Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
To all of you, thank you very much for coming today. On behalf of all of us, thank you for the tremendous work that you do in helping the heroes of our country, but just as importantly their families as well.
In my dealings with certain veterans—it may be a shortfall or just fundamental ignorance on everyone's part in this regard—when an individual with PTSD goes into a private sector job, that company or that small firm is unaware of what triggers the PTSD in certain cases. Many times the individual.... I am dealing with one fellow now in Nova Scotia who unfortunately lost his private job because they couldn't deal with him. They didn't know how to deal with it. When I spoke to the manager, he said, “Well, we had no training or awareness of how to deal with veterans with OSI or PTSD.”
I would like some assistance or guidance from either one of you in this regard. How do we get the information out to the private sector and those jobs out there that these veterans are coming in...? We tell them they are heros and team leaders. They are successful, focused, and everything else, but they have OSI or PTSD. They'll hire them, but then unfortunately it doesn't work out for them, and the guy feels like a failure again. He is out of the military. He couldn't get a private job. Now what does he do? He feels kind of hurt by himself, and he feels he let himself and his family down.
What advice or guidance can you give us in this regard in order to help the private sector, and the medical sector as well? Many doctors in the regular system don't necessarily like dealing with men and women of the service with post-traumatic stress because the forms are complicated and long, and it's quite backlogged. I just need some advice from you on how we can go forward on these issues.
Again, thank you very much for the great work that all of you do.