Veterans Affairs Committee on Nov. 23rd, 2010

[LCol Rakesh Jetly]

Yes.

[Lise Zarac, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

All right, thank you.

I would like to talk about the first graph you showed us. Looking at a graph is all well and good, but I think we should go beyond that.

Could you tell me if you have studied something? You have the number of men and women. Have you compared them? Is the percentage of men identical?

That seems to be minimal, but I am sure there are many fewer women in the Canadian Forces than men. Is the percentage of female suicide proportionate to the percentage of male suicide?

[LCol Rakesh Jetly]

It's below.

[Lise Zarac, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

Much below?

[LCol Rakesh Jetly]

I don't know how much below, but the proportion is below.

This isn't done in my section. This is an epidemiology section. It's a statistic. For women, it is between zero and one, and in an organization of 70,000, statistically, it's very difficult to measure--

[Lise Zarac, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

Did you study why it is below? Do women have different duties than men and could that be it? Did you study the factors as to why?

[LCol Rakesh Jetly]

No, we haven't studied that. But since April 1, part of our new and more detailed investigation may result in some suggestion as we start tracking them.

[Lise Zarac, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

Okay, because I think you can get some answers if this is studied carefully.

Also, you see a decline and then it goes up again, up and down. Have you analyzed, in the years during which it goes up--

[LCol Rakesh Jetly]

That's not statistically significant.

[Lise Zarac, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

It's not?

[LCol Rakesh Jetly]

It's not. This is--

[Lise Zarac, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

The reason I'm asking is that General Dallaire's book just came out. In it there is a paragraph that talks about Vietnam; when a soldier lost hope of gaining anything--he went out into combat thinking, oh, this is going to be fast, and then in combat he lost hope--that was the beginning of the problems for him.

[LCol Rakesh Jetly]

That's very valid. Again, I think suicide is probably the worst way of gauging that. We should gauge that long before. We should look at mental illness, we should look at suffering, we should look at this.

Suicide--this is always the tricky part, because you need a degree in statistics to understand all of these, and I don't have that--has to do with the confidence bars there, similar to the polls before elections.

[Lise Zarac, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

How much is that done at the beginning, before somebody joins the army? Do you evaluate his mental health?

[LCol Rakesh Jetly]

No. Well, it's an overall health evaluation.

[Lise Zarac, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

But not specifically mental health.

[LCol Rakesh Jetly]

It's not specifically mental health, but you make sure that somebody is healthy; it's a recruit medical.

[Lise Zarac, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

Should we do it?

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you.

Mr. Vincent.

[Robert Vincent, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to talk about the patients referred to a doctor who diagnoses them with PTSD. In your experience, would you say that the Canadian Forces recognize the diagnosis at the outset and agree to compensate the applicant, or is the file challenged?

[LCol Rakesh Jetly]

The army doesn't have a choice. We have confidentiality. So the army will never--

[Robert Vincent, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

What choice do the armed forces have?

[LCol Rakesh Jetly]

The choice to reject or to not accept the diagnosis...you know, the medical confidentiality.

If a soldier walks into my clinic in Petawawa and I give him a diagnosis of PTSD, I don't tell the head of the army that he has that diagnosis.

In terms of whether the culture accepts the diagnosis, yes, absolutely. Does the organization understand that when you send soldiers to war zones time and time again, some of them are going to come back ill? Absolutely. For the individual soldier, we will not divulge his diagnosis.

[Robert Vincent, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

My question was more specific and I feel you were sort of trying to get around it.

If you ask a member of the Canadian Forces to go see a doctor and the doctor gives a diagnosis of PTSD, is the diagnosis made by the doctor—the doctor to whom the Canadian Forces sent the soldier—accepted by the Canadian Forces at face value? Will that person be compensated from that moment on? Or will there be a challenge instead? Will it take years to prove that it is a PTSD case even though we are talking about the doctor the Canadian Forces referred the person to?

[LCol Rakesh Jetly]

Compensated by Veterans Affairs or compensated by...?