Thank you, Madam Chair.
I thank the minister for being here today.
I want to take an opportunity to mention something quickly. I'm just over a year into my mandate here and I'm very thankful to be here, but two parts have disappointed me so far. Certainly from my perspective, it's only our third meeting here, and I would like to have had more opportunity to speak. The other one is that even now with our discussion today, I'm yet to see a budget tabled since I've been elected. Those are probably two of the disappointments I've had.
I would like to follow up. I had a discussion on this at our meeting in March this year, and as you know, National Defence and Veterans Affairs Canada built a suicide prevention strategy late in 2017. In 2018 we had 15 suicides. In April your department revealed there had been 20 suicides in 2019, the highest number since 2014. For perspective, 175 Canadian military personnel have died by suicide since 2010, which is more than the 158 Canadians who were lost during the war in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014. We know that we want to invest. We think it's so important for mental health, probably more than ever, especially now since COVID is an issue all across Canada, but certainly it's a huge issue in my riding at Base Borden in Simcoe—Grey. Minister, where are we in 2020?