Thank you.
I was happy to hear that bill was really intended to be about workplaces and, in particular, first responders.
Thank you very much for identifying this issue and bringing it forward on behalf of first responders and those who are going into the military, the RCMP.
To Mr. Davies' points and the broader definition of PTSD as it relates to problems outside the workforce, I would point out that PTSD is already a recognized mental health problem in the U.S. in the DSM, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, groupings. I haven't been able to find out whether it's part of the case mix groups in Canada, but it would go to the point that people who have terrible calamities in their lives, such as a tragic car accident, have ongoing PTSD symptoms because of it. They go into the mental health system and there are treatment protocols and processes there for them. There's clearly a triggering event. The failures of the mental health system, and the inadequacy of the funding of the mental health system, I don't think, are going to be changed by broadening the application of PTSD in this bill.
To my mind, the people who are struggling and suffering, and those committing suicide, are more the first responders, the military. I just had a mother of a soldier who had returned from, I think it was, Kuwait, who could not get treatment for his PTSD. He thought he had it. It related to the problem of causality. Was there a triggering event?
We heard as well from one of our key witnesses here that it's like the frog in the pot of water that slowly heats up; they don't even realize they're at the point of dying because of the gradual changes. In our first responders, the RCMP and the military, I think first of all there's a culture of their thinking that this is their life, that they should be tough and be able to handle these calamities as they experience them.
Then at the federal level there also seems to be a problem that if there isn't a culminating event, if there isn't a clear moment in time, then the PTSD isn't caused by someone's work. At that point, there seems to be a treatment gap. I think those who are going to benefit the most from the bill are in those groupings that Mr. Doherty identified. I think the best impact we can have is focusing on them.
I would like to see our moving federally to what the Province of Ontario did, which was a presumptive ruling that if you have PTSD and you've served in these areas, it is presumed to be workplace-related. I think this is the first step of this bill, to get to presumption of work-related injury. I think broadening it will take us away from that ultimate goal that I think we've all shared.
I would like to stay with the workplace. I don't know that it needs to be defined. I guess it will come down to what other groups we would ask the minister to include when she's doing the work. I would respect Mr. Doherty's advice to us on that without necessarily having to amend the bill to limit it to the workplace.