Thank you to the witnesses for being here today to give your perspectives on this.
I want to put things in context for you. You may or may not know this, but I think it's worth getting on the record that we had the top medical people of the Canadian military here—this would be our Department of National Defence, or DND—and Brigadier Downes, the surgeon general of our DND. He said that he had done extensive research and had read just about everything there was about mefloquine and its effects on military people—this is the top medical officer in our national defence department—but could not agree with anything you would have said today.
In other words, his view was there is not enough evidence and not enough study, just as my colleague across the table, from a medical background, was trying to draw the connection between a study and the fact that it did not show any evidence of the correlation that both of you clearly outlined to us today. Not surprisingly, either, the other witnesses we have had at this committee have all drawn the same connection that you have—except for our military brass, the people making the decisions within our military circles. This was the drug of first choice right up to Afghanistan, in particular the one that stands out in Canadian history in terms of some of the effects and psychological and mental health issues that happened in Somalia and the atrocities that happened through military hands.
One of our more respected generals, I believe, who's now a senator, is Roméo Dallaire. He has said unequivocally that we should not be giving this to people in the military. He forcefully said it, publicly, and yet we are here at committee asking questions of our military leaders who don't find any credibility in what you're saying. They obviously haven't read Professor Quinn's references to what's happened in Australia.
Obviously, you have had study. Interestingly enough, there was never a reference to the fact that Australia had taken action on this and had developed policy within government to compensate and help these individuals who are struggling so much.
I put that in context because it's simply a matter of screening, of asking those who served whether they took this drug. That would be up to and including Afghanistan and including the ones who are still taking it in our military.
So I'm outraged; you might be able to see that across the video screens. I'm outraged by the fact that this government has not taken action on it—or other governments previously, if we had this information. It seems to me that the database is there. That was another question brought up: How do we know who took it? Well, we know who served. We have all their records. We ask them, “Did you take it?” That's all. Then we acknowledge the fact that there is a correlation. Australia has dealt with it, the United States is dealing with it and banning it, and yet we somehow stubbornly within our military want to continue to allow our military people to take it. If we did nothing more than just stop it from being offered, we'd be doing a service to our military people and to future veterans. We're here talking about veterans, the ones who took it and the ones who have claimed the correlation of these symptoms and these problems with their health issues, and we have a defence and a government trying to say that it doesn't exist.
When I give you that context, my question is, what do you think the next steps for Canada should be on this issue of those veterans who consumed this toxic drug and those who are continuing to consume it? Could I have your general thoughts, each of you?
Why don't you go first, Professor Quinn? Then perhaps Dr. Sellers could weigh in as well.