homelessness chapter). This will include accessible women-specific housing and housing that includes support for dependants and service animals.
