I will attempt to respond to both within the limits I have.
I wish I could tell you why they are not responding to the requests for an audit. There is certainly enough evidence, from our perspective, to demonstrate a need for somebody to come in and do an external audit to understand particularly--and I can only speak to Gagetown and my experience there--what has happened with this program.
In any attempts to understand the organizational structure, the referral process, how clients are being tracked, we are getting different answers from different people. People within the system, I think, are trying to perhaps protect themselves and may not want the external audit. Certainly, there have been some attempts.
We also know that certain staff members have been effectively silenced--have been told they were not allowed to speak out.
I'm hoping the Minister of Veterans Affairs does come through with some way to provide some sort of evaluation of what is going on. I don't understand why it hasn't been done to this point. There certainly is enough evidence.
The adequacy of services is probably a problem across Canada. The response to the upcoming Afghanistan tours.... There certainly was an awareness that treatment providers were going to be needed; however, there didn't seem to be any standards set as to the criteria for hiring staff. There certainly have not been a lot of efforts towards training.
Both Robin Geneau and I have offered on many occasions to go to the base and not only train but supervise staff. That has met, again, with resistance. We don't feel we are the ones who have to do the treatment, but we would like to see adequate service providers. Training is available. We are both trained in many of the techniques and strategies, and we utilize them in our own practice. And we've gone out of our way not only to use the strategies, but to train.