Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Congratulations, General, on the role you've played in planning and training the finest soldiers in the world, a feat even more remarkable given the rust-out of the Canadian Forces after about a decade of neglect by the former government.
Providing our troops with the equipment they need is well under way, so my questions have more to do with caring for our troops. As you know, the tempo has been high, particularly with 2 Brigade. This base is also experiencing tremendous growth with the standing up of the Canadian Special Operations Regiment, filling in the hollowed-out regiments, and hopefully, the relocation of JTF 2.
This is setting the stage for even more pressures on the medical-related services and infrastructure. Recognizing that CFB Petawawa was potentially going to be phased out in the mid-1990s, we're now left with a number of World War II-era buildings. When this committee travelled to the base last month, we saw how a burst line had caused a major cave-in just a short distance from a rail line. A few more metres and it would have cost the military $1 million a day. There is a cost in waiting to upgrade infrastructure. It can really carry a hefty price.
The base clinic, where soldiers are treated, is losing its functionality. That's not even mentioning the scarcity of mental health practitioners. They now have a medical clinic in one area and a mental health clinic in another.
Over the course of our constituency week, as Laurie did, I had the opportunity to speak with soldiers, and one soldier in particular who had been shot in the head while in Afghanistan. Our soldiers did hear their stories over Remembrance Day. This brave young man related how he never lost consciousness, and that when he was shot, he knew at that moment that he had lost his sight in one eye, but all he could think about was whether they would keep him in the military or kick him out. This soldier has found out that with treatment he is going to stay in. He said that his treatment was among the finest, and he cannot praise enough the doctors who worked on him.
In Edmonton, when I met with soldiers injured in Afghanistan, their overarching concern was having enough time to heal so that they could return to full active duty.
The bottleneck, particularly at base Petawawa, appears to be in the shortage of personnel selection officers. As you know, the BPSOs not only do the post-deployment assessments to pre-handle problems like post-traumatic stress syndrome, but they also conduct aptitude tests for the special forces etc., a very necessary component in force generation. Force generation is one of the two co-objectives of the Canadian Forces right now. With back-to-back rotations, the lone BPSO right now at Petawawa is really unable to process the backlog in the caseload in a timely fashion.
General, I'm asking for your commitment. Now that you have an idea of what these on-the-ground problems are that you may not have heard about, I'm asking you to see that those under your command who are responsible for putting the proper people in place to care for our soldiers and those responsible for maintaining base infrastructure do not fall any further behind and thereby prevent a future crisis from ensuing. We need adequate funding directed to these areas.