National Defence committee  Mr. Chairman, thank you. I simply want to remind you of one thing, namely that families are absolutely crucial. My family had to receive care. We are still experiencing this situation today. So please, don't forget how important the family is.

National Defence committee  In fact there has been CANFORGENs—I suppose you're familiar with the term—that have been issued by the Chief of the Defence Staff over the years, where the chain of command has no authority at all into the medical support that an individual gets. However, when we use chain of command, it's often used in the informal way; that is to say, it's not necessarily by order and directive, but it's by the boss: he's a warrant officer and I'm a corporal, and the warrant officer doesn't like anybody talking about PTSD or anything problematic of that nature.

National Defence committee  When we started to really shift gears on mental health after Operation Phoenix in the late nineties, we said we had to fast-track operational injuries to meet the sense of urgency. There was an argument that the injuries of the mind had to be as fast-tracked as the physical ones.

National Defence committee  They're in fact getting more.

National Defence committee  I would say that the situation is significantly different from what it was in the nineties, and we have leaped ahead. Also, it is not a money problem. Never, in one occasion of anything, have I heard that there's not enough cash to do the job. It's often the expertise, and so on, that's there.

National Defence committee  Yes. It is a hundred million times better than what we had. To give you an example, my militia regiment, where I'm the honorary colonel, has 25 chaps right now in training for leaving in 2009, and they have already been nearly five months in training. So some of them are getting over a year of pre-training to get into the operational theatre.

National Defence committee  If I may, with respect to the point on the suicides, I went public in 1997 exactly because of a report that said we weren't really getting more suicides than anybody else, and it wasn't because of the missions in Bosnia; it was because they were already predisposed to this. I think if you take a look at a very specialized group of people who have gone through a whole bunch of training and all their rigours and you've eliminated those who can't sustain that, and then you look at the figures, you might say those figures are troubling.

National Defence committee  In 1997, when I was chief of staff of personnel and then went public because we were misguiding our own people, let alone outside, I went to the U.S. Veterans Center for Post-traumatic Stress Clinics, which is in White River Junction, Vermont, to ask them whether all treatment should be the same, such as commanders with their stresses and training, versus soldiers.

National Defence committee  The proportion of individuals truly suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder is 8%. However, 20% of the population is affected at various levels, depending on their experiences. If they receive proper support from their family and their workplace, and if they are allowed a period of readjustment, these individuals can be successful in returning to some normalcy.

National Defence committee  Mr. Bouchard, you can imagine the stigmatization amongst civilians with regard to mental health issues. We have already made up our minds. Each of us has our own prejudices in this regard. So, imagine someone belonging to an organization in which every day you have to show your courage, your determination, your ability to endure stress and be a positive force in situations and who, suddenly, is no longer able to deal with that, not because that individual has lost his arm or has a bad back, but because something between his ears is not working properly.

National Defence committee  I fear brevity is not my strength. However, when I participated in the committee that advised the Deputy Minister of Veterans Affairs for nearly four years and which led to, ultimately, the creation of a report that led to the charter—and Admiral Murray was the DM at the time—we debated at length the co-location even of the Veterans Affairs Canada clinics on bases to make it maybe easier administratively and so on.

National Defence committee  Mr. Chair, I want to thank you for that eloquent introduction. I hope that I will not disappoint you. Ladies and gentlemen, I have a prepared text and I have also distributed two charts to which I will refer later on. Certainly they're for public knowledge. They are not scientific; they are a soldier's view of a situation.

Veterans Affairs committee  I'll give you a fast answer.

Veterans Affairs committee  I haThank you, sir.

Veterans Affairs committee  Fascinating. Remember, we're an army that came out of 40 years of peacetime soldiering. We were in Germany, but I mean.... Over the last 15 years there's been an incredible learning curve, actually telling the young kid at the recruiting centre, “You know what? You might be going off to fight.