First of all, I'd like to thank the committee for giving me the opportunity to appear before you today on something that's been very important to me, especially in the latter years of my career. I'd like to remind you that I am here as a private member. I'm not reflecting my current office as the veterans ombudsman. I may be out of the military, but the military is not out of me.
My consciousness regarding operational stress injuries--and I'd prefer to refer to them as operational stress injuries, because PTSD tends to be a particular diagnosis that doesn't really treat the entire community of personnel who have endured psychological injuries--was really heightened in 1995 in the aftermath of the Bosnian-Serb offensive on the enclave of Srebrenica. If you remember, at the time the Dutch, who were protecting the inhabitants of the enclave, had decided that they wouldn't fight. As such, the soldiers who were in the enclave had to witness the atrocities that were subsequently committed. Now, on one hand they managed to avoid the killed in action and wounded in action that they would have endured had they fought. But on the other hand, they weren't able to avoid the soldiers who had ruined lives due to alcohol misuse and drug addictions, as well as suicide. There was a huge aftermath.
I would like to think that I bring a bit of a different perspective to the table here today, because as a result of my experiences at that time, I developed the attitude that force protection is often referred to in the physical sense, but it applies just as much in the psychological domain and it remains just as much a priority for the chain of command to address. My assertion is that with all this emphasis on treating those who have been wounded or have endured psychological trauma, we have neglected to put enough emphasis on preventing or mitigating the effects of operational stress so that we have fewer casualties after a battle or an operation.
Now, many mental health experts are completely dismissive of the possibility that you can prevent operational stress injuries. However, I would submit to you that there are sporting organizations around the world that spend millions of dollars to mentally prepare their athletes for the types of competitions that they will engage in.
I will outline one of my own experiences as the commanding officer of the 3rd Battalion Patricias, which tends to validate my assumption in this respect. When I arrived at 3rd Battalion...of course, as I said, force protection is a command responsibility, and not only did I look at the physical side of it, but I also was very concerned about the psychological side. As such, I and my command team embarked on a very thorough training program that was state of the art at the time--critical incident stress debriefing. We were also a little bit avant-garde in our approach to doing business in that we developed what we called a stress inoculation training package. We drew from some of the contemporary writings in the field of killing, combat, and psychological stress. The intention was to introduce our soldiers to the types of psychological traumas that they might endure in a theatre of operations, but introduce it to them in a controlled environment with a view to controlling their responses and how they would react from it subsequently.
Now, unfortunately--or fortunately, depending on how you look at it--we were deployed to Afghanistan before we could actually get into that part of our program. But I might add that while we were in Afghanistan, with a view to protecting the mental health of the soldiers we had two padres and two military chaplains attached to us. We had a social worker, and of course, a very large number of critical incident stress debriefers in theatre.
After the operation, we embarked on a program that was established by my staff and at the time was referred to as decompression reintegration. The intention at that time was to bring soldiers out of the combat environment of Kandahar Airfield, take them to a third location, allow them to decompress somewhat, identify the soldiers that might be suffering some immediate impacts of the experience we just had, and have them learn to sleep between white sheets again and learn what had happened in the real world. In other words, we would prepare them to reintegrate into the workplace.
At the time, I encountered huge opposition to that concept. There was no scientific evidence at the time that indicated this type of activity would be advantageous. National Defence headquarters, all the medical experts, and the soldiers themselves didn't want to go to third-location decompression, because they wanted to get home to their families, and vice versa. The families and friends wanted their soldiers home.
Interestingly, we had overwhelming acknowledgement that the third-location decompression was indeed successful. In fact, I'd like to report today that they do carry out third-location decompression in Cyprus for all troops coming home from Afghanistan. There are, however, still some detractors of this concept of decompression or reintegration, and I would have to admit that I would agree with them to a point. I would say that third-location decompression is not necessarily ineffective but it's insufficient.
My recommendation would be that we should be treating the problem of operational stress injuries from recruitment through to retirement, and we should be engaging the medical community to be assisting the chain of command in preparing soldiers to endure the psychological traumas long before they might ever set foot in a field of operation.
My second recommendation is probably even more important. I submit that psychological stress injuries are the responsibility of the chain of command. I shudder when I hear senior officers say, “Yes, we've got it almost correct, but some soldiers slip through the cracks.” Personally, I consider that analogous to leaving a wounded soldier on the battlefields of Afghanistan. A casualty is a casualty, and we should endeavour to have nobody slip through the cracks.
In conclusion, I have heard forecasts, depending who you read, that there could be upwards of 20% to 25% stress casualties coming out of the field of operations in Afghanistan. I personally, as a past commander and if I were in command today, find that morally reprehensible. I find that the wrong message to be sending out to our troops, to our recruits, and most importantly, to the families and friends who have to live with the casualties when they come home.
Once again, my assertion is that we should be looking at the complete career of the soldier and that the chain of command should be held responsible for it.
I have a host of other ideas that I will defer until the question and answer session. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.