It means when I sign the paper and put on a uniform—and it's probably very similar in the RCMP, I'm not sure—I'm willing to give my life. I'm willing to do my duty as a Canadian to go to some place for Canada and be shot at, killed, maimed, or wounded, and that is what I signed up for. When you sign and you put on a uniform, that's the unlimited liability clause.
With regard to recommendation 1, the legislation is just not balanced. I'm not saying that they all should be carbon copies of each other, but there should not be this difference between this gentleman, a World War II veteran, and somebody who is post-Korea, like me. I was in Egypt, Gaza Strip, and Beirut. A veteran is a veteran, and all veterans deserve to be treated equally. That was the first one.
The second issue is transition. I got out mid-career. I said never again would I leave my wife and kids at Trenton railroad station as I did three times. The first time was for a year, and I had been married for four months.
A veteran transitions from military life to civilian life. You must remember that a veteran is different from a politician and from a civilian. There are probably three different cultures. Being a veteran is like being a policeman. It's teamwork. You depend upon the person beside you. You depend upon the people in that tank. You depend upon teamwork of the gun crew. There's no competition. Then, all of a sudden, wham, you're, what, competing in a competition. It's two different concepts. Competing means that I'm going to do the best I can to beat these two or three.
DND is now working with VAC, so it's not all negative, but there's somebody else missing from the table, probably the Public Service Commission. There are other people missing from the table, people like me, and I have a person who is I won't say how many years junior to me, who was in Afghanistan. He got out for the same reason I did, mid-career, because of family, and he's transitioned. We could teach them some of the tricks of transitioning, even the psychological ones, because PTSD might surprise you. It's not an Afghanistan phenomenon.
I suffered from whatever you want to call it when I came back after three tours in the Middle East. Anyway, get the people who have successfully transitioned involved. That is my only suggestion there. It's hopefully a positive suggestion.
Along the same lines is my point about bureaucracy, which you mentioned. Bureaucracy has gone to the point of.... Until lately it's been a lot of macho males. It's not that we're in the sharp end. It has changed now, but it is not in the nature to go on sick parade. You just don't do it. Why don't you do it? You would be taken off duty. You're looked upon as what they used to call “MIR commandos”. You're branded, so you don't go.
Unfortunately, if it's not in a medical file, it never happened. That's the state of things. When you are going for a disability.... Many mental issues don't happen immediately. They happen, the studies are showing, two years, five years, ten years afterwards.