Thank you very much for your questions, madam. There were several. I will do my best to answer them.
I believe the first question was around our deficit reduction action plan response. The only thing I can say right now is that as you are well aware, all government departments have been asked to put forth proposals with respect to these plans. We are all engaged in that process, and as you can well imagine these are all a matter at this time of cabinet confidence. It will be the cabinet that will ultimately decide how each department's responses will be managed. From our point of view we can offer nothing further. Simply, we will wait until our minister tells us how that will play out, if at all.
On the second range of questions you asked, there is certainly a recurring theme around mental health, and post-traumatic stress disorder in particular. I would like to offer that the Department of Veterans Affairs is very much engaged in addressing the mental health needs of our modern-day veterans. We have a very robust mental health strategy. That strategy basically has involved a number of elements. It includes very aggressive case management at the front end for individuals who present with mental health illnesses. We have mental health resources. We have a regional mental health officer in each of our regional offices. We have access to clinical care managers across the country. These are individuals with expertise in managing mental health issues. In partnership with the Canadian Forces, we have no fewer than 17 mental health clinics; we call them occupational stress injury clinics. Veterans Affairs Canada has ten of them, and seven are provided by the Canadian Forces.
Veterans have access to these clinics, as do their families who are experiencing mental health issues. We have access to at least seven specialty centres across the country that deal with addictions and substance abuse, which are often co-existing with mental health conditions. We aggressively monitor research on mental health issues. We have partnerships that we've developed with other agencies, like the Mental Health Commission of Canada, to help our understanding and our management of the issues.
So we are--