Evidence of meeting #31 for National Defence in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was treatment.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Dawn Black NDP New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC
I understand that. It just seemed to me that during your testimony you said many times that self-disclosure was the sharpest tool in your toolbox, or whatever.
NDP
Dawn Black NDP New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC
When you talk about screening, I wondered how that screening worked without self-identification. I'm sure there are some soldiers who want to go on deployment in Afghanistan and there are indicators that would indicate they should not.
Maj S. West
We set up our screening in such a way as to encourage you to report. We can't force you to report.
LCol H. Flaman
The other thing is that people will, as I say, determine what picture they want to paint. If they want to paint the picture that says they're ready to go and they have no problems here, they'll check that. We used to do the enhanced post-deployment screening before, because we wanted to know how much of the stuff they reported after was really present before. We threw out the before, because everybody who is ready and actively training to go is not going to fill out the thing that says they don't want to go. They just go right down the list and check everything off as negative. Then they don't have any hook to say to you, “Well, you said here”, or “What's your problem there?” There's nothing there.
NDP
Dawn Black NDP New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC
By percentage, how many who want to go to Afghanistan are screened and not permitted to go due to the screening process when they go in? Can you give us some idea of that?
LCol H. Flaman
Just off the top, I would say between 2% and 5%. There are those we screen out, and we tell them it's not in their best interest to go, for whatever reasons, such as a bad knee, for example.
Maj S. West
As far as the mental health issues go, again bringing the spouse in is a really good check. Even then I can assure you that my husband was very well briefed before he showed up at the social worker's, and we didn't have a lot of issues. So a family that did have issues....
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rick Casson
Thank you very much.
That concludes the questioning. We want to thank you. As a panel, is there anything you want to add? Very good, thank you.
I just want to remind the committee members that we're coming to the end of our hearing, so if you have recommendations, please move them forward. We'll see you next time.
The meeting is adjourned.