I won't go on any further about the veteran mental health cause. Mr. Peddle did a great job of responding, and I agree.
I will speak to the mental health crisis that I believe there is within the IRCC for the folks who were answering the phones and the emails. As the veteran community, we built strong relationships with those folks inside the IRCC, and I believe this government has let them down.
Those folks were dealing with people calling—no different from somebody calling 911—and basically saying, “Save me. I'm going to die.” You have to remember, most of these folks who left Service Canada and CRA to come over to IRCC for the purpose of answering the phones or answering emails did so because they wanted to help. They thought they could make a difference. Most of these folks were working from home, communicating by Microsoft Teams and accessing your portal through a VPN. Most of these folks have still not been acknowledged for all of their hard work. Most of these folks were trying tirelessly, with a completely broken processing system, to process the applications we submitted.
Within our government bodies, I am gravely concerned about how inefficient the application processing was. I think the folks who were answering the phones and emails were gravely impacted by it.
I would like to extend this one step further, to the national mental health crisis that we have. Try to book an appointment with a psychologist right now and you will find it is going to take upwards of four to six months, if you can even find somebody.
My question for this panel is, what are all of you doing to solve the mental health crisis in this country?