Thank you very much for having me here today. My name is Trev Bungay and I served 18 years in the Canadian Forces in the infantry. I conducted seven international tours, four in combat in Afghanistan.
It all started after my combat tour in 2007. Back then there was such stigma that you didn't say anything. You bottled it up and you carried on, so I did another two tours on top of that. In 2010, I lost my family. In 2012, I lost my job. I started back with nothing.
When I left I didn't even know that I was supposed to have medical coverage. I didn't know how to get it. I didn't know who I was supposed to see. I had been to all the proper places. I'd been dragged through the MIR a thousand times. I'd been dragged through the psychologist on base. I was given 22 pills a day and told to go home for six months and to see what would happen. What happened was that I attempted suicide.
That day was huge for me. There was a light that turned on that day. Unfortunately, it wasn't bright enough, so three months later, I attempted again. From that day forward, I realized that suicide wasn't the answer. I had lost 15 of my own friends to suicide that year. I watched their children crying on their caskets.
For me to be released as quickly as I was, there was absolutely no need. I needed to be retained. I needed to be able to be there and to have somebody watch me. I was in no state of mind to leave and carry on a new life.
I was starting from scratch. I have a grade 12 education. I'd been in the military since I was 19. I was 37 at the time, with no education and nothing to fall back on.
Things started to really change for me when I decided that I needed to get off those drugs. I needed to get my own help in my own way. I started researching what I needed to do. I determined that I needed a multidisciplinary approach to healing. Yes, I had my medications and I used them properly. I did my psychology every single week. I did massage therapy. I went and saw a nutritionist. I talked to dieticians. I did whatever I had to do because I felt that if I had a healthy body that would result in a healthy mind and I was going to get back on my feet.
Within six months of getting off those medications, I was running two companies. It was all because of that multidisciplinary approach. Back in January 2015, we opened our very first clinic in Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia. We now have one in Moncton, one in Fredericton, and one right here in Ottawa. We're about to open a second one in Halifax and hopefully others in Charlottetown and Sydney this year.
In that little amount of time, that year and half, we've helped 3,000 people. Many of them are veterans from either the military or the RCMP. They come in and they are broken. We put them back on their feet using that approach. Every single one of my clinics has a medical doctor, a psychologist, a massage therapist, a dietician, and a nutritionist. Some of my clinics have occupational therapy, physiotherapy, and chiropractors. We have the whole gamut.
Veterans love the fact that they come into that building and they get to do whatever they need to do for their treatment, and they can go home at the end of the day. All of our services are billed right now through Veterans Affairs Canada, but for some reason, Veterans Affairs Canada will not recognize what we are doing.
There is your first problem. We're helping 3,000 people in a year and a half, and nobody from Veterans' Affairs Canada will say, “Hey, Trauma Healing Centers is down the road, they will help you.” Go to the OSI; nobody wants to go to the OSI. That was the whole point of getting out, they didn't want to be around it anymore. Now they're being forced to go into centres, and they're seeing their buddies in there, and they're going, “Argh”. They're sitting down, and they're having to do 30-minute surveys on an iPad with a pen that's so small they can't hit the button, and if you hit the wrong one, it erases everything and sends it back.
All I'm asking for here is for somebody to come in and give us a shot. We're helping these people. We're giving them their lives back. I can give you testimonials; you can watch videos on it; we've done it all. We educate. I go around all year long and speak to Corrections Services Canada, the RCMP, and veterans. They love it. I asked to go into JPSU and just talk to the soldiers who are leaving and say, “You don't have to go out and be alone, there's help.” I was shut down immediately.
One of the biggest services that we offer is our peer support. Our peer support is huge for us because the veterans tell us that they're very happy to have somebody who has been through the motions, somebody who they can call 24 hours a day, somebody who can help them with their paperwork because a VAC can't get to it. The case manager has 700 files on his desk, and there's no way that's going to happen this year.
I guess the biggest point for me to bring up today is that the services are out there to help veterans. Nobody's out there to hurt veterans. I'm a veteran. I'll be the last person on earth who will ever hurt any veteran. We are here to help, and we're going to expand, and we're going to grow with or without you. But we really, really want your support.
Thank you.