Thank you, Madam Chair.
I too want to thank you witnesses for coming back once again today. Thank you very much for that and for your years of service.
Colonel Jetly, I want to thank and congratulate you. I'm sure you're quite excited to move on to that next stage in life.
In 2016, we did a report of the Mental Health Expert Panel on Suicide Prevention, a joint suicide prevention strategy, which highlighted that for some of our members, the transition period between being released from the Canadian Armed Forces and becoming a veteran could be a particularly stressful and a vulnerable time.
My riding is Simcoe—Grey, which has one of the largest if not the largest base, CFB Borden. What we find here is that many of the individuals decide after their military career to stay in Wasaga Beach or Alliston or Angus, or some of the other local areas here, which is good. We certainly want to find a way for them to seamlessly integrate into our community here. I've heard many times throughout the years that they seem to lack that 24-7 in-person support close by. I know that if someone has stress or mental health issues, for instance, they have numbers and they have to go to Toronto, but driving in Toronto, if you weren't stressed before, you will definitely be stressed by the time you get there.
So my question for you is this. With what we've heard and talked about in this area, do you think it would be a good idea to reach out? I know we're doing a hospital expansion down here in Alliston, which it borders on. Would it be a good idea to work together to put some of those services close so that they're still here in the communities that they're in to hopefully help them through that stressful time? I know they're also stressed as well with the backlog in Veterans Affairs, so I think it's our duty to do anything we can to help them out.