Thank you very much.
Colonel Wright and Lieutenant-Colonel Bailey, thank you for being with us. Thank you for your service. Through you, I would also like to thank the women and men who serve under your command for their service.
It's great to have you here, Ms. Spinks, and thank you for your important work.
Madam Chair, I served in a war and conflict zone for just under seven years as a civilian UN official stationed in Baghdad. During the latter part of that time, in a fairly short window, our team lost two colleagues to suicide. One of them was a serving U.S. armed forces officer who was attached to the United Nations mission as a liaison officer to the coalition forces, and the other was a UN civilian security and protection officer who was regularly exposed to potentially hostile scenarios in greater Baghdad.
My question, I guess, is around the idea of access. We've heard a lot of testimony about the programs that are in place, the funding that backs these programs and the importance of these programs. In your assessment, are there still barriers to access that go beyond or are different from the stigma itself and are simply a function of the fact that the person in question has suffered an injury that may prevent her or him from even having the motivation to seek help?
Access, in my assessment at the moment, is still very much a demand-based option. There is very rigid mandatory screening upon entry into the Canadian Forces, including psychological screening. Are we looking at access as too much of a demand-based option? Should there be greater emphasis, in whatever rational and reasonable way, on pushing the programs more into the lap of somebody who may have an injury?