Veterans Affairs Committee on April 19th, 2007

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Brent St. Denis]

Gilles Perron, please.

[Gilles-A. Perron, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

I'm going to ask a couple of short questions and I'd like short answers.

Raymond, what's the waiting time for an appointment at Quebec City's Emergency Hospital Centre?

[Raymond Lalonde]

At Quebec City's Emergency Hospital Centre, well, I don't know.

[Gilles-A. Perron, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

If I said to you it was over a year, would you believe me? It is unacceptable.

Secondly, on the front lines, why isn't Quebec's CLSC network being used for diagnostic purposes or why isn't somebody like Pascale Brillon offering training, for example? It's available, the infrastructure is there. It would cost less than it would to build another centre.

I'm going to give you another example. Let's say that there's a person from Lac Saint-Jean who has to take the bus to go to the Emergency Hospital Centre in Quebec City regularly. That's unacceptable. There aren't 100,000 cases in Lac Saint-Jean, there may be 10. In Abitibi, there are perhaps seven or eight, maybe a dozen in the Bois-Francs, in the Sherbrooke region.

We really must find a way of starting the diagnostic process in the local communities. We have the tools we need in Quebec. Why don't you meet with people from the association of psychologists, the CLSCs, and others? We have the tools and the infrastructure; what we need to do is use them.

[Raymond Lalonde]

When you talked about the Emergency Hospital Centre, what were you referring to? Were you talking about our clinic in Quebec City?

[Gilles-A. Perron, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Yes, the Quebec City clinic.

[Raymond Lalonde]

No, the waiting time isn't a year.

[Gilles-A. Perron, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

The waiting time is one year.

Denis Boucher is on the waiting list. He has an appointment in the last week of May, but he's been waiting for a year.

[Raymond Lalonde]

There have been problems with staffing changes at the clinic. Our objective with the OSI clinics is to provide appointments with a maximum wait of 15 working days. We're currently holding discussions with clinic staff to increase resources so that we can meet this objective.

Secondly, it clearly isn't our goal to treat everybody at the clinic. However, when it comes to assessments and for some period of time, it may indeed be that the best place for treatment is the clinic because we have an interdisciplinary team. But we do want the majority of our clients to be cared for in the community so that they don't have to travel.

That's why we want to work with service providers in the Lac Saint-Jean region, for example. We want to increase their knowledge base through interaction with professionals at our clinics so that patients only come to the clinic to get a proper assessment or when the treatment requires an interdisciplinary team, including psychologists and psychiatrists, for example.

[Gilles-A. Perron, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

I agree with you. You play the same role as the Cardiology Institute in Montreal.

[Raymond Lalonde]

Exactly.

[Gilles-A. Perron, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

I agree with you there, but you have to get a foot in the door in order to get treatment, and that can take a very long time. That's unacceptable.

[Raymond Lalonde]

We have a plan to address that, and our goal is that no one will have to wait more than 15 working days to get an initial appointment at our clinics.

[Gilles-A. Perron, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

I have another concern which, I know, has nothing to do with your system. I'd like to know what needs to be done to prevent post-traumatic stress disorder. Ms. Brillon and Mr. Guay, who appeared before the committee, told us that this was possible. I am sure you've met them, they have patients who are in the military and also patients at Ste. Anne's Hospital.

I find it regretable that Ms. LeBeau came and told us that National Defence will give our young troops a three and a half-hour training course on post-traumatic stress disorders before they leave for Afghanistan in August. These young people don't even know the disorder exists.

And yet, his booklist the various symptoms, so people can self-diagnose and realize they might have a problem. Why isn't this being taught, why isn't there more training given at National Defence? Is anyone putting pressure on you to do this? One of you said earlier that the faster someone is treated, the better their chance of success. So it follows that victims of PTSD should be treated on the front line, in the theatre.

[Raymond Lalonde]

Obviously we're not experts when it comes to National Defence's programs and services, but what I can tell you is that National Defence is working hard to identify unstable people, including people who may suffer from mental health issues as a result of family or personal problems, for example. It won't help the Canadian Forces if you send troops away on a mission who are likely to become chronically ill and may be forced to leave the Canadian Forces. One of the problems force members have talked about is that often they are so eager to go on a mission that they won't necessarily talk about all their problems. There's also a taboo associated with mental health issues, not to mention troops' desire to do their duty as part of these missions.

[Gilles-A. Perron, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

I believe you. In Valcartier, the second floor, where the psychologists' office is located, is nicknamed the stairwell of shame.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Brent St. Denis]

They're good questions, Gilles.

[Gilles-A. Perron, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Brent St. Denis]

Thank you, Raymond.

Now, the only outstanding request for questions is from Roger, for a very short one. Anybody else?

Okay, Roger, for a short one, and then we're going to suspend for a minute while we thank the witnesses.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

Thank you, and I'll be very quick.

Slide 16 talks about leadership. We know governments come and go. In fact, we're going to change this one out shortly, but we want to—

[Gilles-A. Perron, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

We don't engage in politics here.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

You mentioned the collaboration with the World Health Organization. I want to know who's leading in the world on your mental health strategy. Who's leading in the world? Who can we learn from? Are we there? Are we close?

[Bryson Guptill]

It's a difficult question to answer as to who's ahead. There's a lot of research in this field. Certainly in terms of the volume or the amount of money spent, the U.S. is leading the pack in the research. They probably have more people diagnosed with PTSD as all the other countries together. There's been research going on in the U.K. as well. They've taken a slightly different tack. Australia has a lot of research going on in this area.

We have a subgroup of our overall collaborative work with the western countries, the western allies, to share some research in this area. As I mentioned, Dr. Pedlar is the person who actually deals with this and could speak to your committee at some point if you wanted more details.

[Roger Valley, Liberal, Kenora, ON]

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Brent St. Denis]

Thank you very much, Mr. Guptill and Mr. Lalonde. You've helped us immensely today. No doubt our interim report on this matter, which we're going to be discussing in the near future, will be greatly influenced by your assistance today. So thank you.

With that, we'll take a one-minute suspension while our witnesses leave their chairs before we go to the other business. Betty has asked during that minute suspension to make a presentation. Apparently she would like Gilles and Roger to pay attention.

We have a motion submitted by me. I'm not going to speak to the motion. It's self-evident, so we'll give Betty first dibs.