At the end of the Cold War, we closed our military hospital system generally, not just for economies or anything like that, but primarily because seeing fit and healthy patients all the time did not clinically prepare our clinicians to be competent when operations occurred. So we integrated them into civilian hospitals, mainly university trauma centres, where they maintain their top-level skills.
At the same time, particularly for services that are difficult to access, such as mental health, where there are national shortages in Canada, we essentially doubled the Canadian Forces capacity so that most of the mental health care can be provided in-house. We went from 228 clinician positions to 447. Now we're at 380 positions that are filled.
Mental health tends to be the issue that causes us the greatest difficulty with regard to access. However, right now, compared to objective wait times that are compiled by the national Wait Time Alliance, particularly for psychosocial and psychiatric care, the wait times for Canadian Forces members are dramatically less than they are for any other Canadian.