Again, there's a lot of programming for veterans in this budget, and that's always a good thing for veterans.
The issue I'm having, though, is with the $20 million towards the centre of excellence. I'm the one who helped advocate for its inclusion in the original veteran's platform for the election, and that money was costed specifically for the building of a physical place to treat veterans with PTSD. Now here it is a year and a half later, and I'm part of the mental health advisory group that has been briefing the minister, working very hard to make sure it ends up being that way.
In this budget, the centre of excellence appears to be a bag of money going towards research. We have tons of research happening. For the last six years, CIMVHR has had a gathering of 500 to 800 doctors, and they all like to talk research.
Veterans need a physical place to get treatment. When we do get sent for treatment, it's usually after the person has ruined their life to a great degree. Everything is a mess, or everything is about to fall off the edge, and they send us to 12-step programs at addiction centres. There are places where you can end up trying to seek treatment within a group that includes criminals, organized crime gang members, and drug dealers. It is not a healthy environment.
I was at one of these briefly in 2013 with the RCMP. While I was there, Ron Francis, an RCMP member, got into trouble for smoking pot in the red serge. Those of us with PTSD would see that as a sign. He's raising a flag, he needs help, because he's not in his right mind if he's doing that. He was there while I was there, and he lasted about a week. As an RCMP member, he was not comfortable talking around gang members and drug dealers. He left, and six months later, he took his life.
I received a letter recently from two other RCMP members, who within these last few months had to go to one of the Woods facilities. It was the same thing. They're in there, and one of the people with them was a high-level member of organized crime. There were several other criminal-type people who made it feel like a prison environment. There are issues of hierarchy and ego, and who's done the most.
That is not the kind of treatment we need. That's why I pushed Harjit Sajjan and Andrew Leslie, in 2015, to please include within their electoral platform an in-patient care facility, where we could bring veterans at the beginning, rather than waiting until they're addicted, abusing alcohol excessively, or having out-of-control anger.
Do we wait until their lives are falling apart and then send them to care? That's the wrong way to do it. We should be catching them at the beginning.
I'll stop there. I am part of the mental health advisory group to the minister, and Mark Campbell is part of the policy advisory group working to try to make the pension happen.
I'd be happy to answer questions, if you have any. Thank you.