Good afternoon, everyone. We'll get our meeting 74 under way as we continue our study on the care of ill and injured members of the Canadian armed forces.
Joining us for the first hour is Colonel Homer Tien, a Canadian military trauma surgeon and military trauma research chair at Sunnybrook Hospital with the Department of National Defence.
Colonel Tien has been with the Canadian Forces since 1990. He has an undergraduate degree in biochemistry from Queen's, and received a medical degree from McMaster in 1992. He then posted with the 2 Field Ambulance at CFB Petawawa, and served as the unit medical officer for the 1st Battalion of the Royal Canadian Regiment. While at 1 RCR, he deployed to Croatia on Operation Harmony. He then deployed to Bosnia with IFOR on Operation Alliance. He then served with Canadian special forces at Dwyer Hill Training Centre as their first unit medical officer.
He has also deployed to Vancouver and to the Golan Heights, and has worked with Veterans Affairs in the recovery of RCAF airmen missing from World War II, in the Burma recovery mission.
He went to the University of Toronto to complete his general surgery training, his fellowship training in trauma surgery, and his master's degree in clinical epidemiology. He is now posted at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre as a trauma surgeon. He is the medical director for the Tory Regional Trauma Centre at Sunnybrook, and is co-chair of the U of T's trauma program. He is an assistant professor of surgery at the University of Toronto.
We welcome you, Colonel, to committee, and look forward to your opening comments.