The Canadian Armed Forces Ombudsman
The military is a complex system. There are a lot of policies that govern the way it operates and that system can be complex for even the most experienced person. If you ever feel like the system’s failed you, that you’ve got a complaint and think you’ve been treated unfairly, there’s a formal way to move forward with help from the office of the Canadian Armed Forces Ombudsman.
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Special Guest
Greg Lick has been the Canadian Armed Forces Ombudsman since 2018. His previous work experience includes the Canadian Coast Guard and the Canadian Armed Forces Reserves.
Highlights
- The role of the Ombudsman in three parts.
- 6:53 Most popular way to contact office is by phone.
- Walking through the process from the initial contact.
- 13:02 Issues they see on a daily basis.
- Ombudsman view of important family issues for military families.
- 18:42 Healthcare availability is the biggest issue right now.
- Upcoming initiatives at the Office of the Ombudsman.
Quotes
“You always get to talk to a live person when you phone us. And even if you leave a message will always call you back. We have very clear service standards, which actually make sure that we do call you back that live voice is really important where somebody has a complaint because most people when they have a complaint, they want to be heard.”
– Greg Lick, CAF Ombudsman
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Thank you
- This podcast is made possible by funding from True Patriot Love Foundation.
- Thank you to Organized Sound Productions for their help bringing this podcast to life.
Transcript by Otter.ai
Intro
This podcast is made possible by funding from True Patriot Love Foundation.
Greg
We’re not this cold call center where you get a robotic voice and you never get to talk to a live person. You always get to talk to a live person when you phone us. And even if you leave a message will always call you back. We have very clear service standards, which actually make sure that we do call you back that live voice is really important where somebody has a complaint because most people when they have a complaint, they want to be heard. First of all, talking to a robot maybe isn’t the right way to go.
Intro
The military lifestyle is all encompassing. It’s difficult, but rewarding. Dynamic, very, very dynamic. Unpredictable. You are in the Canadian Armed Forces or a family member connected to the military. You know the lifestyle can be a challenge. Military lifestyle is always changing. In this podcast, we explore the world of deployment, postings and transitions. This is The Military Lifestyle. Here’s your host, Jon Chabun.
Jon
The military is a complex system. There are a lot of policies that govern the way it operates. And that system can be complex for even the most experienced military member. If you ever feel like the system’s failed you, you’ve got a complaint, think you’ve been treated unfairly. There’s a formal way to move forward. I chat with the Canadian Armed Forces Ombudsman next.
Today, we’re talking with the Canadian Armed Forces ombudsman, Greg Lick. Welcome, Greg. Thanks for being here today. Thanks very much for having me. And if people are wondering, I’m based here in Esquimalt. I did not fly out to Ottawa to meet Greg and have chat with him. We’re connecting via the Internet today. So thank you for doing that. And so, Greg, the role of the Ombudsman, can you give us kind of a breakdown of what the role of the Canadian Armed Forces Ombudsman is?
Greg
Absolutely, it’s normally a sort of parted out into three parts. One is to provide sort of a service of education, referral for our constituents, so that they can avoid problems. And so I kind of put it in the, in the sense of where the problem lies that with 604 policies that govern how military personnel are governed, that’s incredibly complex for anyone to understand within the department, and certainly for for new recruits, for even the very experienced military personnel, but also families for them to understand all the benefits all the services that are available to them. a military family very, very complex. And what we try to do is try to demystify tried to put it into a language so that everyone is able to understand and access those services and benefits that they deserve. That’s the education part of the part of our services, so that we avoid problems. But we’re also, most importantly, for families, we are the only formal recourse mechanism for complaints of military families. And that’s very important, because there’s really no other organization in the department that actually deals with complaints from families. Certainly the Military Family Resource Centres, provide direct services to military families, but we have the ability to help them with their various complaints. And that’s an important part of our service. We also provide, obviously that service for all of our constituents as well but in this particular sense, military families we’re the only one. And then the other sort of third part of our mandate is really to look at very systemic issues that affect our constituents, including military families, military members, veterans, that are systemic problems that need a deeper investigation so that we can promote and recommend long term positive change for our members. That’s kind of the three parts of our services that the Ombudsman office actually deals with.
Jon
What are a few examples of how people have accessed the Ombudsman?
Greg
We have a variety of ways and we tried to make it as easy as possible for military families for members to access our services. So years ago, we started off having locations offices across the country. We went away from that given advances in technology. And so now we have all sorts of means we have a 1-800 number that allows people to call us for information call us to make a complaint. The website that we operate is very, very extensive in terms of the information available on it, that members and families can look at it. And the important part of that is that like many other organizations, we’ve actually put it now ours is on the internet, so that families and members can look at it at home, rather than on the department’s intranet, which is only available if you have a particular military or or departmental computer. So that’s important for military families because they can now access that information at home, with their spouse, with their partner, whoever it might be. That’s the website. On the website. We have all sorts of different educatation, we call them educational products. Did you knows? Did you know that this benefit could be available to you? Did you know that this service could be available to you? Did you know that if you’re in this particular situation, what kinds of benefits could be available to you? That’s really important. So people can decipher all the and understand all the various benefits services and programs that are available to them. So you can call us you can we have a live chat ability so that you can live chat with us over the web. And you know, we also have the ability, I think, most importantly for for families to make an appointment to schedule an appointment with us so at your convenience that allows them to meet with their spouse, meet with their partner and us and call us at a convenient time that’s available to families, not just convenient for us as an example. And I think that’s that’s vitally important.
Jon
Do you find that there are certain way that people will submit their guess call it complaint or issue? Is it online by phone or printed out the form mail it in? What do you find is the most popular way?
Greg
Certainly the most popular way is by phone. People like the idea of I think it’s just natural human interest that they like the idea of talking to a live person. One of the things I that separates us from many other call centers will call them is that we’re not this cold call center where you get a robotic voice and you never get to talk to a live person. You always get to talk to a live person when you phoned us. And even if it’s you leave a message will always call you back, we have very clear service standards, which actually make sure that we do call you back and that live voice is is really important where somebody has a complaint because most people when they have a complaint, they want to be heard. First of all, talking to a robot maybe isn’t the right way to go. So by phone is really the most really the most common one but the other ones give the other means of getting in contact with us. Allow people to choose. And that’s important nowadays in this all sorts of different ways of communicating. Everybody has a different way but phone is definitely the most common.
Jon
And in terms of like the accessibility of your phone line. What is the kind of is it office hours kind of you can speak to someone?
Greg
So we have extended office hours. So we’re not 24-7, such as the the Sexual Misconduct Call Centre because that’s an emergency call center. For us, we have extended office hours they’ll allow, particularly people from the west coast, allow them to choose a more convenient time to families and members to allow that side of the country to contact us. And then we have earlier hours for the East Coast. So just makes it easier for people to contact us but we’re not 24-7, but that we’re trying to make it as convenient as possible. And if there’s not a convenient time, sort of during those extended hours, make a booking with us to schedule a convenient time to you.
Jon
Okay, so if I make the phone call, walk us through the process what what takes place after that initial phone call initial contact or what it might be.
Greg
During the initial call, the initial contact. The biggest part of our role is take the information from you. What are you asking? Is it just a piece of information that can be easily accessed? Is it referral to a particular mechanisms department to deal with a complaint? Is it actual complaint that we might be able to do a more in depth investigation about? So the biggest part of that first contact is to get the information from you understand in from our point of view, what what we can do to help you and so that, again, they might as I said, it might be a piece of information might be a reference to our website to say, if you look on our website for this particular situation, you’ll see that there are a range of various ways that you can deal with that particular problem or get the information so a lot of its getting the information. One of the biggest and most important principles of our office is confidentiality. So every call, every piece of information that you provide us is absolutely confidential. It is not shared with anyone unless we have your written permission to do so. And that’s important in a military environment where some people might have a fear of reprisal. And certainly with the military members where they don’t have representation by a union. One of our roles is to ensure that confidentiality, ensure that people are confident when they call us that we’re not going to share the information with someone who may not use it in appropriately. If we need to use your information to help you resolve the problem. We will ask you for a form that allows you to fill it out and provide us written permission to use that information. Because sometimes that’s the only way to deal with a particular problem, say around benefits and things like that. So we collect the information will then assess how we’re best able to help you either by referral, providing information or possibly moving it along to a more deeper investigation depending on what the particular situation is.
Jon
When I think the Ombudsman, I think of people will contact the ombudsman when when they feel like they’ve been treated unfairly, when when there’s a little bit of a system failure or something the system is that they’re basically hit a point where they feel like this is not right. Is that accurate? Would you say?
Greg
It’s it’s actually very accurate in terms of what we what our mandate is. So there are many people who will call us or may call us and think that they deserve a certain benefit at a certain amount. But our our role and the role of pretty well every ombudsman in the world is to ensure fairness in a process to ensure that the person is treated fairly by the system. And so in our case, we’re not a defense attorney. We’re not an advocate in the true sense of the word that will defend you no matter what. So when we receive a complaint, we always take down the information we always look at both sides of the story or are many sides of the story and there always are other sides of the story. And that’s to ensure that when we look at the particular situation, look at the problem that what we’re looking at it for is from the lens of fairness, has the person being treated fairly within the process that they’re dealing with. We do get people that will call us when it’s not really a truly an issue about fairness. And so we spend a little bit of time usually with the, with the person to explain what our mandate is what we can do what we can’t do. And so for example, one of the areas that we are not allowed to investigate is areas of criminal activity that is dealt with by military police, civilian police, whatever the particular situation is, and so that’s an area that we’re not allowed to intervene.
Jon
What type of issues do you see on a daily basis? Can you give me a kind of some examples of what kind of categories if people are kind of like wondering what the what you deal with?
Greg
Absolutely. So with respect to military families and military members, the most common category of complaint or issue that we deal with is pay and benefits, as you would expect, I think. And so that makes up our major category. But we also deal with postings and relocation. We deal with health services complaints will deal with promotion. And those are those tend to be the majority of the complaints, we get a number of complaints that are outside of our mandate, and we have to ensure that people are then referred to the right area where they can resolve their problem. But as I said the most the majority of them tend to be pay and benefits. And that includes benefits available to military families and members as well.
Jon
Now, what is your perspective on important family issues for military families? What have you seen?
Greg
Since last November of 2018, so I’ve had the opportunity to visit a number of things. Right now, Cold Lake Bagotville, Halifax and Petawawa and heading out to CFB Shilo. So I’ve had the ability to sit down now personally with families, and usually what we do, we organize an evening for families to come in and talk with us and talk with me personally, in this case, about the services that we can provide, but also what are the issues that they’re facing, and they’re fairly common across the country, and very consistent with many of the issues that we investigated and reported on back in 2013 in our report on the homefront. So health care and family doctors available to military families in what are typically relatively isolated communities where military bases are. Availability of bilingual services, Francophone services in the health area, available to families in a primarily Anglophone community and vice versa for Anglophones accessing service health services in primarily Francophone communities. This isn’t an uncommon issue for all Canadians, except that military families experience since they experience more postings, more movements, more relocations, and any other sort of category of Canadian, they experience more complex issues, more issues with health care than any other. Spousal employment. So as military families and their spouses and partners move across the country, they’ll have to give up possibly employment in with one company and have to find employment in another area if they can. But what are the stressors that they face is that with the more isolated bases, there just isn’t the amount of employment that they would have in a in a more major community like Toronto or Montreal or so on. Access for special needs care. So as members and families move across the country where they’re trying to access specialized health services such as special needs care for children. Sometimes they have to move from a spot on a waiting list that they’ve waited a long time for. Suddenly, they’re moving and go to the bottom of the list in another province. And that’s a particular issue for military families. And one that’s a big stressor for families with special needs children in particular. The other areas that we’ve seen are some of the benefits that are available to families and in this case, military members and their families, including some assistance when they sell a home and have to sell at a loss. they’re forced to move from a place based on their deployment, based on their careers and so on. But sometimes they as markets move up and down, they have no choice but to sell it a loss. And home equity assistance, that policy has changed over the years and some communities such as Cold Lake that have experienced extreme fluctuations in home markets, in this case due to the oil patch, they’ve also then experienced very severe losses. And that’s a policy isn’t quite working for them right now to deal with those exceptional cases. Some of the benefits policies like the post living differential have not been updated, in the case of that one, since 2008. And some of these policies set with central agencies such as Treasury Board, and they do need more attention to be paid to them so that military members and their families don’t face the unintended consequences of market fluctuations and so on. So those are those are some of the issues Jon that military families are facing. With regards to the MFRC one of the ones I’ve heard most often is given all the passionate people that work in the MFRC sees across the country trying to help military families. I think the one struggle I’ve seen for all of them is making trying the best they can to make families aware of their services. There are lots of services available. But sometimes families just aren’t aware and it sometimes no matter how hard you try it, making people aware, they don’t always get the message. So that’s one of the areas that I would like to help the MFRC see if we can in communicating that.
Jon
Yeah. And sometimes when I talked to people, they’re more receptive to hear something when they’re in the moment, right. Sometimes it’s just not when we do have a chance to speak to them. It might not be relevant in their life, they know about us, but they don’t really, really know. So we definitely do our best but as ongoing education definitely. Are there any emerging trends that you see when it comes to military families?
Greg
Other than the ones I’ve mentioned, which are ongoing, and more than anything healthcare availability is not only for Canadians, but particularly for military families is probably the biggest issue that I’ve understood for all. Spousal employment, so on infrastructure, so the housing and military housing availability on various bases. Definitely we’re encouraged to see some investment by the housing authority in those bases, but it’s going to take a while, like any capital investment. They’re trying, but it’s going to take a while to to get up to speed. It’s a long term investment to get all the infrastructure in each of the bases up to up to a standard which Canadians expect. So that’s that’s a particular issue. But I can see I’m encouraged to see some work in that area. But it’ll be it’ll be long term. Healthcare, again, is that is pretty well, the major one, at not so much a trend but certainly the this Liberal government committed to the policy of Strong Secure and Engaged, which chapter one took a lot of the elements from even our report On The Homefront, about military families and and put a lot of initiatives forward there that speak to how they’re going to support military families better going into the future, including a comprehensive military family plan. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen the proposed version of it. It’s very, very encouraging. And I’m very hopeful that we’ll see that move forward in the future, with approval with funding and so on. So that will go a long way towards helping families deal with their particular issues.
Jon
All right. Well, thank you very much for your time. That’s all I have. Do you have anything else you’d like to add when it comes to military families and the ombudsman?
Greg
There’s a couple of things I would like to promote. We’re looking at in our systemic investigations right now. One of the ones that does affect military families a lot is OUTCAN where military families and members are posted outside of Canada and then having to deal with even more of the complexities of relocation, different countries and so on. We’re doing that investigation now. It’s bringing us lots of information. We will see that coming out probably next spring in terms of our report and recommendations, and so that will be very important for families to to see. We’re also always working on different educational products. And one of the ones I think that will be very, very valuable for military families is what we call the ABC of postings. A being, what do you do? What do you need to look at before you’re posted? What do you have to look at Part B during your posting? And what do you have to look at, you know, after you’ve relocated, in terms of putting in receipts and all the stuff that has to go on after you get to where you need to go. So that’ll be coming out in early 2020, with a video and it will make sure that people get the information in a way that they can digest very easily. And I think the other one that I like to just offer is that as we go through our various systemic investigations over the next number of years, I’ve and the team have committed to develop a five year actually six year plan that will help us look at various themes over the years, and the theme for next year will be families. And so we’re going to continue the work that we started back in 2013 with a report there On The Homefront. And we’ll start to look at the theme of families next year in a very deep manner to help families get the support and services that they need as they support military members.
Jon
Alright, well, thank you very much for your time, Greg.
Greg
Thanks, Jon. My pleasure.
Jon
You can reach the Office of the Ombudsman at 1-888-828-3626. Their website is ombuds.ca. They’re also active on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube. The Ombudsman does visit bases to meet with families from time to time, so keep an eye out for that.
Extro
Thank you for listening to this episode of The Military Lifestyle. To learn more about this episode. And to check out our other resources like the deployment app, go to EsquimaltMFRC.com. A special thanks to True Patriot Love Foundation for funding season one of this podcast and to Organized Sound Productions for bringing our idea to life. Please share this podcast with your military family or with someone living the lifestyle. Subscribe to the military lifestyle on your favorite podcast. Your support is greatly appreciated. Thank you for listening.
