It's good to be working for the committee again. I know most of you now.
Depending on which group, which expert, or which stakeholder you will be speaking to, there are some issues that have been coming back over and over since 2006. Many of these issues are recurring. There was a stakeholders group. The Legion was the big representative, plus the ombudsman, plus smaller groups, and they were speaking with the government. That group had highlighted a few key priorities. In this document, I have connected these priorities with the ones that were highlighted in the mandate letter. There are four big themes that I think are still current issues with veterans groups and veterans in general.
The first one is support to families. It has been identified as somewhat of a disappointment. Before the new Veterans Charter came into force in 2006, one of the key pillars of the new Veterans Charter was supposed to be support to families. The results were sort of disappointing. Since the coming into force of the new Veterans Charter, all these, as we say in French, lacunes, have been highlighted concerning families and how individual spouses of veterans cannot access services on their own. They have to go through the veteran and they need some sort of permission to access services. If veterans suffer from any sort of mental issues, for example, they will not, sometimes even for themselves, ask for help, so it's very difficult for people from the family, spouses and children, to get the support they need. That was a key issue that was highlighted for many years.
With regard to financial support for families, in comparison with the scheme coming from the Pension Act, the new Veterans Charter is not very advantageous in terms of general amounts that are provided. There was some criticism of that, and this is also an issue that has been going on. Access to rehabilitation services and support services for individuals and families are two big areas.
Transition to civilian life has been an issue since we have had a professional army, let's say. Before that, civilians were going to war and were then going back to their civilian life. Now they are professionals. They want to have a career in the army, so they are not going back home after their service. They want to have a career. If, for reasons of physical or mental disability they have to be released from the forces, it is a big issue for them. It's much more difficult to integrate into civilian life when you've never had the experience of living in civilian life before getting into the army. It creates new challenges that are very different from those of older veterans. The structures in National Defence and in Veterans Affairs have not adapted very rapidly to these changes. A lot of work has been in progress in the last five years. A lot of efforts have been made to make it easier for veterans to transition when they are released.
Those who are releasing voluntarily don't have much of a problem. Compared to the rest of the population, they have an easier time getting jobs. The problem is for those who are disabled and who have to leave the forces for medical reasons. These are the people who have the most difficulty. We have heard a lot about the rate of suicide in the forces. In the forces themselves it's not so much of a problem. It's a problem of course every time there is a suicide, but the problem is much more acute and significant for veterans. If we have to compare, and it's a bit impersonal and inhuman to compare that to the rates for the general population, in the forces, the statistics are comparable to those for the general population. For veterans after they have left, it's 50% higher.
The problem is there is an issue within the forces, but the issue is much more dramatic and severe for veterans. There is a real issue there, and it's difficult because there's no systematic tracking of veterans after they leave the forces.
There's the difficulty that is very hard to handle.