You may have heard my conversation earlier with the minister, dealing with the issue of the suicide hotline or the assistance line. Obviously, I have some concerns, and Mr. Doiron and I have chatted a bit about that.
In the preamble of our study, “Mental Health of Canadian Veterans: A Family Purpose”, we talked about improving the transitional support between Canadian Forces and Veterans Affairs, and including recommendations that could ultimately be used in the development of a coordinated suicide prevention program. Recommendation 13 was that VAC and Health Canada work together to make the Veterans Affairs Canada assistance service available through online chatting and accessible through multiple platforms.
There was great fanfare around this suicide prevention strategy that we have, and we have this line and we have this system. However, veterans have been contacting me and telling me this system doesn't work. We're spending money on this to try to talk people from that cliff edge they may be on.
I'm wondering, first, how much money we're spending on this line—because if we are, we're wasting it—and two, what we can do to make certain it isn't wasted.