Veterans Affairs committee  Our CAF centre of excellence is going to be much more focused on treating the ill and helping the ill. It will certainly help those people who are struggling with illness. The larger group that's still facing transition won't be specifically addressed by us.

Veterans Affairs committee  You've hit it on the head. It's a translation of that. The idea is that as we do more and more research, we're going to figure out promising things. We've made a concerted effort in the last decade or so to publish everything we find in the peer-reviewed literature. They're not military reports sitting on shelves.

Veterans Affairs committee  I can't tell you the exact amount. The funding is basically joint funding. It really is our own CAF health services that are funding it. Some of it is in-kind funding in terms of my contribution and my salary and that kind of idea. It's not an endowed chair in the sense or the idea of $5 million sitting there and then us living off the interest.

Veterans Affairs committee  There are two aspects around it. The chair is one thing, and the centre of excellence is a separate thing. We have clear terms of reference for the centre of excellence, which has the thrust of research, education, and training. That's staffed within the directorate of mental health.

Veterans Affairs committee  I think militaries have always had the adage of realistic training, of exposing people to stress. I think we are doing that to the best of our abilities. There's the road to mental readiness program. Also, all the stress awareness, coping, and performance psychology stuff starts in basic training and then is throughout one's career.

Veterans Affairs committee  Mr. Chairman and members of the House committee on veterans affairs, thank you for this invitation. I'm the senior psychiatrist in CAF. I have several key roles, including advising leadership on mental health issues, and leading our relatively newly minted centre of excellence, which is a cell within our directorate of mental health that is charged with a more strategic nature to forward thinking.