Longer deadlines eyed for answering veterans’ requests for federal service

OTTAWA — The federal government is looking to extend the amount of time that officials have to respond to veterans seeking various different types of benefits and support for their servicerelated injuries.

The move follows years of criticism after Veterans Affairs Canada consistently forced former service members to wait months longer than promised to access support — or even find out whether they qualify.

Those delays have been found to add further stress and frustration on injured veterans as they wait for medical or financial assistance.

Veterans Affairs Canada says it wants to give veterans a more “realistic” idea of when they can expect to hear back when they request assistance, and that many of the new timelines will be rolled out before the end of the fiscal year.

But Virginia Vaillancourt, acting national president of the Union of Veterans Employees, said the solution isn’t to make veterans wait longer. The solution would involve investing more resources to keep them from having to wait in the first place, she said.

“With more staff in the office, it means that the veterans are actually going to get the service, the benefits and the care that they deserve — and that the government has promised them,” Vaillancourt said.

“Whether you’re telling them it’s going to be eight weeks or 24 weeks, they still have that stress of waiting and not knowing if they will be approved for services and benefits.”

Veterans Affairs has struggled to provide timely benefits and support to former service members for years, in part because of Conservative-era budget cuts and layoffs from which the department still hasn’t fully recovered.

Compounding the problem has been a sharp increase in demand for services in recent years, which has created a backlog of applications for disability benefits and slowed response times in the provision of support.

The federal Liberals promised during the last election to fix the problem by hiring more staff, and most recently committed $42 million over two years to address a backlog of applications for disability benefits that had reached 29,000 files.

But performance continues to lag; while injured veterans are told they can expect to know within 16 weeks whether they simply qualify for disability benefits, ombudsman Guy Parent found the average wait remains 23 to 29 weeks.