I agree.
With Petawawa, one of the problems, as General Jaeger said, is getting enough mental health care professionals there. Part of the problem is the number of mental health care professionals we depend on who are civilians. With Petawawa, we're dealing with the fact that there is a general shortage of mental health care professionals across Canada. There is a lot of competition for those mental health care professionals. Petawawa is a semi-isolated location, and the amount of money we can pay under Treasury Board guidelines is not competitive with what some civilian organizations can pay. We're just having a lot of difficulty getting civilian mental health care professionals to work there.
To improve that, our Ottawa OTSSC is operating satellite clinics in Petawawa, and the health care professionals go there. One of our senior Canadian Forces psychiatrists is spending a minimum of one day a week in Petawawa. We have a tele-medicine pilot project that will link Ottawa with Petawawa. Through high-definition medical cameras, soldiers will be able to have tele-medicine consults with mental health care professionals in Ottawa. While we wouldn't recommend that for initial assessments, it would be useful for ongoing care.
We posted a major social work officer to Petawawa this last summer who is taking the lead as a mental health care professional there and leading the clinic, and that has made a big difference by itself. This summer we'll post in three more social workers and a military psychiatrist, which will augment their capability significantly. Along with that, we've not been able to fill all the civilian positions, so we're going to transfer five of those to Ottawa: one psychiatrist, two psychologists, and two social worker positions that are not filled. We'll be able to fill them in Ottawa. Those people will then be used to run the tele-medicine capability that will link Ottawa and Petawawa. They will also do satellite clinics in Petawawa.
In addition to this, I have a lieutenant-colonel within the new mental health care directorate who is capable of spending up to two days a week in Petawawa as a psychiatrist.
As well, we still have the capability for patients to come to Ottawa to get help. It's not that far down the road. So where that works out for them, we can manage that.