National Defence committee  By the way, our website I think went live this week in French. Yes, it was a long process to translate all the documents and to get everything, but we think it's an important thing. When we had discussions with Senator Dallaire on becoming our national patron, it was one of the

National Defence committee  But we have earmarked that as a growth area for us.

National Defence committee  Obviously we're a volunteer board so if somebody out there is fluently bilingual and wants to help us, we welcome help from right across the country. If people want to work with us and think what we're doing is wonderful, they can look on our website and see what we do.

National Defence committee  That's aimed at doctoral students in their third and fourth year who already have demonstrated interest and demonstrated expertise.

National Defence committee  Yes. I would guess that there will be a significant spike in mental health issues in the next five years.

National Defence committee  It's important to know we are not direct service providers, other than our Hand Up! program, which is a very specific “I need these tools to get on the job” kind of thing. That's a pretty straightforward one. We look for programs, experts, and people who are in communities and do

National Defence committee  We don't have a homeless program ourselves, but we have funded them. We've helped to keep the veterans homeless shelter in Vancouver that was in danger of closing. We had a presentation with Veterans Affairs on that. We've done one or two others. We have a van that we donated t

National Defence committee  We are proudly independent.

National Defence committee  If you look at our mandate as described—you can look it up on our website—60% of our program and funding is targeted toward mental health issues. That is going to be the greatest need going forward. Obviously once you know the scope of the physical wounds, there are the things th

National Defence committee  The main thing is that we have feedback on that. It will be no secret to the members of the committee that there is a lot of discussion and some angst. I think there are a lot of very good things in the charter. For instance, there is the definition of a “veteran”, and bringing t

National Defence committee  One-third of $1 million sounds like a lot of a money, but if he has all these ongoing medical or mental issues, what does he do in three years? How does this go, and is it really a healthy way of dealing with it? I know that's an issue the government and the opposition is going

National Defence committee  From a personal point of view, as a padre in the reserves, I've been called on a number of times to do notifications overseas, because I'm the guy who's long in the tooth and who's been around the longest. They look to me when such things have to be done. In the last few years,

National Defence committee  I know, in particular, in talking to Colonel Jetly, who is head of mental health in the CF, we've talked about animal programs and how they feel about them. From a clinical point of view it's hard to get all the clinical data. It's a lot of testimonial and personal stories, and t

National Defence committee  They're still in the forces, yes.

National Defence committee  Nope.