Thank you, Chair.
I appreciate the questions of my colleague. I think it's important to understand some of the process and steps that people take.
Just by way of introduction, I spent eight years as a registered nurse living and working in isolated and remote first nations communities across Canada, at the very least northwestern Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, British Columbia, and across the Arctic. I have a rich understanding of the experiences one goes through in taking an assignment in those communities. I have to say, Mrs. Smith, that I have very close friends who are members, and I share some of your concerns, particularly with the culture of stoicism that you referred to and the fine line between bravery and an ability to come forward with some of the things that you see. In nursing, not unlike the RCMP, we have come into a variety of different things. Of course, there's always a nexus between our personal and professional issues and the counter-transference between those two.
Having said that, my questions may be focused more with Mr. Tousignant around the wellness program. I just want to very briefly talk about what nurses have experienced in the north and how they've come to respond. It seems to me, based on what Mrs. Smith is talking about, there may be some structural defects in how emergencies or traumatic scenarios are dealt with that prevent officers from coming forward. If I can shed a little bit of light on our own experience, it's actually mandatory that we participate in debriefing programs or sessions by phone, or if the situation necessitates it, with a counsellor. Obviously there's a grade on which they're evaluated, but it can be highly subjective and highly individualized based on what the person has seen and how they respond to that.
Furthermore, there are other scenarios that require a mandatory group debriefing, the entire unit in this case. The entire nursing station staff converge on the basis of what transpired. It deals not just with the incident itself but with how the group interacted, things they feel they could have done better. Inevitably, that scenario rises again there or in some other station, and most of us get moved on over the course of our career. I think one of the cornerstones there is that it's built right into our operation.
Another cornerstone would be confidentiality: the real ability of the member, or in this case of the nurse, to be able to go in confidence and actually make disclosures because these kinds of things can sometimes trigger or manifest issues that you have in your other life. As I said, I talked about a nexus between them and prevalences of the use of alcohol—certainly maybe not when you're in the community but binge drinking when you've left the community—or social adjustment disorders with your family or large groups when you get out.
At risk of rambling on here, I'm just wondering whether you've contemplated some of those features in this wellness program, or foundationally speaking, some of these around it. I believe that they are the most important pieces that actually have us come through. I'm not terribly comfortable in a group therapy session, although I have been in one, but for the benefit of my colleagues, I thought of at least one case of a shooting where a murder was the outcome that it was productive for us as a group dynamic, more so than individually. I'll stop there and maybe you could just talk about it.
