Let me start by trying to answer your question in a more general way. Then I'll ask Raymond to deal specifically with some of the issues you've raised as they relate to regions in Quebec.
You've touched on the important issue that many of the folks suffering from some of these conditions are not located in Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa, or even Quebec City. They're often located in more rural areas, and because of the nature of the illness they often retreat from society and go to even more isolated locales. So this is a challenge for us, there's no doubt about it.
Let me say initially that there is a shortage of people in Canada who have the right kinds of skills to deal with people with operational stress injuries. We recognize that, and in our new Veterans Charter we have an ability to provide treatment to these people. The treatment is a quasi-statutory right, so it's not restricted by any specific budget limitations. We can draw on the services on the basis of need, in other words. But we do find that there are shortages of skill sets, and that's why we've had to focus some of our attention on these areas where we've established a critical mass and clinics.
I'll give you an example from Calgary, because I was at our Calgary clinic just a few weeks ago. They are treating some people in the Calgary clinic who are living in some very isolated areas of Alberta. In some instances they've made the trek into the clinic, and in other cases they're dealing with people on a distance basis by phone and other means. They have been providing counselling to people.
Often the difficulty has been getting the message out. My colleague Raymond will talk a little bit about our peer support programs. But in the Calgary situation we were advised by the people who run the clinic that the most effective way to reach out to some of these people is to have former members of the forces, who are peers of these individuals, do outreach for some of them. They go to them in these remote communities and encourage them to come in for treatment.
I think we've established enough critical mass, and the expansion of a number of clinics will help us deal even more effectively with this. But there are certainly areas of the country, and the Quebec north shore is an area that comes to mind, where—