If I may, Mr. Chairman, on a serious note, when we were bouncing around the bases, a couple of us went to 18 different bases. It was heartbreaking for a couple of us old vets to listen to the stories from the soldiers. That's when we asked the professor and a couple of other female members of our staff, and Deborah Harrison from UNB, to visit the bases in Ontario to bring the families on board and so forth.
It really was heartbreaking. I can think of one case in Comox--Joe knows this better than I--where a lady had a full-time professional job and her husband had OSI, really heavy-duty OSI. He was out looking at trees all the time. They had a couple of kids.
The base really didn't want to have anything to do with it. It was “Go and see the doctor. It's a chain of command responsibility.” She lost her livelihood. They lost their house. They were in debt and so forth. When she asked the military and VAC, “What can you do for me?”, the answer was, “Not very much.”
That's the kind of thing that sticks in the backs of our minds when we're going through these deliberations. There will always be other horror stories out there, suicides and so forth. You can only do so much.
I talked to this kid in Calgary who was as happy as a bug in a rug. He was married, had a couple of young kids. He came to our ceremonies, and six days later he blew himself away. Can you counter that? No, not at all.