National Defence committee  I would have to go back and get the numbers and the facts for this committee. I don't know at this point in relation to perhaps the Department of Foreign Affairs how many former regular-force personnel are rehired. I'm prepared to provide that information to the committee when I

National Defence committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ladies and gentlemen, it is a pleasure to appear before you today to discuss the rehiring of retired personnel by the Canadian Forces. Before I begin, let me introduce the other key witnesses present here with me today. First, from the land staff is Col

National Defence committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. To address the first question, I'll use my experience. When I deployed to Afghanistan in 2005 as the commander of the Canadian contingent, from February until August, all the doctors on my mission we actually put into emergency, into ERs, just before our

National Defence committee  Agreed, and the issue comes back to.... I would throw this out: the jury is still out on what type of resilience training one should do to ensure one would be prepared. This much we do know. Do we need some form of resilience training? Yes. We're actually looking at it right no

National Defence committee  That's what you're speaking to. We have done some form of resiliency training, but we're looking at it from an institutional point of view for what we do CF-wide. On the second one--

National Defence committee  Okay. On the second one, I'm more than happy to sit down to talk to them. At least seven or eight different universities have come to us wanting to partner with us on research, to pass on information. Finally, I'd only throw out to you that there's a danger in using the Bagot

National Defence committee  Glenrose is one of the seven sites we have partnered with, because at the end of it all, Glenrose has a very high standard of policy, process, and structure in place to support them. Personally, I've been there. I've actually been there when they've made prostheses for soldiers.

National Defence committee  About two years ago we established a director of rehabilitation at Canadian Forces, realizing the challenge, tying into what the associate had said, that the IED is the weapon of choice and the result of that is many men and women in uniform who actually end up losing a limb. Tha

National Defence committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am sorry, but we will need about 25 minutes to answer the questions. I think there are two aspects to the question: first is the coming home, and second is once you are home. Mr. Chair, just let me again ensure that committee members know that we have m

National Defence committee  Very briefly, Mr. Chair, the Department of Veterans Affairs, with which we work closely, is actually in the process of looking at the new veterans charter, which came out in 2005-06. At that point in time, the commitment was that it was to be a living charter, which means it woul

National Defence committee  I would like to first provide some context. We recruit annually to something called a strategic intake plan. It lays out that for each occupation and trade within the Canadian Forces we can recruit so many people. It's not just wide open; there are specific targets. As you hear

National Defence committee  If I could, I'll respond to that question, Mr. Chair. First, they are volunteers. Reservists volunteer to go on any mission operation throughout the world. What happens is that they actually move to a different class or status within the Canadian Forces, from part-time to full-

National Defence committee  If I can quickly build on that, I have a plan here. Remember, this is more of an art than a science. I can't tell you that by doing everything on our plan here, les voilà, everything is going to be great. Nobody can say that. But we've learned in all of this that you have to do e

National Defence committee  You look pretty fit.

National Defence committee  If you look at the naval stressed trades in particular—this is worth noting for the committee—Commodore MacKeigan did some work to find out the real issue here. We found out that for many--not all--the real issue is grade 10 math. If you take a look at the current construct—I se