Mr. Chair, I'll finish up in about 90 seconds.
The glue that holds the programs together, be it the veterans independence program or the rehabilitation program in the new veterans charter, is a case management service, which Veterans Affairs has been offering since 1946 in one form or another. The version we now provide has been refined by our review of the New Zealand experience, where they don't have a lot of veterans programming, as you'll find out, but they have a first-rate case management service.
For those individuals who will tell you as members of Parliament that they have an awful time navigating the system—it's the most frustrating part of dealing with a municipal, provincial, or federal system—this is a service for the most severely disabled and the ones who need it most. It does the navigating for them, and it makes all the difference in the world in terms of the outcome. We're developing this service, and it's a very important element that pulls the programs together.
The mental health strategy is a particular focus, as you will know, with the increasing incidence and attention being paid to PTSD. Veterans Affairs and National Defence have developed a joint mental health strategy. The number of individuals we now have pensioned for psychiatric disabilities is about 11,000, of which 7,200 have post-traumatic stress disorder. That's a remarkable increase in 10 years.
We've responded with a comprehensive continuum of health services, building capacity leadership in collaborative partnerships. The net effect of those words is that we have OSI--operational stress injury--clinics now open in nine cities in Canada. National Defence has five operational trauma support service clinics. We are expanding our services to help family physicians. They are the primary caregivers to deal with individuals. We're now offering services through these clinics to around 2,000 individuals to whom we were not offering any services at all four years ago. We have some distance to go, and I'm sure in your discussions with the G-8 and the Commonwealth, you'll learn lots of ways in which we can improve. And I know you won't be shy in telling us.
The last one is the remembrance programming. It's very important. It's often referred to as the third leg in our stool--the first being the disability awards, the second being health care, and the third being remembrance.
One of the things CF veterans will tell you, if they haven't already, is that they want to be recognized as World War II veterans are. We want them to feel recognized and remembered like the World War II veterans. That's at the heart of our remembrance programming. It involves community engagement in Canada, maintaining international and national monuments, and certainly public information and research. The priorities, as it says on the last slide, are youth learning and engagement, better remembrance and recognition of Canadian Forces veterans, and engaging community and organizations to carry this legacy forward.
Mr. Chair, committee members, that's our presentation. We were 30 seconds under time.