National Defence committee  Thank you. Thanks for the invitation to appear before your committee to discuss maritime health service support issues. As an introduction, my name is Commander Rob Briggs. During my career I have served primarily in the navy environment, though I've also spent considerable t

National Defence committee  Sir, if I could briefly go back to your first question, there's no doubt that the stigma of mental health is a big issue, not only within the CF but within the greater Canadian community. It is very hard to break those barriers down. A lot of it is perception of the individual,

National Defence committee  Everybody should undergo this process regardless.

National Defence committee  I would say generally our philosophy—and this is a general rule—is that if the interruption of a medication is going to cause an acute exacerbation of physical or mental symptoms, then someone is non-deployable at that point. There are a lot of other parameters as well, but I'm t

National Defence committee  May I answer, sir? The troops, upon redeployment—and granted, we're talking about the folks who deploy to overseas, to Afghanistan—have a third-location decompression; it is currently in Cyprus, and I believe it lasts from three to five days. At that point, mental health care pr

National Defence committee  When you hear figures like that, it's difficult, sir, to determine whether the actual number of cases has increased or the willingness of the folks to come forward has increased. That is, is the stigma being broken down so that people feel more comfortable coming forward, or is i

National Defence committee  There's no ship like the HMCS Calgary.

National Defence committee  It wasn't, but they traditionally have great morale on that ship.

National Defence committee  Very good.

National Defence committee  You're not the only one, ma'am.

National Defence committee  The navy has a history of being away from home a lot without it actually being called a deployment. In the old days of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, it was common to be away from home for six to eight months of the year, and that was just business as usual. Typically you'd come as

National Defence committee  Absolutely. We've made inroads, as Colonel Darch mentioned, on the general duty medical officers. We're critically low on pharmacists and PAs. We're low on medical technicians and a variety of other specialized trades like lab technicians, x-ray technicians, and biomedical engine

National Defence committee  When we talk about psychological stresses, I would say the trigger is obviously different. It could be a flipped-over rigid hull inflatable boat that you happen to be in, or a line that breaks and hits your friend next to you during replenishment at sea, or some other type of tra

National Defence committee  Sir, since we've had the centralization of the Canadian Forces health services into one group, in effect, it's really allowed us to use all our assets; whether they're headquarters assets, training establishment assets, or army, navy, or air force assets really doesn't matter.

National Defence committee  There's a lessons learned process that we've developed through our operations folks, so I would say that on the operational piece, sir, we do much better than other aspects. Nobody does it better than the army, I'll be quite honest with you. They've had this process in effect for