Veterans Affairs Committee on June 3rd, 2008

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Going back to what you opened up with, High Commissioner, I agree with my colleague, that it was a great soliloquy on the history of our military engagement and partnership and mutual suffering through it. One of the things that I think we have in common is that often we take the yeoman's job. I know we feel an extra burden being in Kandahar, in a place where there's a lot of combat, but your troops have been in Vietnam and Afghanistan and Iraq as well, and I think you still have--I'm not certain--battalion strength or maybe even a couple of battle groups in Iraq at the moment.

Of the 423,000 clients you have, do you know what percentage would be what we would call “traditional” veterans, from the Second World War and Korea, and what percentage would be contemporary veterans from Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.? I know we're really trying to drill down into some detail, but we'd like to have that for the report.

[Adam Luckhurst]

The significant majority are World War II veterans. I can't give you a percentage, but outside of that, in terms of veterans themselves, the 423,000 include dependants and war widows and the like. So overall, I think it would be somewhere around the 200,000 mark, but I could get you a more definitive number on World War II veterans. There were, I think, around 55,000 who went to Vietnam, and a significant number of our Vietnam veterans are now our clients. Our younger veterans are obviously a smaller group, but that partly reflects the fact that their conflicts happened reasonably recently.

It has taken some time for some of the people to come forward in the past to become our clients. So we won't see the full impact of servicing the more recent deployments for some time.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Thank you very much.

Now to the Bloc Québécois and Monsieur Gaudet pour cinq minutes.

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Do you provide some training to your young men and women in uniform about the post-traumatic stress syndrome?

[Adam Luckhurst]

Because I'm not from the defence force, I can't really answer that question in any level of detail, but the defence force certainly has a mental health strategy in place. Obviously a part of that is treatment and a part of it is prevention, but I really don't have the details on exactly what they're doing.

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Could you send us later on some documents on the prevention efforts being done in Australia for young men and women who are going to war?

[His Excellency William Fisher]

My military attaché will answer you.

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Thank you very much.

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

Could I add something?

Last week, I was surprised to learn that Americans consider that some 30% of young soldiers coming back from Iraq suffer from psychological injuries, from the post-traumatic stress syndrome.

Do you have similar statistics? I believe that your military attaché could send us the answer to this question.

[Adam Luckhurst]

No.

[His Excellency William Fisher]

I do not know either, but I will enquire, if you wish me to do so. I don't know whether we have figures such as these.

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

Thank you.

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Thank you.

The last questioner I have is Ms. Hinton.

[Betty Hinton, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

You might have to go back to what you said originally, but you gave us some numbers on mental health services. You said how many were accessing the mental health services. This may be a very difficult question for you, but can you tell me—if you can look up the number—approximately what percentage they are of your entire population, military and non-military?

I ask this because we've been hearing statistics from different reports. I'm rather interested in what the percentage is. Obviously, geographically, we could fit Australia into a corner of our country, so it must be a lot easier in Australia to get to your people than it is in Canada. The mental health part of it has become a really serious issue.

You did give a figure, but I didn't write it down fast enough.

[Adam Luckhurst]

Essentially we have about 52,000 veterans with an accepted disability in the area of mental health, but because of our arrangements, people can access treatment for conditions that are war-caused or not, particularly those people who have a gold health care card. Through our databases, we can identify people who have received, for instance, medication for a mental health condition or have attended a psychologist or psychiatrist.

About 140,000 DVA clients have received some form of treatment for a mental health condition in a year. So out of 423,000 or so, it's about a third, I guess.

[Betty Hinton, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

We're hearing that approximately 25% of the Canadian population has some need of mental health services. It's a stressful world out there. Military service makes it even more stressful. You're saying about one-third and we're hearing about a quarter in Canada. I wanted a bit of a comparison.

I'm sure my colleague Mr. Cannan has some questions. I'll give him the last part of my time.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

I've used mine up.

[Betty Hinton, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Well, thank you very much. I appreciate your responses.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

We thank everybody. At this stage, I would like to thank High Commissioner Fisher for his presentation and Mr. Luckhurst for his elucidation of the questions. You highlighted how we've been tremendous allies over many years. I know there are many similarities between Canada and Australia with respect to our population densities. You concentrated on your coast, and we concentrated on our southern coast, the warm climes of our country. Thank you.

If you don't mind, I'm going to proceed to some committee business as we're carrying along.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to set the record for the cheapest committee travel ever. I've never seen one as low as this. Why I have to do this, I don't know.

The Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs wishes to visit the national military cemetery in Ottawa in light of issues raised during its comparison study of veterans services offered by members of the Commonwealth and the G-8. The visit to the national military cemetery, combined with information on eligibility criteria for interment and arrangements concerning burial costs, will help the committee compare Canadian procedures with those in the United States, the United Kingdom, and other countries.

It's $400. We don't even require an interpreter because the lady who is on-site speaks both en anglais and français. There you go; we even save money on an interpreter. It's pretty straight-up stuff.

Mr. Stoffer.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

When I go to a cemetery it's always appropriate to bring a wreath and lay it on behalf of either our committee or the Canadian people. You don't need a special day for it, because every day is special.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Anders]

That's a fair suggestion. I imagine a wreath could be had for $50 to $100. We'll add that to the budget. I think we can figure out a way to add that in. How about we take that as an amendment to the travel request? We'll have to vote on this as an amendment to the travel request.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

What's the $400 for?