Thank you, Mr. Chair.
First of all, I'd like to thank everyone for being here.
Lieutenant-Colonel Perron, thank you for your service.
Mrs. Fynes, my deepest condolences to you and your family on the loss of your son.
I too am a military mom. I have two sons serving, and the reason I am sitting in front of you today is that I decided to run for office because I wasn't too happy with how we were treating our military and our veterans, and so, what better way than...? Don't tick off a military mom, right?
I'm a fellow doer. I want to thank you, because they say when a member serves, their family serves right along with them, and I know that to be true, so I offer my deepest condolences to you and your family.
As I said, I have two sons serving, one who is deployed as we speak. I've had to accompany him to funerals as well, funerals of classmates and fellow soldiers who unfortunately lost their battle with mental health.
You talked a lot about...and I wrote this down: “It is a mental health issue, not a crime.” I was speaking with my colleague Randall on the way here, and we were talking about the fact that the Royal Canadian Legion has now recognized a Silver Cross mom who lost her son to suicide.
We've made strides. I previously was the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Veterans Affairs and Associate Minister of National Defence, up until two months ago, and I was with the CDS and our two ministers for the joint suicide strategy announcement.
We are asking our men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces to come forward and say they're suffering. We've heard a lot about universality of service and the fear of coming forward and then not being able to serve. Do you think that having paragraph 98(c) still in force for universality of service is what is preventing people from coming forward and asking for help, in your opinion?