If I may, with respect to the point on the suicides, I went public in 1997 exactly because of a report that said we weren't really getting more suicides than anybody else, and it wasn't because of the missions in Bosnia; it was because they were already predisposed to this.
I think if you take a look at a very specialized group of people who have gone through a whole bunch of training and all their rigours and you've eliminated those who can't sustain that, and then you look at the figures, you might say those figures are troubling. I would caution how you look at the numbers of a specialized group with a lot of training and who have already undergone the attrition of those who would be in the norm of the civilian population.
In regard to the specialists, when I commanded the Quebec area there were not even enough for the civilian population, so how would we meet our requirement? How do you argue that our requirement is more important than the other requirements? How do you argue that the families of these people are more important than the families of others?
I would contend that the only solution in this regard is a continuity of programs. That is, between the Canadian Forces and Veterans Affairs, guaranteeing that both the therapist and the injured person have a continuum for treatment. That builds trust with therapists that they're not going to get shuffled every couple of months to different patients, that they'll only have ten visits. These artificial limitations are absolutely stupid and preposterous. You treat a person until the person is well or can reasonably function, not by a limited number of visits.
I think you create that continuum between Veterans Affairs Canada and the Canadian Forces in regard to the therapists. And secondly, get into the universities and recruit like mad. If you have to pay a prime for that, fine. Be competitive with civvy street, and go get them.
The money we invest in attempting to bring back those who have been injured--and we do bring a large number of them back through accommodation and so on--is peanuts compared to the investment we're putting into training them and the loss of the experience of that veteran to be able to help others. It's like a business plan: you pay the price up front.