Veterans Affairs Committee on Oct. 27th, 2016

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

That's key. Thank you, that's very important. I'm hearing that all the way across.

Dave, it really struck me when you said that you took the pill, the results were frightening, and you knew it wasn't good. You went to try to talk to people about that, and you overheard things and realized that you would not be deployed if you didn't take that medication, so you turned around and walked out. What would that have meant if you had refused to take the medication? What does that mean to you as soldiers, to not be deployed?

[Dave Bona]

What it meant for me as a solider?

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Right. You said you wouldn't have been deployed?

[Dave Bona]

It would be like a hockey player who's trained to the level of an NHL player sitting in the stands while his teammates are playing. It's completely unthinkable to sit at home while you're deployable.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Okay. Thank you.

You mentioned your doctor suddenly deciding and somehow having this realization that she should treat you for a brain injury and not PTSD.

[Dave Bona]

Dr. Susan Brock, who loves her soldiers, was getting all these young kids from Afghanistan with TBIs that she could not treat. On her own dime, she researched the hell out of this to help these young kids. She tripped across LORETA neurofeedback that has been developed in the States. This treatment was developed originally by the NFL to treat some of their football players with concussion disorder. The spinoff from that is the concussion seemed to be an injury, such as TBI. She has had some startling results with some of these young kids who couldn't even talk being able to talk again. She just slipped me in on the protocol, because I was not responding to conventional PTSD treatment, and I did not fit the criteria for TBI.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Brandon, you're on the young end of this thing. When I first started hearing about this, my thoughts were Somalia, but clearly this is an issue that is larger than I want to hear.

Are you aware of other friends and comrades that you soldiered with who are also represented by you here today?

[Brandon Kett]

Yes. The part I skipped was my talking about how the people that I took mefloquine with are now in positions of leadership within DND and are able to pull that trigger, or not, with controlled measures of violence if they're deployed, and that scares me.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Thank you.

Mr. Fraser.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I thank you guys for being here today and for sharing your story. I can assure you that all of us listened very carefully to the powerful testimony that you gave. Certainly, we want to take all of this and make recommendations to make this better.

Brandon, you mentioned, and we heard a little from Claude and Dave on the world-class outreach and treatment. What do you see as a way to do this outreach to make sure that we're including as many as we can in this process? Can you describe for me the treatment you see going forward on how we deal with this?

[Brandon Kett]

A better tracking system needs to be developed so we can track veterans' suicides and people affected by different illnesses. I'm not sure how they're going to do that now that everyone's been released, or find where they've gone, if they've starburst, and so there's going to have to be a way to pull that in, and that's out of my league.

Can you repeat the second part of your question?

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

It's the treatment they're able to offer.

[Brandon Kett]

A lot of the treatment that's worked for me has been holistic, naturopathic type of stuff. It's not really recognized by the federal government as a validated treatment for illnesses. There's going to have to be some sort of a give when it comes to alternative treatments, I think.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

John, the organization you're with is an international group, I understand, dealing with mefloquine. I understand that's a relatively new organization. Do you see a role for them in helping the outreach and treatment of these issues for our Canadians?

[John Dowe]

Absolutely, I do. I think over the process of the last couple of years, concurrently in several countries, we've established a great level of trust and we've accumulated a lot of information and a lot of anecdotal evidence, as well, for people to make that a great point of contact to initially come to, not only for Canada, but for a couple of the other countries as well.

We've found a lot of success with the website—and also Twitter and even on my Facebook—with people feeling more comfortable about sharing their user experiences, gleaning information, and being proactive about adjusting their mental health treatments to more accurately reflect what they may have, which is an acquired brain injury.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Okay. Do you see a role for your organization working with VAC to try to help in the outreach department?

[John Dowe]

If asked, I would, absolutely. It would be my honour to help consult with that, of course.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Okay.

Claude, you mentioned some of the financial difficulties that you had faced and some of it of your own mismanagement, but, obviously, because of some of the mental health issues. Can you give any thought as to how there could be better counselling, other services offered that might have helped out, that weren't there?

[Claude Lalancette]

I think giving a lump sum to someone who has issues like we do is so easily spent. We have problems with addiction. We have problems with self-destruction. We have problems with suicide. We have problems with murder with this pill. It just creates a situation. A lump sum just creates a situation for things to get out of hand.

I figure a pension would be more...than a lump sum.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Do you think other services offered, though, on how to budget, how to spend money, would assist?

[Claude Lalancette]

Well, yes, maybe to assist the veteran, because I'm telling you, with my concentration, my administration, I needed Warner Stahl. Warner Stahl was my clinical care manager who was taken away from me. He was putting my things straight, because I was in disarray.

I think a clinical care manager or someone to assist the veteran with his spending, his ideas, and make him think straight...because some people just get out of hand, especially with a lump sum. It's very easily spent.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

I understand. That's well said.

Dave, you said it wasn't until your psychologist started treating you for a traumatic brain injury, that you started to see results. Is that how you framed that?

What is it that prompted the psychologist to determine that what you had suffered was a traumatic brain injury ? How did that come about?

[Dave Bona]

That was just a shot in the dark. She had several clients in the same boat as me, with hundreds of thousands of dollars in treatment for PTSD that was having no effect.

We were running out of options and literally, this was just a shot in the dark. Well, we've tried everything else, let's just try this.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Just briefly, what kind of treatment did you go into after that and how long did it take until you started to see some results?

[Dave Bona]

It's called the LORETA neurofeedback, and how it works is you wear a cap and it has all the sensors on it and it monitors the electrical activity in your brain. You either listen to music or you watch a screen where the screen grows large or small, or the music volume goes up and down.

It creates pathways, because when your brain gets damaged from PTSD and this “mef tox”, the normal pathways in the brain are damaged and they don't communicate. LORETA neurofeedback teaches the brain to communicate around the damaged area and creates new pathways.