I have only a couple of quick comments. Primarily I want to refer you to something that each of you was provided with in the House. If you're doing a review on post-traumatic stress, this book should be on your file somewhere.
This publication is true. It's not driven by management. What you see in here are some members who have laid out their personal lives for the reader, with the goal of trying to help our people.
Brad's touched on an interesting point, the point about the cultural makeup. I come from an organization that is traditionally very quiet, very within itself, and hard to get close to, and the cruelty is as real today. I don't mean that in a bad way, but it's a job that has a lot of sadness attached to it, even though you feel good about the quality of your work.
When I first knew I was in trouble and was in treatment, the first person I chose to speak to was my brother, in a vehicle. We were coming back from another part of the province. I realized very early in that discussion that this was not the place I was going to disclose. He's a retired member of the Mounted Police.
I can give you thousands of those examples. We don't understand. There's no education. There's no research. There's no proactivity. We're talking about something here that we're now in the infancy of, although we've been aware of it for years. We've called it burnout and all those other terms, but we are starting this as a forest fire. We're cutting a track and working back.
In a way we're at a disadvantage compared to the military, because the military have their own infrastructure within medicine. We used to have that, and the doctors knew what the members were exposed to, but now that we've transitioned from a clinical model to an occupational model, the last thing a member of the Mounted Police is going to do today is go to an RCMP doctor. It ain't going to happen. If you do, they'll go to your personnel file and start to make notes that are going to be reflected in profiles, which are limitations and restrictions that will prohibit your lateral and vertical movement. You can kiss the Mounted Police goodbye when it comes to disclosure. However, that doesn't mean they should neglect what's going on or not deal with it at the front end.