Evidence of meeting #4 for National Defence in the 40th Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was report.
A recording is available from Parliament.
General Counsel, Office of the Ombudsman for the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces
That is a good question, but I think it should be put to the Canadian Forces and not to our office.
Bloc
Pascal-Pierre Paillé Bloc Louis-Hébert, QC
Okay.
You may once again refer me to the Canadian Forces, but I would like to know if you can tell me how many places are available across Canada, by province, to help these people? It would appear that there are several hundreds and even thousands of people who require these services, but we can see that there are very few spaces available. The need is very great.
First, can you tell me how many spaces are available by province?
Secondly, what happens when there are not enough spaces? Is there some kind of procedure set up in the meantime?
General Counsel, Office of the Ombudsman for the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces
Once again, that's an excellent question, but it should be put to the Canadian Forces.
Bloc
Claude Bachand Bloc Saint-Jean, QC
You stated in your report—and I'm going to use the exact terms—that there is a problem with high-level direction. According to your most recent report presented in December 2008, can you tell me how many people in your office worked on this very exhaustive report? I know that there are many employees in your office, but how many of them actually worked on the substance of this report?
General Counsel, Office of the Ombudsman for the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces
Our office has been working on this issue since 2002. According to the latest follow-up report, some five investigators worked on this. As General Counsel, I worked on the report as well.
Bloc
Claude Bachand Bloc Saint-Jean, QC
Can you explain to us what research you and these five investigators did? Did you speak to the superior officers in the chain of command? Did you speak with soldiers who have come back and who do not suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder? Did you speak with soldiers who are victims of this disorder? Did you speak with their families? How big a sample did you use? Is it similar to what I have just described to you or does it go beyond that?
General Counsel, Office of the Ombudsman for the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces
During the last investigation, we interviewed over 360 individuals, including Canadian Forces members, family members, members of the chain of command, the chaplains and health care workers. We feel that we did a good job collecting information from throughout the Canadian Forces.
Bloc
Claude Bachand Bloc Saint-Jean, QC
Could you explain to me what you mean when you state on page 2 of your presentation:
We also identified a number of areas where progress continues to be slow, particularly with respect to: high-level direction and national coordination [...]
Are you referring to the defence staff of the Canadian Forces? Are those people slow to respond?
General Counsel, Office of the Ombudsman for the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces
In our first report, we made a recommendation, there is a lack of global leadership. What is needed is a special advisor who would report directly to the Chief of the Defence Staff to ensure that proper direction is provided across the country.
Conservative
NDP
Dawn Black NDP New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for coming, Ms. McFadyen. It's nice to have you back at our committee.
Your 2008 report found that of the 31 recommendations from your original 2002 study, only 7 had been partially implemented and 11 had not been implemented at all. This appears to be a rather astounding failure and a shocking lack of progress over six full years.
There was a piece in today's Ottawa Citizen that said “stubborn traditionalists inside Canada's military have still not fully accepted the reality that psychologically damaged soldiers urgently need treating for combat traumas.” It quotes a support counsellor in the same article as saying the traditional military culture “is still alive and creating a big barrier”.
Over the course of your investigation, is it your opinion that the failure to implement the recommendations is more the result of an unwillingness to recognize the seriousness of the problem? Was there an effort made to implement these recommendations that failed simply because of a lack of capacity and resources, or is it a combination of both?
General Counsel, Office of the Ombudsman for the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces
During our investigation, our investigators found that at virtually every base they visited—they visited over 19 bases during their investigation—that stigma was still raised as being a real problem. There's a problem that people are still afraid to come forward. They're afraid that they'll be stereotyped or that people will think they're malingerers or they're lying.
NDP
February 25th, 2009 / 3:55 p.m.
General Counsel, Office of the Ombudsman for the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces
Yes, and we certainly found that when we were out visiting bases. That is why we made the recommendation strongly again in this report that there needs to be some high-level direction and leadership.
After the first report, there were CANFORGENs and other policy documents issued that said this is an important issue and it's a lack of leadership if we don't deal with this. But we're not necessarily sure from what we found when we were doing our investigation that those words have made it down to action, because when we spoke to people, there were still some problems with stigmatization. That's why, in our opinion after our investigation, we determined that it was still necessary to have someone at a level reporting to the CDS just to show that it is a very important issue and taken seriously.
NDP
Dawn Black NDP New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC
I agree with you. I think that's critical in terms of making real change along the way.
In your recent report you reiterated the 2002 recommendations and you called for a database to track the number of CF personnel in the system. You're also calling for another mental health survey to get an updated picture beyond this survey, because it's old data now, from 2002.
General Counsel, Office of the Ombudsman for the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces
It was conducted in 2002 and it's now 2009.
NDP
Dawn Black NDP New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC
Could you tell the committee exactly how the information gathered from such a survey and a database would help the department better serve the Canadian Forces members who have post-traumatic stress disorder, or OSI?
General Counsel, Office of the Ombudsman for the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces
When we made the recommendation initially, and reiterated it in 2009, we found that if you have the database, then you can determine how many people have the problem. There is a lot of money spent on Canadian Forces health care, about $500 million a year. So let's make sure that those resources are going to the right places and we know where training and education programs should go.
I believe when the Auditor General did her report last year on this issue, she also reiterated that there needs to be some way to make sure the money is being spent properly.
NDP
General Counsel, Office of the Ombudsman for the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces
We thought it was very important to stress that again.
NDP
Dawn Black NDP New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC
Now, you first submitted this report to the minister in September 2008. Is that right?
General Counsel, Office of the Ombudsman for the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces
Yes.
General Counsel, Office of the Ombudsman for the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces
No, because of the election and everything, we waited until December.
