Veterans Affairs committee  I was there, and I don't know. I don't know who he asked. I don't know what he said. Certainly we had a few young soldiers in Petawawa prior to going and a few in theatre who were having difficulty tolerating it, and we switched them to the other agent. It wasn't like “you will take it no matter what.”

Veterans Affairs committee  We're not going to get there.

Veterans Affairs committee  There was something in the media today about some training in the eighties. I didn't read all of it, but there is a risk of harming people when you do certain types of conduct after capture and evasion training. You have to be careful about how far you take it, and not introduce illness, absolutely.

Veterans Affairs committee  I'm not a primary care physician prescribing this, but in my day, I took malaria, when I was in Rwanda, so I had a few nightmares, had a few things. For me, if I were to deploy again to Africa, I'd probably ask for mefloquine again, because I prefer the devil you know. Yes, I had a few side effects but the other medications....

Veterans Affairs committee  It depends on the guidelines. If you're a pregnant woman or breastfeeding, it's probably the first line still, based on the CDC guidelines from a little while ago. So it gets down to these individual kinds of ideas. Of course, there's a lot of literature and a lot of concern about mefloquine right now.

Veterans Affairs committee  There really hasn't been. We can argue, our colleagues Greg Passey, Cam Ritchie ...there's certainly a split within the community. People I respect hold one view versus the other. It's a contentious issue within medicine. Again, suicide is extremely complicated. With our Afghanistan cohort, if you were taking mefloquine, if you were taking anti-malarials that was during the summer, the fighting season.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, that's a huge problem.

Veterans Affairs committee  Within our sort of headquarters, it's more of a force health protection issue, so—

Veterans Affairs committee  Force health protection, sort of our preventative medicine. They're in the process, so I can't speak for.... We're in the process of revising our policies and things on that. It's exactly reaching out. It's not me doing it or my section, but our preventative medicine folks are reaching out to our allies and giving the surgeon general information.

Veterans Affairs committee  My opinion would be asked from time to time, but really, when you're giving people treatment to prevent another illness like malaria, it becomes part of force health protection. They have expertise, and they have epidemiologists and scientists within their section.

Veterans Affairs committee  The discussion is going on right now.

Veterans Affairs committee  It's a pressing issue right now, which we're working on.

Veterans Affairs committee  You're hitting on one of the most difficult issues, historically, I think, because from speaking to many people who have developed PTSD, it's often your worst nightmare, and you don't know it's your worst nightmare necessarily. So, clearly, let's work on sleep deprivation, let's work on getting shot at, let's work on crawling under barbed wire, let's work on people who speak a different tongue...the IED kind of scenario.

Veterans Affairs committee  Absolutely.

Veterans Affairs committee  We have. The problem, in a way, is that population-wise in Canada, we're small. But there are universities...UBC, for example. For the last two or three years I've been going there to lecture to the graduating class, and this year I had breakfast with some of the kids to try to recruit them and I just chatted with them.