National Defence Committee on May 6th, 2008

[Col Pat Stogran]

That was the situation as of 2003, after I left the unit, because my successors had also been blamed for not being able to address them. I hope that situation has changed, but what hasn't changed is that the chain of command at every level is relying on the medical experts to solve that problem for them. I would submit that we should be, in the case of preparation, preparing ourselves for battle. The medical experts should be integrated into the training system to make sure the psychological preparation is just as rigorous as the physical preparation—the pulling of the trigger, the manoeuvring around the battle space.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Thank you.

Mr. Comartin, seven minutes.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here.

I apologize for being late.

Mr. Stogran, if we can go back to the point Mr. Bachand was raising around the culture, the institutional mindset, he didn't really get an answer from you as to whether it was more ingrained at the mid-level of the forces or at the top. I don't know if you have a comment on that, but if you do, I'd like to hear it.

[Col Pat Stogran]

Mr. Chair, it's throughout the chain of command. I have met with soldiers who feel that the senior non-commissioned officers do not treat these things with the care they deserve, and I've also heard at the very top, very senior officers saying that a few slip through the cracks. So I would submit that it is endemic throughout the culture as it stands right now. Now, that's not to blame everybody for it, but I think that if the chain of command took ownership of those types of injuries, the entire chain of command would change.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Again, I'm not sure you've had time to do this, but can we look to any other military forces around the globe who you believe have addressed this and perhaps integrated this into their psyche better, that we need to deal with OSIs with a greater degree of understanding and compassion? Are there any other units around the globe we can look to for instruction or direction?

[Col Pat Stogran]

In my study of the situation, there are very few militaries of the world that actually engage in the prevention before deploying to a theatre of operation, aside from, for example, the U.S. Army Battlemind program, where they do pre-training of a sort. It's not as intensive as what I am suggesting, from recruitment to retirement. And importantly, in the Battlemind program they have a follow-on package that addresses the longer-term reintegration of soldiers after an operational deployment. The Missouri National Guard, for example, has what they call the yellow ribbon campaign. Now, I don't think they have the third-location decompression idea that we have here in Canada, but they will recall their National Guardsmen at 30, 60, and 90 days just to check on their reintegration to make sure they're getting the services and benefits they're entitled to, and to make sure things are going well for them at home.

So there are bits and pieces. I think what is really required is a coherent strategy that goes from recruitment to retirement. I don't think that exists anywhere.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

In terms of the preparation, you make the analogy that we spend all this time on physical fitness and military tactics, and those are obviously directed by experts in those specific areas. In terms of this one, though, are you suggesting that the preventative work, the preparatory work for our soldiers, sailors, and air force people would be done by people with expertise in psychology and psychiatry? Or would it be a broader group?

[Col Pat Stogran]

Mr. Chair, I feel that within the training system you should have medical experts who are contributing to the design, development, and delivery of training. However, once again, the actual hands-on, the procedures that are used within a unit, that should be transparent to the troops. They should see their chain of command treating this just as if it was applying a shell dressing to a sucking chest wound.

There used to be, in the 1970s and 1980s, a great deal of beasting going on in the ranks when we were being trained. I would submit that--as primitive as that was at the time--it built a certain strength of character in soldiers; it weeded out people who weren't really cut out to go on operations, but once again it was very primitive. If we had psychiatrists and psychologists who, in the same fashion as we do physical training, would push soldiers to their psychological limit and introduce them to the types of traumas and atrocities that they could experience in theatre....

I'll give you an example. When I was a young officer, we used to offer our troops--when they were on their basic training--rabbits and chickens to kill as part of their basic training and to eat them. That in itself, for many young recruits coming from downtown Toronto, was a traumatic experience. So these soldiers would make it through the training system, only to arrive in theatre and either kill a person, or the first dead thing they see--because it's politically incorrect to do that kind of thing now--would be a human being on operations.

So there must be ways of desensitizing our soldiers, using virtual reality, for example. They're experimenting with it in the treatment of stress casualties. I would submit that we can make the conditions real enough for them so that we can control their responses.

Colonel Grossman, in his books On Killing and On Combat, writes about separating these traumatic events, separating the emotions from the memories, so that if you don't have the emotive response at the outset, you won't have it later on when you're remembering these types of occurrences. I'm not endorsing that particular approach, but I know of no studies at this point in time in the Canadian Forces--my last job was with research and development--that are going to that length to make our training more scientific.

I'm sorry for the long answer.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

You have a minute.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Let me pass for now.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Mr. Hawn.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all for being here.

I can agree with Colonel Stogran. Seagulls taste like hell, but if you're hungry enough....

Mr. Price, just to clarify a little bit on the grievance procedure, we talked about the CDS seeing 40% of the 100% that make it to that level, but grievances are designed to be resolved at the lowest level possible, so if somebody makes a grievance and the lower office can satisfy that, then fine. If the person is not satisfied, then it keeps escalating to that point. It's not as though we want to see all those grievances at the CDS level.

Talking about the CDS providing financial relief, do you have a concept of the level of relief? There is a dollar value there somewhere. What level and what appeal process do you mean, if whoever has been granted this money says it is not enough?

[James Price]

We haven't discussed it, and I know it's being discussed at National Defence. He needs the authority to bring resolution to grievances that he sees. He doesn't need broad authority. I don't know what's been talked about, but certainly with the kinds of things we see, we find it frustrating that the chief has to go off to a third party to get an endorsement to pay out sometimes very small amounts of money.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Yes.

Ms. McFadyen, regarding the response of the CF or the government to the reserve study, are you aware that some of these issues have gone to Treasury Board for further study and so on?

[Mary McFadyen]

One of the recommendations we made with respect to accidental dismemberment was brought forward by Minister MacKay to make sure that...because as the policy now stands, if a reservist and a regular force member were in the same accident and had the same injury, the reservist could possibly get only 40% of what the other person would get. So that was one positive thing that went over to Treasury Board.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Okay, Mr. Stogran, you mentioned early on in your comments what I would call ROE-induced PTSD. The example is of Srebrenica, where the rules of engagement did not allow the soldiers to do what they knew in their soldier hearts should be done, and that obviously induced some PTSD. Is it fair to make the connection that robust ROE under which soldiers are empowered to do the things they know they should do would ultimately result in potentially fewer operational stress injuries?

[Col Pat Stogran]

Mr. Chair, I would have to qualify my answer, because that's only one very small part of the answer. I couldn't say conclusively that would be the case. However, I can say from personal experience that the opposite is true. Denying a soldier the ability to do what is morally right in his mind does cause psychological trauma.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Again, Mr. Stogran, through the chair, you're talking about recruitment or retirement and OSI training, and I would have to agree with that. Following on from what Mr. Comartin said, just to expand that question a little bit, are you aware of any other services that are looking at that kind of recruitment or retirement training?

[Col Pat Stogran]

Mr. Chairman, at this point in time, I know of no others. However, I am taking advantage of the present position I have to hopefully hold a symposium in the new year to find out what the state is of various armies around the world in addressing that situation.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

For both Mr. Price and Ms. McFadyen, you said you are acting on an interim basis, but I would emphasize that you do have the full authority. If you take the “acting” and “interim” off, it would make no difference.

[Col Pat Stogran]

Yes.

[Mary McFadyen]

Yes.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you.

One of the suggestions that came to us from one of our military witnesses who was a severely injured soldier was to have a separate office. He called it a wounded soldiers holding list, that sort of thing, basically establishing a unit that might not be together physically all the time but would be a unit of wounded soldiers. He said they were doing something similar at Walter Reed or in the U.S., and he was going to flesh it out and send us some more information. Do you see some potential value in that, because it would maintain a sense of unit cohesiveness since you would have injured privates, corporals, sergeants, etc.? Is that a worthwhile suggestion, in your view?

[Col Pat Stogran]

Mr. Chair, I'm very thankful to the honourable member for bringing this point up, because it's something that I did forget to put in my brief.

At Fort Leonard Wood, with the American warrior training unit or rehabilitation unit, they have established exactly that sort of thing: a disciplined chain of command within the structure of the hospital. I met with many soldiers who had been very seriously wounded in Iraq, and whether it's a captain, a major, or a private soldier, every morning at 0800 they report to their squad leader and are given their orders for the day as per any other military organization. However, those orders are in accordance with those particular injuries, so that chain of command in that case works very closely with the medical authority. The soldiers were all praising that particular approach to doing business.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Also, along the same lines, the suggestion was that maybe within the VAC's ombudsman office and the CF ombudsman office.... Maybe this has already been done, I don't know, but there might be a separate office; or one of the offices should be assigned strictly to deal with the issues of veterans carrying wounds, physical or psychological, or the serving members carrying those kinds of wounds.