Thank you very much for having us here today. We appreciate being invited.
The True Patriot Love Foundation, or TPL, was founded in 2009 to bridge the divide between the military and civilian worlds. It was through a presentation that the founding board members heard from General Rick Hillier, who was at the time raising money for the Military Families Fund, that we first put together a dinner in Toronto to raise funds to support military families.
We disburse those funds to charities across Canada to deliver programs that support members of the Canadian Forces. We are like the United Way for military charities, which is probably a good way to think of us. We don’t run programs per se, but we raise funds and provide supports to charities across the country.
So far we have raised $14 million to support military families over the last four years, $3 million of which has been disbursed to the Military Families Fund. We also provide funding to all the MFRCs around the country, Soldier On, Outward Bound, the Veterans Transition Program, a whole host of programs that are out there.
We have three principle areas of funding. The first is family health and support. That includes a wide range of things, everything from emergency child care.... Oftentimes that’s child care, so a member of the CF or a spouse can attend doctor's appointments, that sort of thing.
We have come across many requirements around needs for funding for children with special needs. When a family, for example, moves from Alberta to Ontario and they have a child with autism, in Alberta, where there aren't waiting lists for therapies for autism, they would have had the services that they require. But when they move to Ontario, where the waiting lists for publicly funded services are years long, oftentimes these families are having to remortgage their homes to pay for the therapies in the interim, so we step in and provide funding in situations like that.
Another area for us is mental health and well-being, obviously helping to deal with issues around post-traumatic stress disorder and operational stress injuries. We also include under that umbrella mental health supports for the entire family, because when a soldier is affected, the family is often affected.
We're also seeing situations with children and youth. Even simply dealing with the day-to-day challenges of being part of the Canadian Forces, in terms of moving from base to base, causes some challenges in the mental health and well-being area for the children and youth.
The third area we focus on is physical health and rehabilitation. It's important to state here that our role isn't to supplement government funding. We step in and fund where government isn't able. Here is a good example. When you think about rehabilitation, it may be a soldier who, say, has lost a leg in Afghanistan, comes back to Canada, and wants to be able to drive again. The government will pay to retrofit the soldier's existing vehicle. However, if it's a small vehicle and, say, they can't fit a ramp or a wheelchair in the back of that vehicle, we will provide funding for a more appropriate vehicle, and then the government will pay to retrofit that one.
One of the areas we thought it was important to talk about was that of mental health. We held a multinational symposium with the White House in Washington last fall, which various members of Parliament and representatives from the Canadian Forces attended. One of the things that was a common theme among the participating countries—Canada, the U.K. and the U.S.—was that serving members, when they're dealing with mental health issues, need to be able to access services that fall outside of the CF. It's very difficult for them to put up their hand and say to their employer, “I'm having issues”, and to seek help through their employer. An important area of focus for us is to provide those alternative services through the various charities that exist out there.
One of the charities that we have been supporting and which was recently given some support from Veterans Affairs Canada is the Veterans Transition Program. They have data that shows that only 37% of impacted veterans will seek services from Veterans Affairs Canada because of that whole sort of stigma associated around that.
We also look at and fund non-traditional types of mental health supports because there is a stigma around mental health. If you think about the culture of the military, people are often reluctant to come forward and ask for help.
One program we have provided substantial funds to is Outward Bound Canada. It doesn't put itself out there as a charity offering therapy. It's an adventure-based type of initiative. We've had testimonial after testimonial from individuals who have gone through the program: “It was the best thing I could have done for myself.” “It was an opportunity to talk to my peers about some of the challenges they're facing.” “I realized I wasn't alone.” “It opened up a whole new network for me that I never had before.”
Now they're seeking help for mental health issues, addictions, family counselling, or whatever it may be to help them get back on their feet.
I'll turn it over to Mariane to talk about a couple of other areas.