8 October 2025
09:00 – 15:00 ET
Hybrid – 66 Slater Street, Ottawa / Microsoft Teams
Health and Well-being Advisory Group members
- Sergeant (Retired) Michael Blais, Canadian Veterans Advocacy (co-chair)
- Dave Gallson, Mood Disorders Society of Canada
- Sergeant (Retired) Alannah Gilmore
- Corporal (retired) Victoria Jonas
- Captain (Retired) Tarik Kadri (co-chair)
- Corporal (Retired) Dennis MacKenzie, Brave and Broken
- Dr. Stewart Madon, Canadian Psychological Association
- Warrant Officer (Retired) Brian McKenna
- Dr. Don Richardson, Canadian Psychiatric Association
- Dr. Gail Wideman, Canadian Military and Veterans Families Leadership Circle
Regrets
- Colonel Anna Grodecki, Canadian Armed Forces
- Sergeant (Retired) Chuck Isaacs, Aboriginal Veterans Society of Alberta
- Constable (Retired) Trevor Jenvenne, Royal Canadian Legion
- Sonia Poirier, Office of the Veterans Ombud
- Captain (Retired) Robert Thibeau, Aboriginal Veterans Autochtones
- Dr. Brent Wolfrom, Queens University
Office of the Minister of Veterans Affairs
- Michael Hamm, Director of Policy
Veterans Affairs Canada
- Tabitha Stubbs, A/Director General, (VAC co-chair)
- Jeff Gallant, Manager, Community Engagement
- Amy MacDouglad, Senior Analyst, Community Engagement
- Charlene Pascal, Project Officer, Community Engagement
- Noah Ellis, Project Operations Assistant, Community Engagement
Welcome and land acknowledgement
The VAC co-chair opened the meeting by welcoming the members and encouraging everyone to speak in their language of choice. The VAC co-chair proceeded with a land acknowledgement and shared her personal reflections on the impacts of colonization.
Introductions
The VAC co-chair expressed her gratitude to members for welcoming her to the group and introduced herself and her background. She introduced the meeting structure and encouraged members to take a moment for themselves if needed or if topics were challenging or sensitive. The VAC co-chair welcomed the member co-chairs and invited them to introduce themselves.
Member co-chairs introduced themselves, welcomed advisory group members and expressed their enthusiasm for the meeting. They reviewed the group’s mandate objectives. They then discussed the meeting objective to establish and discuss the group’s top two priorities for recommendations during this meeting. Subsequently, they welcomed the members to introduce themselves. Members shared their background and their objectives for the meeting.
The group also welcomed the Director of Policy for the Minister of Veterans Affairs. The Director thanked members for welcoming him and offered a message of support from the Minister of Veterans Affairs and Associate Minister of National Defense. He shared that the Minister wished to be there but was unable to do so as she was required in the House of Commons.
Review priority area of focus
The members engaged in a wide-ranging discussion on challenges that Veteran’s face in accessing medical care throughout Canada. Members observed that most primary healthcare is a responsibility of the respective provincial and territorial governments. However, they put forward that it is the necessity of the federal government to work with each provincial Minister of Health to ensure that Veterans have legally ensured priority access to healthcare, long-term care and other medical services.
Members expressed that this was particularly important, in an environment in which Veterans are experiencing difficulties accessing primary health care providers, and referrals for specialist care.
Discussion on that point expanded to the use of VAC funded Occupational Stress Injury Clinics (OSIS) and how they are allocated specifically for mental healthcare treatment. Members discussed and supported the concept of expanding the mandate and funding of OSI clinics across Canada to provide primary health care services. Furthermore, the idea was discussed that the responsibility of all healthcare services for Veterans could be transferred from Provincial and Territorial governments, to the Government of Canada, similar to the US model. Members suggested that the provincial systems do not have the staffing resources to treat the current population demands, which can result in long wait times for medical care.
Members were then reminded of the group’s mandate objective and the work undertaken by the group to date. They reviewed the list of their seven priority items that they had agreed upon in a previous meeting:
- Improve ability to access health and social care professionals
- Enhance provider specialization in Veteran care
- Enhance availability and understanding of specialized care required due to occupational exposures
- Investigate the standard of care and make recommendations that enrich supports for families who have lost their loved ones to war
- Examine the intricacies of financial benefits available to Veterans to ensure equitable allocation of funds to those who need it most
- Explore the long-term needs of Veterans as they age
- Investigate barriers Veterans experience to receiving care in the home and maintaining independent living
They discussed the components and the ease of actioning them for the Minister of Veterans Affairs. After which, the group held a poll and selected the selected the top two priorities that they would focus on for today’s discussions. The results were:
- Access to health care and healthcare professionals; and
- Enhance availability and understanding of specialized care required due to occupational exposures.
Breakout groups for further study
The advisory group members separated into two breakout groups to discuss their top two priorities in more detail.
The first group discussed their top priority of access to healthcare and what steps could be taken to improve it.
- They began their discussion with a review of the relevant findings from the Community Health Need Assessment (CHNA).
- Members discussed that Veterans are struggling to find and access family doctors, which is hindering their ability to be referred for specialist care. Consequently, they suggested that eliminating the need for a General Practitioner referral and allowing Veterans to self-refer could reduce the wait time for Veterans, improving their access to care and medical outcomes.
- The group discussed the use clinical benchmarks rather than hard limits (eg. 25 session limit) for treatment for VAC funded treatment.
- Members discussed that VAC paperwork requirements can be burdensome to Veterans and care providers, creating a disincentive for medical care providers to choose to take Veterans as patients. They suggested simplifying the administrative process would improve Veteran access to care and reduce VAC costs to process these forms.
- The group supported the idea from an earlier discussion, to expand the mandate of OSI clinics to include general healthcare and addictions, and have primary care providers on-site, to improve access for Veterans across Canada.
- Members suggested that the Build Canada Homes funding allocation should mandate that 5% to 10% be allocated for Veteran specific housing with wrap around supports, to create barrier free housing.
- Finally, members proposed that Veterans should receive a $3,000 to $5,000 annual wellness fund that they could use for self-directed wellness, such as naturopathy, equine therapy, and gym memberships.
In the other breakout group, members discussed their second priority, enhance availability and understanding of specialized care required due to occupational exposures occupational exposure risks. The group discussed exposure risks, which they divided into the categories of physical, chemical, and psychological exposures.
- Members discussed that there is a wide range of exposure risks that may be associated with all CAF deployments, noting specific risks during missions in Bosnia, Sierra Lione, and Afghanistan as well as domestic, training, and peace keeping missions.
- Members stressed that banning the use of harmful chemical substances and emission emitting electronic devices within Canada is not an effective solution, as there are many exposure risks that are present in regions which the CAF deploys. Further, that there are many psychological (moral) harms that may be caused due to deployments, such as experiencing and/or witnessing substantial violence and human suffering.
- Members would like to see VAC develop a comprehensive guide of potential exposures related to various operations, occupations, etc. The intent of the guide would be to support 1) Veterans speaking to their physicians and 2) assist doctors know what to screen for and consider.
- The group would like VAC to advocate for medical practitioners to improve their medical screening of CAF members and Veterans.
- Members proposed that CAF should inform VAC when they stop or make changes to military kit, exposure limitations, processes etc. for health reasons, and the medical basis of that change. VAC could then proactively communicate that information to potentially impacted Veterans.
- The group also noted that they are not placing blame on CAF for things that weren’t a known problem at the time but, once known, Veterans and CAF members should be proactively contacted so appropriate steps can be taken.
- Members discussed that VAC should identify possible exposure risks for Veterans based on their service and proactively inform them of their medical risks, and associated assessments, treatment benefits and financial benefits.
- Some suggested that VAC could apply the mental health benefit approval model to physical health conditions, applying a more presumptive and proactive approach to exposures.
Following the break-out discussions, members reconvened in plenary to share and their discussions. The two groups were in agreement with their respective approaches.
Closing remarks and next steps
Throughout the meeting, the group also maintained a list of topics to revisit in future meetings. These included:
- Discuss a Federal health care approach for Veterans
- Opportunities to improve, or eliminate some, VAC forms for Veterans and physicians to reduce complexity.
- Provisions for gym memberships as a consideration in access to care recommendation
- Invest in education for physicians on military culture, combat injuries etc. so physicians can more effectively screen for and ask appropriate questions.
- Include occupational exposures on medical questionnaires (physician offices, emergency rooms, etc.)
- VAC should allow for form completion, diagnosis and treatment by a broader range of health care providers and should advocate for provinces to do the same.
- The group would like to have future presenters on Traumatic Brain Injury, Tropical medicine, and Income Replacement Benefit vs CAF Long Term Disability (SISIP)
- Care for families
- Revisit the three themes that were not voted in for this meeting:
- Mental health support for Veteran family members;
- Financial well-being; and
- Aging in the right place.
Members provided closing reflections indicating that they found the meeting to be a productive and positive experience. Members expressed their preference for in-person meetings and several members requested that the frequency of in-person meetings be increased to more than once per year. Some suggested future membership additions should give consideration to additional fields of health professionals (nutritionist, physiotherapist, etc.)
Meeting adjourned.