What I see, as an outsider looking in, is a tremendous disconnect between chain of command and medical. They rely very heavily on privacy.
I've had colonels tell me that my son is a responsible young man and they can't interfere with his life. I said he was a responsible young man; he's no longer a responsible young man. He blows money like crazy. He drinks himself into stupidity so that he doesn't suffer the nightmares, and they still come back.
I think there needs to be a bridge between medical and chain of command. When they took him to the hospital the other day, I got an e-mail from Major Kiss and he said, “He's with RVH now. We can't touch him. We're not privy to any information, unless he tries to leave the program early, and then we'll get involved. That's a chain of command thing. Other than that, we don't know what he's doing. We don't know anything.” I haven't heard from him either. I guess they took his phone away. He's been in there now for five days and I don't know anything about it.
The other pet peeve I have is the universality of service. They've spent $1 million turning my son into a combat soldier. Now they want him out of the military. Certainly there must be something.... I think universality of service came into effect in 1998, and I believe the military uses it as a way of getting soldiers out of the military, or just saying, no, you can't be a soldier any more.
When a soldier is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, I think the local police need to know, as well as children's aid services, if there are children, probation officers, because a lot of them get in trouble with the law, and the chain of command, the military police, and medical. They all need to sit around a table and say, okay, this guy has a problem, or this woman has a problem, and how can we deal with it if the lid comes off?
As I said, the OPP were at his house 25 times. I'm surprised they didn't shoot him, because he used to show up at the door wearing a helmet, a flak vest, and pointing an airsoft rifle, which looked very lethal, at police officers. But they knew, because most of them in that division happened to be ex-military, and they all told me that they've dealt with parts of PTSD. All of them deal with it, but a lot of the soldiers don't come out and say they have PTSD, like my son.
I kind of feel bad in many ways that I've championed his illness or his injury in the press. A lot of them don't come out because they don't want to be like Johnny Woolvett, a former star who is now just a drunk. That's the perception.