You have received the motion in both official languages. It reads as follows:
That, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the Standing Committee on Veterans' Affairs study the problem of suicide among former members of the Canadian Forces and report its observations and recommendations to the House.
I would like the committee to study suicide specifically. Last week, and again today, we have seen the matter come up often. The matter is dealt with only briefly in the study on the Veterans Charter. It is a matter that we should look more deeply into with this study.
There are a number of cases, like Frédéric Couture in Quebec. He was the former soldier that I told the committee about. He took his own life. This was a disastrous situation; none of his family was aware of what happened when he was on his combat mission. I would like to study and understand the phenomenon, especially what can be done to prevent it.
We have to examine the resources that the department presently provides in order to present suicide. We have to study it in great depth to find out what happens in those cases.
We should also study the question of awareness, the information that our veterans get about the effects of stress on others, on families and on themselves. We should study the matter in depth and call the witnesses that I have already identified. Universities have experts in post-traumatic stress syndrome and suicide. I saw a report about the subject by a veteran who did a PhD in psychology at the Université Laval, in Quebec City, and who had lived through it himself. We could meet a number of witnesses, including parents who have lived through their children coming back and then killing themselves.
You can see that this is not a partisan perspective. Every member here could look deeply into the problem of suicide that we are hearing more and more about, including the follow-up done with people coming back from combat missions and the services. We must do an in-depth study of the matter.