Sir, if I could briefly go back to your first question, there's no doubt that the stigma of mental health is a big issue, not only within the CF but within the greater Canadian community. It is very hard to break those barriers down.
A lot of it is perception of the individual, so that does produce problems. We can have all sorts of services, but if people don't identify themselves or aren't identified, it's hard to give them treatment, and that is an issue we wrestle with.
We have done some things. For example, our new health assessment, which is about to be unrolled, is going to be every two years. Formerly, every five years CF members up to the age of 40 needed to get a physical examination per se, which involved a history and a physical exam. Then from age 40 to 50 it was every two years, and thereafter it was every year.
The advice of our subject matter experts has indicated that we're much better off from the get-go to do this every two years. As part of this, not only are we increasing it to every two years, but our experts have weighted in a variety of screening questions, on not only physical health but also mental health.
We would hope that in effect by doing this every two years we would identify folks who are in some sort of physical or mental distress. That's one way we have of perhaps reaching out a little more frequently to hopefully identify these folks.
I think the committee is already aware, because of testimony, that we have an enhanced post-employment screening process now, which, as far as I can tell--and again, I'm not a mental health expert--is the premier post-deployment process that any military has in the world. From what I'm told, it's even superior to what the U.S. system has in place.
We're ideally catching everybody from a deployed operation abroad. Within three to six months of their return from a deployment, we're doing an enhanced screening process, as part of which there is a questionnaire and an actual interview with a mental health professional. That's supposed to be ensured through the chain of command. The chain of command will tell Corporal Bloggins, “You have to go in on this date for your enhanced post-deployment questionnaire.”