Thank you, Mr. Russell.
Yes, I have one or two recommendations I would like to make.
We are far from being alone among the people we know. All the couples and all the families that go through this have similar profiles, if I can call it that.
In my view, the biggest problem is that people still do not know what resources are available. In the current health care system, I often feel that people do not really know much about post-traumatic stress disorder and do not really know how to deal with the experience of armed forces personnel who come to see them.
For example, I could remind Mr. Russell that my husband over the years regularly saw psychologists and psychiatrists. But nobody referred him to Ste. Anne's Centre, the place where he got help.
These veterans have to know about existing resources that are appropriate for them, and those resources have to be made available to the veterans. That is my first recommendation.
People know that I work in the Quebec health care system. Our former army friends know that I work on establishing suicide prevention networks. They call me, and I am the one who tells them that Ste. Anne's Centre is there for them. I am not an expert. And I do not want to criticize the health care professionals who are committed and have incredible workloads—it is just that I really think they are not properly equipped to recognize and treat these veterans, whose circumstances are extremely specific, at least in my corner of the world.
So, Mr. Russell, my recommendations would be to ensure that people know what resources are available, and to make those resources available.
Every two, three or four months, for example, my husband receives a kind of pension statement. It would be so easy to slip a little note in there. Two or three times a year, we get mailings on his pension. That is all I am asking. Over the past few years, I would have read it, seen it, and perhaps recognized our case there. It would at least have encouraged me to seek initial contact.
When the wheel keeps going round but nobody can help you, you end up becoming completely discouraged and wondering where to turn. That is where my husband was at when he contacted Veterans to tell them that he needed help, and that no one could help him. Nobody seemed to understand what he was experiencing, and what he had.
That is my answer.