Thank you.
Mr. Chair, with reference to the database, as I said, we've done some work in this particular subject. We produced our report in 2008. For the past two years there hasn't been too much follow-up on some of those issues. I must say, though, that since I took my appointment in 2009, I've been going on outreach visits to bases and so on.
There have been some creations, such the joint personnel support units in all kinds of organizations, in order to coordinate the care and services provided to members and their families. Still, to create a database, it seems that it's easier for DND or the CF to have a database on physical injury than on mental injury. I don't have the proper means to provide some intelligent recommendations here, but to me the database of people suffering from post-traumatic stress injuries is key.
As a lot of the committee has identified, this is not going to go away in the near future. It's going to increase in the future, and people see great demands on our medical care and everything. This database will be very useful in identifying how many people are suffering, not only in order to deliver the proper care but also to dictate additional infrastructure or additional requirements for health caregivers.
So I think it is important, and we've been asking the department for the last eight years, to make sure they have this database in order to treat this psychological injury as early as possible in order to prevent, as much as possible, the result of suicide. It is not necessarily linked with it, but it is definitely better to address the issue at the origin rather than to treat it at the end.