Thank you, Chair.
I would like to thank all of the witnesses here today for your important testimony. A special thank you, of course, to Colonel Wright and to Lieutenant-Colonel Bailey for your service. I really appreciate you being here with us today.
Mental health, as we all know, has a huge stigma across Canada. I do believe though, that the stigma for military and other high-stress front-line workers is even higher because everybody looks to them to be the strong ones in the middle of a crisis.
We are still losing, on average, more than one serving member per month to death by suicide. I also understand that the estimates are up to 10 times higher for the members who attempt it. I think this is such an important study because we have to make sure that in every step we take, we're supporting our military to be in the best health, mentally and physically, as we possibly can.
Again, I want to thank both of you for your service and for the work you're doing on this important file.
I'm concerned about the idea of self-harm. I know that in the National Defence Act, we have paragraph 98(c), which is really based on self-harm as a deliberate avoidance of duty. I'm very concerned that this it is not the message that we want to send out to our military folks.
I'm just wondering if you have any concerns around having this kind of language in our National Defence Act when we're looking at opening up the doors and taking away stigma for people who are considering harming themselves.
Colonel Wright, I would like to start with you.