Good afternoon, everyone.
We are continuing with our study on the care of our ill and injured members of the Canadian armed forces.
Joining us today, appearing as an individual, is Lieutenant-Colonel Stéphane Grenier, who is retired. He served in the Canadian military since 1983. He has served in several missions abroad, most notably in Rwanda and Kandahar, and has also been deployed to Cambodia, Kuwait, the Arabian Gulf, Lebanon, and Haiti, just to name a few.
He was faced with his own undiagnosed PTSD and related depression upon return from Rwanda and took a personal interest in the way the Canadian armed forces was dealing with mental health issues. In 2001, Lieutenant-Colonel Grenier coined the term “operational stress injury”, and conceived, developed, implemented, and managed a government-based national peer support program for the Canadian military, namely the operational stress injury social support, OSISS, program.
In 2009 he spearheaded the development of the corporate mental health awareness campaign that was launched nationally by the Canadian Forces Chief of the Defence Staff. He had that campaign endorsed by the Mental Health Commission of Canada, with whom he works today on a volunteer basis. As well, that campaign was endorsed by the Canadian Mental Health Association and the Canadian Alliance on Mental Illness and Mental Health, using his example of corporate leadership in reducing the stigma that is often associated with mental health illnesses.
Lieutenant-Colonel Grenier was awarded the Meritorious Service Cross by the Governor General of Canada for taking the concept of peer support and driving it from the grassroots up to a formal federal government program.
He has been retired for the past year, but is still playing a leading role with the Mental Health Commission, as I mentioned earlier, on its workforce advisory committee.
Lieutenant-Colonel Grenier, welcome to committee. We look forward to your opening comments. If you could keep them to 10 minutes, that would be great.