Mr. Chair, I'd rather not respond to the question. I am the veterans ombudsman. I've made my statement that their cause is indeed my commitment.
There's no question that a person in need who has served overseas, whether it was the so-called peacekeeping missions that were out of sight, out of mind, when we were bringing body bags back home anonymously in the old days.... In my experience, I was shot at, shelled, spat on, and had knives pulled on me. I was detained as a so-called peacekeeper. There are probably not many people around who have more compassion for the plight of these personnel, many of whom came back under different terms before we started establishing the OSISS clinics, before the Canadian Forces started getting involved in operational stress injuries in a big way.
At the risk of speaking outside my particular mandate, it's my understanding that the Canadian Forces, in their treatment of occupational stress casualities, are also reaching out to those former members who may have slipped through the cracks in the past.
All I can say is that all the retired members of the Canadian Forces, especially so-called peacekeepers--and I shouldn't be singling them out--should all understand that I have an empathy for what they went through in the watershed years of the 1990s.