Thank you for that question. Merci.
To start with, I'd like to take a very short but long view and suggest that throughout Canada's military history, the issue of mental casualties has always been a fundamental problem. The number of stress casualties and psychological exhaustion casualties has always been high when you engage in something as traumatic and violent as war. It is the reality of modern war, and in that sense, I would suggest to you that the research findings in the civilian psychiatric profession and corresponding developments in the military profession in Canada and in our NATO partners have come a long way in a hundred years, based on this experience.
At the Gregg Centre at the University of New Brunswick, we have been closely following the tour of duty that was deployed from there in 2007, and what we've seen suggests that never before have the Canadian Forces, in particular, been better prepared and equipped to handle the problem of mental health when it comes to soldiers. We attribute this to the challenge of the 1990s. In the 1990s, the Canadian Forces senior leadership recognized that mental health was an issue that must be addressed and that institutions must be created to screen soldiers before they enter the armed forces, to take care of them when they are mentally injured, and also to look after them after they are released from the Canadian Forces. Never before have those institutions and systems been better in our nation's history.
So I would put to you that yes, this issue is a significant problem, but as long as we continue to keep resourcing the institutions that have been created to address the problem, then in my opinion it is well attended to.