Thank you for that question.
Certainly, during my time at Veterans Affairs I've had the opportunity to speak to people in the clinical field, the scientific area, the sciences area, and to many veterans themselves about the benefits of service dogs to their well-being, if you will, and the kind of support for those who are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or some other form of mental health issue. There's quite a bit of literature, actually, quite a bit of information about this very issue, but it hasn't really been quantified in a way that we can speak with authority about the benefits with some rigour, if you will. Obviously, it does provide a benefit to those who are experiencing those particular issues. It may be anecdotal, but for them it's real.
We decided to pursue a pilot project, a very comprehensive study, that will be headed by Dr. Aiken, at Queen's University, and Dr. Gillet, and people from our own department. There will be 50 veterans with service dogs. The pilot project will run for about two years. It will be one of those scientific approaches with all the rigour and benchmarks. At the end of that, we hope to have some clarity about an issue that is very much in a topical domain right now, not only here in Canada, but elsewhere in veterans communities. I feel the only way to go forward with these kinds of items is to actually do something that you can justify and give some credibility to these kinds of programs, so we can advance them, if they work out, as a program response to those kinds of issues.