I appreciate that. I think, really, that one can't happen without the assistance of the other. I'll tie that directly to VIP and chronic care. If those two are not chugging in the same direction, we're going to be stalled for many more years. You know my view on that.
In my organization we may portray an image that it's very regimental and so on, but at my level it isn't. There are many at the top who feel that it still is, but we're slowly slagging away at that.
In my organization we are severely understaffed in health care. In the health services delivery areas, we have not had a chief psychologist in the Mounted Police on a permanent basis for probably three or four years. The job is still vacant. In fact, they're using the salary dollars to pay for two projects going on within the unit. Here we are, keeping the chief psychologist position vacant while we're funding two sidebar exercises.
I'm telling you that there are a lot of members out there who need to be identified. I come from an organization of approximately 20,000 to 22,000 police officers, and we have just 14 staff psychologists. The position of the chief staff psychologist, who should be getting everybody on program--on base, on whatever--is not even filled.
The force jumped as a result of the Brown task force and the change management team, as they normally do. They react to some of these things, because there's always short-term interest, so they bring something forth.
One of the products they jumped up with was a mental health program, which is referred to as...it will come to me. Anyway, we have a staff sergeant in B.C. who is a psychologist as well. He's coordinating a program on decompression. The idea of these decompressions is to get out ahead of the disability or the illness or the injury and try to train people in how to handle it. They're doing classes of, let's say, 21 to 24 people. They did three in B.C. They were going to do two in Newfoundland for the Atlantic region in the month of December, and they have one scheduled each month from now to March.
Now, I've already told you that we have 22,000 members. We're going to have a lot of casualties before they roll around and have any noticeable effect with that program.
I want you to know that it's my information that the other 14 staff psychologists are rarely consulted on this. This was something senior management ran with because it came out of the change management group, and they thought it was a good idea. That's how that baby is coming down the pipes.
There are a number of risks with this program. I'm not one to speak about that. I'm not a psychologist.
When I was preparing for this and the force was here and spoke, there were three terms I found interesting. One was the RCMP's traumatic and resilience program for post-traumatic stress. One was the mental health wellness program, because they all transition into each other. Then there was the workplace wellness program. Now we have a new baby on the network, which is called.... Well, it's another wellness program. I'll just leave it at that.
Over the period since somebody's been trying to be accountable for this, they've rolled out a new health care model we're telling the world about. The commissioner has signed a two-page principles of wellness document. I challenge you to tell me what it means. There are some nice phrases there, but what we need is some results. We need some outcomes. We need some people helped. We have to re-establish trust internally in the force.
There are a lot of frustrations that are unfairly put on Veterans Affairs. Some of those are because the force has not maintained our medical files in a very good way. People like me thought our employer was keeping our medical records, not unlike in the military. When the time came that I needed them, there was nothing there except a record that they paid a bill one day at Walmart for medications or whatever. Now we have to catch up and put together materials to support our duty-related injuries. That's not often easy.
Remember that we had no involvement with Veterans Affairs until after October 2001 or 2002. After that, a serving member of the forces and the Mounted Police could collect a disability pension for pain and suffering while serving. Prior to that time, even though we had been with them since 1948, we weren't really taught about them, or we didn't know what they did, because they had nothing to do with us until we went to pension. That changed a bit in 2002, but there has never been a good education component, and the transition interview is critical to filling that gap.
The other thing is the continual taking back of money through the vacancies that are run in the health services program. That has to stop. Do you know how they allocate the health care money for the Mounted Police? They give it to them based on how much they spent the year before. That tells you how we funded health care for the Mounted Police during the last number of years. I'd like to see that money protected. It needs to be there for health care. God, we can't even collect data. Do you know that the only way my force can tell you any reasonable numbers on post-traumatic stress or a couple of other disabilities, including depressive disorders, anxiety and depression, and anxiety disorders? Those are the top four in our organization, and they result in....
I just read a psychologist's comment to me the other day. It said 60% to 75% of our sick members are suffering from occupational stress injuries. VAC will support that, in a way, because if you look at the VAC numbers for our 8,000 claims, the largest percentage of those are for post-traumatic stress.
I call the Mounties and ask what we have for numbers. The only way they can verify any numbers is to call Veterans Affairs and ask them what they are making payments on, and that's no good, because the only numbers Veterans Affairs has are those that are successful. It's not about who is in the system, who is getting in the system, who has failed, or who is appealing the system. We can collect statistics on how long somebody has been going through the same stop sign, yet we can't give anything back. That goes for suicide as well.
I implore you to look at that. I'm going to suggest that our suicide numbers are down, but I can sit here and give you four or five. Most of our people kill themselves with their own tools. Paul Smith is but one of the most recent casualities. Paul's casualty was a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His wife is now in possession of a pension because Paul was killed as a result of his duty-related injury. Now, you unwrap that one.
This is the way it goes all the time.
There are a number of inherent issues with Veterans Affairs. One is that we don't get the feeling that they know us. The position on the liaison is critical. In all fairness, the guy wasn't treated very well in Ottawa. They might as well have stuck him a building and let him roam around until he did his week and then went back home, but our guy embedded in Charlottetown was treated like a king. He went to all the meetings. He was part of the process.
There needs to be a maturity in this area within the upper crust of my organization. I'm not speaking out of school here. I've told them all pretty much the same thing during the year. This is not the first time I have spoken to and or about my employer in relation to this issue. What's going on here needs to be fixed.