National Defence committee  I wouldn't think so. From the numerous studies we've had on stigma and other barriers to care, it is not one that has registered with significant numbers.

National Defence committee  I will do my best to answer that. It appears that Colonel Wright's feed is frozen. The interesting thing about paragraph 98(c) is that from my knowledge, and I've been in the CAF over 34 years, I would be inclined to think that most Canadian Armed Forces personnel are not even a

National Defence committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. This is a two-part question. We currently make the Road to Mental Readiness for families available through the military family resource centres to whomever members identify as their family. Recognizing that not everybody can access the physical centres w

National Defence committee  That is, in fact, an interesting question, because as you have identified, this was different from anything that the Canadian Armed Forces members had been asked to do before. There were obviously some unique challenges, such as how to deploy people within a pandemic environment

National Defence committee  Prior to any deployment, military members will undergo a couple of types of screenings. One would be psychosocial screening. They're encouraged to include their family in that. The objective is to see if there are any personal or family factors that may interfere with their being

National Defence committee  Each deployment is evaluated before a mission is initiated, so the conditions can vary greatly depending on whether it is a combat mission, a humanitarian mission, a peacekeeping mission or even sometimes a training mission. A number of different assessments are done to make sur

National Defence committee  Stigma and other barriers to care are very interesting, because we often think that stigma is the primary barrier to people seeking mental health care when in fact many studies over the past two decades, not only in the Canadian Forces but in other populations, show that the numb

National Defence committee  Once military members transition out of the Canadian Forces and become veterans, their care is taken care of by their family physician, the civilian health care system as well as Veterans Affairs Canada. We do have a memorandum of understanding between our clinics and Veterans

National Defence committee  Thank you. From Statistics Canada epidemiological studies that were done on Canada Armed Forces members in 2002 and 2013, we know that Canadian Armed Forces members are impacted by mental illness and mental injuries at relatively the same rates as our counterparts in the Canadia

National Defence committee  For the families, the Canadian Forces health services does not have a direct mandate to deliver medical care or mental health care to families. However, we can provide care to the families in support of that member. There are also a significant amount of services available for

National Defence committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. I have no additional opening remarks to what Colonel Wright has just presented. Thank you.

Health committee  Absolutely, we recognize that need to provide the education before they go. I think most of you will have seen the little booklets we've handed around as part of a six-phase pre- and post-deployment education program, where we actually spend a full day with all troops before they

Health committee  Absolutely. That was the intent behind the Chief of the Defence Staff's “Be the Difference” campaign in June 2009, where he got up and did a presentation and press conferences with the theme that it was okay to suffer from a mental illness and to ask for help, and that we in the

Health committee  I was just going to comment that in the Canadian Forces, we've struggled with stigma. I mean, you can imagine that in a population that's largely male and out there doing things that most of us in our society wouldn't volunteer to do, stigma has been a big issue. We're at the po