I was.
Evidence of meeting #83 for National Defence in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was know.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #83 for National Defence in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was know.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:50 p.m.
MCpl Jody Mitic
I was.
4:50 p.m.
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
You were. I saw you in that film the other night, getting ready to strap on the running prosthesis so you could keep in shape. As you say, General Semianiw wanted you here in Ottawa for that very reason. I saw you in Newfoundland taking on the Targa Newfoundland race with General MacKenzie and others, and giving a lot of encouragement to others who are in a similar situation.
4:55 p.m.
MCpl Jody Mitic
I've done my best.
4:55 p.m.
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
I'm disappointed to hear you're feeling the way you are, and that you've been treated the way you have been.
I want to ask you a question, because you are in the JPSU and you've been there for a while. The ombudsman had a report last September in which he said some view being posted at a joint personnel support unit as the kiss of death, from a career perspective, and he says that as long as this perception exists, it constitutes a barrier to care. He also said that a second concern raised was that certain elements of the chain of command are either opposed to the JPSU approach to managing the significantly ill and injured or have yet to embrace it, and that if this friction is not promptly reconciled by CF strategic leadership, it's questionable whether the current approach will succeed on an institutional level.
Would you care to comment on those remarks?
4:55 p.m.
MCpl Jody Mitic
I don't know if they still use it, but SPHL is what JPSU replaced, I believe. SPHL was a holding....
4:55 p.m.
Fundraising Chair, Amputee Coalition of Canada, As an Individual
A service personnel holding unit.
4:55 p.m.
MCpl Jody Mitic
Basically, it was that if you were broken and you didn't fix yourself.... I joined in 1994, back when if you were sick, you didn't tell anyone, and if you were hurt, you were a wussy. We might have encouraged that attitude a little bit back then. One of the threats I got after being wounded and losing my legs was “You'll be sent to SPHL if you don't shape up.” At the time, I'd never heard of it, until I went home and opened up one of the books.
When guys are sent there, I believe they lose touch with the unit. Pretty quickly you lose touch with your comrades and the unit and what's going on. I think the biggest fear people have is that if you get sent to JPSU, you are taken out of operations. That's the kiss of death to a career, to a line soldier, being taken out of operations—you're no longer operational.
4:55 p.m.
MCpl Jody Mitic
They can from JPSU, but it's such a new system that there are probably very few examples of anyone going in and then coming back out.
4:55 p.m.
NDP
4:55 p.m.
MCpl Jody Mitic
I am. Even though I was told I wasn't allowed to wear a uniform—I still don't know who told my chain of command, by the way—I was at a meeting at my JPSU to talk about this and sign some documents, and someone told me I could wear my uniform. I said, “No way, I'm not wearing it now. You already told me I couldn't.”
But as I said, there are no examples of anyone coming out of the JPSU and going back to the units—that I've heard of. Maybe there are, but once a soldier walks out the door of the unit and into the JPSU, even though they can be employed back at their unit, they're still not under the chain of command. What happened when I finally went to JPSU is I got tugged at both ends. JPSU is telling you things, and your chain of command is telling you things. Sometimes they don't agree with each other, because the JPSU is supposed to have your medical condition and your medical recovery as the primary concern.
Am I making any sense?
4:55 p.m.
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
Yes.
Mr. Franklin, I have two brief questions.
You said you retired in 2009, having been injured in 2006. Was that voluntary?
Second, you have this umbrella organization, the coalition for amputees. There's an organization that's been on the go a long time called the War Amps. They've been around for 50 or 60 years. I give them money every year, and I'm sure lots of Canadians do. Are they of any assistance in your situation, or similar situations?
4:55 p.m.
Fundraising Chair, Amputee Coalition of Canada, As an Individual
I'll just correct one thing. In 2006, the explosion wasn't voluntary.
4:55 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
4:55 p.m.
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
No, we're talking about the retirement. I appreciate that, sir. I appreciate your sense of humour, despite all the hardship you've gone through.
4:55 p.m.
Fundraising Chair, Amputee Coalition of Canada, As an Individual
In 2009, I did retire. I had a choice of medical release or retirement, and it meant no difference in the care I was about to receive because I was valued at—I don't know—130% disability or some silly thing. It would change nothing, so I just decided to retire. I did that mainly because it gave me a sense of worth, in that it was my choice to leave, not anyone else's.
A lot of our complaints are not within DND itself. It's actually with the bureaucrats and those involved within the bureaucracy and the administration of it.... You see a bus go by and it has “ISO 2001” on it, and what that means is that they simply follow the rules. All we want DND to do is to follow the rules as listed in their books.
5 p.m.
MCpl Jody Mitic
Make up some rules and stick to them.
5 p.m.
Fundraising Chair, Amputee Coalition of Canada, As an Individual
Yes, stick to them. There are like a million ombudsman's reports. I've been in front of the Senate. The senators visited the Glenrose, and I talked to them, and now it's 2008.... We've been dealing with this stuff for years.
The key point—and as a medic, I've always said this—is that once the war is over, everything will be in place, and at that point, all the budget cuts will happen and everything that's in place will disappear. So when we hit the next war, be it Mali, be it Syria—who knows?—we'll then have to regroup and go, “Hey, I've never heard of this new disease called post-traumatic stress”, or whatever the new determination will be, or, “Wow, who thought an amputee would happen?” It will happen again, so what we have to do is find a way to transition from this war to the next war.
But going to the last part of your question...what was it again? I'm sorry.
5 p.m.
Fundraising Chair, Amputee Coalition of Canada, As an Individual
Oh, with the charities, yes. The War Amps themselves have been doing amazing work, but what they've made a mistake on is that they.... They've raised $8 million, but they buy prostheses for kids under 18, and they spend a lot of that money on the CHAMPs program. It's a great program, but there's no province in the country that would refuse prostheses for kids under 18, so what they've done is set themselves up so that the provinces can kind of walk away from a group of patients and citizens of that province. They've kind of made this place where they cannot leave now.
I called the founder of War Amps in 2006 and asked him what we were going to do. I wanted to have a sit-down meeting with the amputees from Afghanistan. At the time, he was in charge, and he said, “Well, I didn't believe in the war in Afghanistan, so we're not going to touch this. This is a file that we're not going to deal with. You guys are going to deal with VAC and all the rest. It's so much better now than it was back then, so we're just kind of washing our hands of it.” I never actually got a meeting with him. I've never actually sat down with anyone from the War Amps, despite a zillion times....
So what we've ended up doing...the Northern Amputee Program morphed into the Franklin Fund, which then morphed into the Amputee Coalition of Canada, which is now peer support and research related. There has never been a single research program on amputees in Canada funded by the War Amps.
I don't want to sit here and diss them, but that is why I created what I created, and creating a charity, as some of you guys know, is like creating a monster. It's tough work. But it's doing well, and we're going to do better in the future, obviously, but these little things.... We're getting our first research program written up now, and then we'll be doing some other stuff, as well as Jackie doing this cool bionic arm stuff.
I hope that answers your question.
5 p.m.
MCpl Jody Mitic
I'd just like to say quickly that with the War Amps, I've been told that if you are an amputee and you.... I'm sorry; if you become an amputee as a serving member, they will handle your file with Veterans Affairs for you. They will be your advocate, and I guess they're really, really good at it. I haven't done it yet because I'm not transitioned to VAC just yet, but I plan to, and their offer stands for anyone who is willing to let them. That's the thing. They don't have access to lists of who is qualified for their services.
5 p.m.
Fundraising Chair, Amputee Coalition of Canada, As an Individual
So there is a disconnect there, obviously, between what Jody has heard and what I have heard, not as a soldier, but as a person from a charitable organization that they might feel is in competition. I think that's where the disconnect is.
5 p.m.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Mitic, are you in married quarters right now? Is the home you're in owned by the government?
