National Defence committee  With more money; at the top--I made the commitment in Toronto—we've looked at about $50 million. That's what I've already talked to the Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff about. That's what we need to expand the program, and that's the commitment of the Canadian Forces leadership to that program.

National Defence committee  On the infrastructure side, if you take a look at the Rx2000 project, critical to it--and I'll be short--is this whole idea of infrastructure and actually having things in place. We need to build infrastructure in four locations, Edmonton and.... Petawawa is one of them. We need that.

National Defence committee  When I was just in Afghanistan, two of my personal staff were individuals who had suffered from PTSD. So I think the short answer is yes.

National Defence committee  It's a great question. What we have seen because of the awareness over the last number of years is that more soldiers are coming in to say, “Hey, my friend has trouble. I think you need to give him a hand.” We're seeing that more than we ever have, as well as families, wives saying, “My husband needs help.”

National Defence committee  The figures are clear, and I think General Jaeger reminded me when we came in here, that for every 3,000 soldiers, we have one psychiatrist.

National Defence committee  At the moment. On the provincial side, it's one to 8,000. So we look at the capacity, but we agree, because it's not just a national issue, it's an international issue, finding mental health care providers, and we're doing everything we can. To be clear here, it's not just a money issue, giving people more money.

National Defence committee  Let me first clarify that what I said was “into the theatre of operations”. Remember, this is not just people in Afghanistan; it also includes those who may be on a ship in the gulf and who are injured. It includes those who are in a theatre of operations, not just focused on Afghanistan, to be clear.

National Defence committee  What it says here is that wounded in action includes injuries from IEDs, personal injury—to get to what you're looking for—acute psychological trauma directly attributable to combat action that required medical intervention. Those are the wounded in action—

National Defence committee  —not the people picked up six months later, which is the second part to that piece.

National Defence committee  The actual recruiting of physicians has been a best practice for the Canadian Forces, if you look at what they've done. They've done a number of things, both provincially and federally, to bring in more doctors. As General Jaeger said, in the last five years the increase has been great.

National Defence committee  What clouds the issue, which hasn't been mentioned here, is serving the nation. This issue is coming up. I'm also responsible for recruiting. Recruiting is up across the country. Why? If you put your finger on it, in many cases it's that people want to serve this nation, given what this nation is doing right now around the world.

National Defence committee  As I said last week, we're still gathering those for here. Again, I would caution that the statistics are only generalities. Getting into the details.... There's a danger with PTSD. But we're looking at and gathering those. These are the generalities, in a sense.

National Defence committee  I have copies right here. The definition of wounded in action is injuries from IEDs, mines, rocket attacks, direct combat with an enemy force. I have copies here.

National Defence committee  I lost 18 pounds while I was there.

National Defence committee  It is interesting because we are very shortly going to announce a new Canadian Forces health and fitness strategy. General Jaeger's team and my team have been working on this. It's going to be announced on April 1. There are actually two parts: fitness and the issue of health and nutrition.