Veterans Affairs Committee on May 15th, 2008

[Col Carl A. Castro]

The air force is translating the battlemind training program into a program they're calling “Wheels Down”, using an air force slogan; and the navy Seabees do use the battlemind training during post-deployment at their third location decompression site. The marines do not use it; I should be very clear about that. The marines have not adopted the battlemind training system.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Now, is that pre- and post-deployment for the marines?

[Col Carl A. Castro]

No, the marines do not use it at all. They don't use any component of it.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Oh, not at all.

So are you telling us that the battlemind program is the umbrella component that is then designed specifically for each part of the military, such as the air force?

[Col Carl A. Castro]

Yes, but each service is doing its own adaptation of it based on what was first developed in the army.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

We were talking a little earlier about using psychologists and psychiatrists, the professional health care people, in a variety of ways, from looking after 30 people, down to one-on-one. Do you train those people specifically to deal with military life, for the issues that a psychiatrist, psychologist, or professional people in the general public would not know how to treat correctly in the military?

[Col Carl A. Castro]

Yes, sir, we do. In fact we have several courses in which we do that. The main course is the combat operational stress control course, which is taught in San Antonio, Texas. Every behavioural health care provider deploying to Iraq or Afghanistan has to attend this four-day course. They are taught about the battlemind training system, the psychological groupings, the symptoms, the effective therapies that are known to be useful, etc. That's our flagship course to train our behavioural health care providers. I should say that chaplains also have a critical role in all of this; I guess you call them padres. They're also a very integral part of the battlemind training system.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

How did the transition go, the adaptation of both the military side and your veterans side, to integrating this program into their system? We still have a transitional issue from time to time, between military and--

[Col Carl A. Castro]

It's ongoing. I don't know if I could ever say it has been fully transitioned. As people turn over and as people change, you have to train more people. We now have a train-the-trainer course in the battlemind training system, and that's being pushed out. Not only do you have to train the soldiers, you have to train the trainers who are training the soldiers. All of these systems are coming online simultaneously.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Okay. Is that the training that happens for the Department of National Defence and veterans at the same time, so they have the same type of training?

[Col Carl A. Castro]

No, it's different. The Department of Veterans Affairs has unique requirements and different approaches in how mental health care is provided. That training is separate.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Okay.

What about a parent who has been deployed coming back? Does a family get integrated into that battlemind program?

[Col Carl A. Castro]

As I mentioned, we do have the training for spouses, but for parents, we do not. We're in the process of developing what we're calling “community battlemind training”. That would be for parents, uncles, grandparents, members of the community on what they should know about how combat impacts the mental health and well-being of service members. We want to help--

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

It's the children I was really talking about.

[Col Carl A. Castro]

Oh, the children. We have deliberately not attached the label of “battlemind” to children. We think it's inappropriate to do that. Instead, we have training. There is Sesame Street, which I'm sure you're familiar with, with the puppets. We have developed Sesame Street videos and Mr. Poe cartoon videos for children to watch. We think that is more suitable, and in the language of children, as opposed to “battlemind”, which is really not a language that would be appropriate for young children.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Thank you, Mr. Shipley.

This normally would be an opportunity for the Liberal Party, but I believe that has been conceded to the Bloc Québécois, Monsieur Perron, if he wishes to use it.

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

Mr. Russell made a deal with me. He'll give me his five minutes, and I'll take my five, so I have ten minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Not all together, though.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

This is the civilized way to go about it. You have to do it like that, otherwise your head spins.

I go back to the question that my colleague, Ms. Demers, asked. I am 67 years old and I go to the Remembrance Day ceremonies on November 11. I see men of 80 or 85 standing, trembling and crying, and when the ceremonial guns go off, they cover their ears because they just cannot stand it.

I am no doctor or psychologist, but I try to be as informed as I can. Their wives tell me that these men drown their troubles in Beefeater gin. That is a psychological wound to me. I am not here to lecture people. Americans, Canadians, everyone in the capitalist world, the free world, must make some effort to take care of the psychological wounds from which these 80-year-old veterans are suffering.

Those are my comments. So can you comment on that order I have given to take care of elderly veterans?

[Col Carl A. Castro]

No.

Sir, you're absolutely correct. There are a lot of veterans from World War II on who have mental health issues, and are actually what we describe as high-functioning. They're able to do their job. They're able to raise a family. They're able to have a spouse who still stays with them and still have symptoms that, if they came in to mental health, could actually get help and feel better.

We try to tell all of the soldiers who are coming back that one of the things with having served your country in a combat environment is you deserve to enjoy life to its fullest without any remorse, and without any pain. You need to come in and get help if you have any of these things. If you're not enjoying life, come in and get help, because you're entitled to enjoy life. Soldiers sort of connect with that sense of they've sacrificed, and now we need to take care of them. The psychological stigma of admitting to a mental health problem is very real; it's large. Many soldiers consider it a character flaw, or character weakness.

One of the things that we do know for certain is when our veterans get older and start going to the Department of Veterans Affairs, one of the key things that they have to treat is post-traumatic stress in the veterans who never got help before, but they are there for other types of physical ailments that our Department of Veterans Affairs takes care of. Now it has really sort of launched this whole training effort within the Department of Veterans Affairs on how do you treat the elderly who have mental health problems. Before, it was always sort of the young to middle age veterans who came in, but as the population starts aging, now all of a sudden we have this very large elderly population with mental health issues, and we have to ask, you know, do the same treatments that work in 20-year-olds work in 80-year-olds? We don't know the answer, but it is being looked at. We need to do a better job. I completely agree with you.

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

Colonel, I am more than pleasantly surprised by your testimony. I see a light at the end of the tunnel.

My comments are for my colleagues. I hope that we will continue to insist that when we recruit young soldiers, they will receive training on psychological wounds before they are sent to combat operations.

Colonel, I thank you on behalf of the future soldiers from Canada and Quebec who will benefit from a program like this.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Thank you, Monsieur Perron.

So that is the five-minute round you've taken on behalf of our friend, our Liberal colleague--

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

Now mine.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

No, no, yours will come shortly.

Now we will go to Mr. Albrecht of the Conservative Party, for five minutes.