Veterans Affairs committee  A decision not to take the antimalarial medications and therefore not deploy may result in an administrative review process, where they would look at whether or not the individual would be able to continue to serve.

Veterans Affairs committee  If we are going to be sending troops into areas where malaria is a significant risk and an individual chooses not to take an antimalarial medication, then we would make a recommendation that the individual not deploy into that particular area or mission. Malaria is a very significant disease, and we would not want them to have that risk.

Veterans Affairs committee  The primary care clinicians who would normally deploy would usually be physician assistants, general practitioners, or family physicians who have experience and knowledge to be able to assess an individual's medical condition and to make a decision as to whether they should have employment limitations applied or stay in a mission.

Veterans Affairs committee  There is a broad spectrum of symptoms that somebody might present with, and a physician assistant or family physician might seek assistance from a medical health professional to help them make the decision, if that was necessary.

Veterans Affairs committee  A decision to repatriate an individual for an acute medical condition would not usually result in an assessment of their universality of service. It's not the medical service that looks at universality of service; it's the personnel world, but usually that occurs after we've applied permanent employment limitations.

Veterans Affairs committee  I would clarify that the chief of the defence staff put out a directive that medical employment limitations assigned by physicians are to be followed by the chain of command. If we gave a direction that the individual needed to be sent back, then the chain of command would follow that.

Veterans Affairs committee  It's really an opinion that you're asking for, and I think everybody is going to be different with respect to what their needs and desires are with respect to planning their future going forward.

Veterans Affairs committee  We're currently organized to deal with the current suite of options that the chief of the defence staff has to offer up, from a deployment perspective. I don't think I can speculate as to what these other unknowns may be and what the requirements of them will be for us.

Veterans Affairs committee  I'm not sure about the comment that there are going to be fewer resources. I am prepared to support the current Canadian Armed Forces as it is. Whenever there's a consideration for a mission to go out the door, we look at what we have for resources to support that mission.

Veterans Affairs committee  Those recommendations do not really fit within my mandate with respect to the provision of health care. My comment would be that we believe any effort to smooth the transition process is going to help our members as they prepare for that transition. We recognize that anything we can do to reduce the stress and time for that is going to be beneficial.

Veterans Affairs committee  As we identify persons who are ill or injured and who no longer meet universality of service and are therefore going to be released for medical reasons, we want to be able to have the discussions between our case managers and VAC case managers to understand the treatment and support requirements of those individuals still in uniform as they're going to transition.

Veterans Affairs committee  I believe the key is at the case-manager level. If, with patient consent, we can have the case managers communicating effectively on what the treatment needs are and what the treatment plans need to be—and it doesn't necessarily have to be that full medical file but just having those discussions at that case-management level—that is really going to go a long way to facilitating that transition and helping that conversation to happen.

Veterans Affairs committee  I think we have to be in it as a team at that point. We want to be working on it together to get to the ultimate goal, to the benefit of the member and their family.

Veterans Affairs committee  The Canadian Forces health services don't offer mental health services to family members. Family members, though, may have access to some mental health services through the military family resource centres. What we do recognize, though, is the importance of families as we're treating military members who have mental illness, and where we can and where the patient agrees, we'll try to involve the family members in the care of the military member.

Veterans Affairs committee  I would just add, if I may, that there is a mechanism to help fund transportation for some if they need to travel to a different location to access health care.