Veterans Affairs Committee on Dec. 2nd, 2010

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Okay.

Mr. Lobb is next.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

The first question is for Mr. Brown. For the purposes of our research here, RCMP members have access to OSI clinics. Is that correct?

[S/Sgt Murray Brown]

The clarity is not pure on that. Do we have RCMP members in OSI clinics? Yes, we do. The protocol has been an issue of discussion. I was also fortunate to be a member of the national mental health advisory committee. We have some members who are there and are very happy with it, and we have others who wish to stay in the private sector.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Okay.

It says here in the magazine you provided that in 2006 there was a joint MOU signed with VAC, DND, and RCMP that would provide a network for that.

[S/Sgt Murray Brown]

There is, and you can enter that program. In fact, I believe there is work going on now to try to enhance it and simplify it and so on.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

That's good to hear.

General Dallaire was here two weeks ago today, I believe, and commented on the importance and the significance of the OSISS networks. It's my understanding that the RCMP have access to these OSISS networks as well. Is it your experience that these are working well for the RCMP? Can you tell us a little about that?

[S/Sgt Murray Brown]

I'm familiar with some members who are using those facilities and the peer support program as well. Those who go there seem happy. They seem satisfied with it. Again, others have opted not to go that way. It's a personal thing, rather than mandatory.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Concerning the members' employee assistance program, both companies I've worked for in my career had employee assistance programs. They're always evolving, always changing, always trying to best suit the needs of the employees and staff. I understand that yours is under review right now. Could you tell us a little bit about what you'd like to see come out of the review?

[S/Sgt Murray Brown]

We have what's called the MEAP, a member/employee assistance program, which is fundamentally the same as what you experienced. That program has been around for a while, and we see it as a core program. It works as well as the confidentiality that it proposes to have. If one or two people violate that confidentiality, then you have to remove the MEAP person or the program will collapse. There's no room for error.

The MEAP is currently under review. Tragically, when they got into it and hired a consultant, they ran out of money and had to shut down the review. The review is back on now, in a haphazard way, and we are monitoring it very closely, because the MEAP, to us and our membership, is a core program. It is a program that is very much peer dependent. That doesn't mean there aren't people who are non-police officers you wouldn't go to; you go to people you have confidence in, but we believe there is an effort to have the members who are referral agents in that program replaced with public servants or civilians or whatever.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

My time is probably running short here, so I wanted to get to another point.

Mr. White commented that there was a need to medicate, but that probably the most important point was to see a psychologist and to get the mental aspects dealt with. You mentioned that there are 14 psychologists directly employed by the RCMP. Obviously there would be a significant number of psychologists also employed through Veterans Affairs who would work through the OSISS clinics and who would also potentially service RCMP officers.

There's a difference between service to the Canadian Forces and service to the RCMP. There are parallels, but obviously there are differences too. Moving forward, would you like to see the ability to service RCMP needs within the OSI clinics, or do you feel it's already there?

[S/Sgt Murray Brown]

I believe there's capacity there, and we are there. I personally am one who would prefer to stay in the private sector. I'm confident in the resources that I have access to, and many are.

I'm a referral agent and have been in the Mounted Police for a number of years. I have made many referrals, even though I'm not a doctor. I don't make medical referrals, but referrals based on situations, or we'll go through the MEAP coordinator, and he or she will make referrals and then advise health services that we've referred a member for specialized treatment.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you.

Mr. Mayes is next.

[Colin Mayes, Conservative, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here.

I'd like to direct my first question to Staff Sergeant Brown. As a former mayor, I had a very close relationship with all the staff sergeants in my community. I was reading about some of the symptoms of stress in this magazine. I recognize those in the corporate world, and I can tell you what that stress is from: fatigue, overwork, being under-resourced. I'm talking a bit about preventatives, rather than about treating a patient.

How much work is really being done to address that? Quite often the RCMP is understaffed. The duty watch is very challenging. Members get burned out. It affects their family, and then you have the stress problem, but if you get to the root of the problem, it's the fact that they're working too much.

Could you please answer that question?

[S/Sgt Murray Brown]

Your observations are exactly on the money. The difficulty is that if you were to look at the stats from Veterans Affairs, the point where you would see most of our people finally stepping up and saying they need some help is when they are beyond the age of 50. I'm going to suggest to you that many of them are burying that and getting to the point where they're at pensionable service.

This is one big difference between us and the Canadian armed forces, and it's important. Many of the forces members are getting out at the age of 33 or 34. They need to work. They need a second career. I think our mean departure age is a little over 54; most of our people are leaving with a mature pension, but they could be put out on medical as well. It depends. There are a number of strategies.

Another solution to your observation is that we have to do a better job on leadership and middle-management training. There's very little of that in my organization, and what is present in two particular courses is relatively new. I'm not asking for every member of the Mounted Police to be made a specialist in identifying post-traumatic stress or depression, because I think during our lives we've acquired a lay skill set to do that anyway.

In relation to the private sector, when you look at the number of 14 psychologists, you have to bear in mind that those are the program people. Those are the people who are setting up the policies and guidelines that allow you to function within the private sector.

[Colin Mayes, Conservative, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

I actually appreciated the fact that you said you're different, because you really are different from the Canadian Forces—

[S/Sgt Murray Brown]

Yes, we are.

[Colin Mayes, Conservative, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

—and you're in totally different circumstances.

The other issue—and I'd like to have this answered by either Mr. White or Ms. Siew—is that when you're on active duty in the Canadian Forces, there's a challenge because it's around you all the time, whether you're on base and stationed in Canada or whether you're overseas and stationed at some outpost.

Is there any effort to break people away, to identify the....? This is not part of the discussion here, but I'm trying to stop the patients coming, stop the stress, and I think that's important.

With the people you're dealing with and with the feedback you're getting, are you finding that it's not necessarily the combat duty, but the fact that you just can't get out of that box?

[Brad White]

I'm not saying it's not necessarily combat duty, but it's called operational tempo.

[Colin Mayes, Conservative, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Okay.

[Brad White]

When you are continually deployed, you come home and have a certain period of downtime. That downtime is usually required to decompress. Following decompression, you then have your taskings that you've got to look after. Then you have your career courses you have to look after. By the time you get through the first tasking and never get to your career course, you're put back on alert again to go back onto deployment because it's a matter of resources, because when you make these types of commitments as a government, you have to say that these are the resources that you're going to provide. We don't have infinite resources out there, so when a guy is deployed with 1PPCLI on one commitment and comes back, maybe he's posted over to 2PPCLI, and within six months he's tasked to go back. It's a matter of judging what your resources are.

You asked if there's a way to get out of it. I lived all of my life on military bases. That was them, up on the hill; that was us. We lived in PMQs. We lived in our environment and we lived in our culture. We self-supported each other because that's how we survived. Spouses couldn't work in the local towns because they knew that they'd be gone in two or three years.

You built that community and you protected yourself in that community. That's what you did.

Where do today's individuals go for relief? They go to the Internet. The world is at their fingertips now. I liken it to what I experienced back in the 1970s when I was in Germany. There was a lot of what you might call power drinking and stuff going on. I went back in the 1980s, and do you know what the young guys were doing? They weren't going to the messes and they weren't going to the bars. They were going to the museums. They were going to see the sights. There was a whole cultural change of focus on where the individual wanted to be. That's happened already.

[S/Sgt Murray Brown]

Is there more time?

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Please be very short, sir.

[S/Sgt Murray Brown]

I think that question is so important that I'd like to make this acknowledgement to you as well. When you look at the Mounted Police, most of our people live in the community they police. When they come home from work, either off shift or on shift, the door-knocks go from there until the start of the next shift.

The other thing is that in our communities you can't hide. Everybody knows where the Mounties live—all the Mounties. Even in Canada, we live in compounds in some communities, not because of the nature of the community but because that's the way the government buys the land. If there's some swampland on sale somewhere that doesn't run too much water, we buy the whole lot.

[Colin Mayes, Conservative, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Our government has hired more RCMP and troops for those reasons.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Does anyone else have any questions that they'd like to ask the witnesses? We have one small matter that Ms. Sgro wants to bring forward.

Mr. Stoffer, you may have one question, please.