Thank you, Mr. Chair, and committee members, for the opportunity to speak today. I'll do my best to get through this. I've been up for almost 24 hours. I haven't slept in years.
To understand veterans, you first have to understand the soldier. There's no greater honour than to serve one's country. Every generation has its wars. Technology changes and conflicts change, but the names never do. The same families are there time and again. I had five uncles at the D-Day invasion. We were in Korea, Somalia, and Rwanda, and I'm sure that somewhere out there is a McLeod who served in Afghanistan.
With a background like that, when you have a problem you wonder, “Why me? Why not them? I'm going to disgrace my family.” The truth is that we've had three generations of dysfunctional families, but we didn't know what it was back then. You got drunk, you beat the kids, and you carried on.
The military family is not unlike any family. It has all the same dynamics. It is a bond that no civilian can understand. We are made to endure the worst humanity can offer, and through that we find the best in each other, and the worst. When every decision you make daily will determine if someone you love will live or die, it's a heavy burden to carry, but it is also what makes us a family, bonded for life.
Why do we go into conflicts around the world? It doesn't matter. What matters is the person on the right and the person on the left, and that's basically the only reason we go. Our government has asked us to go. The people want us to go. We go, but we're there for each other, and that's the only thing that matters when we go.
There's one crucial difference between these two families, however. If I'm ill, my family will rally around me, whereas the military family will dispose of me. If you take a man's career and family, and add a mental illness, suicide seems quite reasonable. Add to that the VAC process, and it becomes quite likely.
Coming forward in the military with a problem means, as the very least, that you've committed career suicide. If you do so, then you'll be bullied, ostracized, and accused of all manner of stupid things in an effort to get rid of you.
Being shot at in Somalia is something you expect. You're scared, but you do your job and you try not to get anyone killed. Living among the dead, day after day, month after month in Rwanda is something we're not designed for. We cannot change it. We cannot stop it. We can only witness it. No soldier is designed for inaction.
With regard to the new Veterans Charter versus the old Pension Act, the new charter allows the military to dispose of us much more effectively because there's no financial commitment to the soldier. The Pension Act took away the financial burden, allowing us that peace of mind.
Every soldier is going to do their absolute best to hide any form of mental illness, but eventually we will fail. It is not a question of whether you have a meltdown; it's a question of when and how bad it will be. When it happens, it usually results in a criminal record, a loss of career, and the end of a marriage, as was the case for me.
Now I have no meaningful employment options, and if not for my pension I would have been a suicide statistic years ago. It can't be a surprise to anyone that if you take everything away from someone, suicide is the end result. There is no argument. Dead soldiers are certainly cheaper for the government. What is an acceptable price for soldiers to pay?
A minister of Parliament serves for six years and gets a pension for life. That tells every soldier that their service to our nation is not as valuable as an MP's, even though our service comes at a much greater cost. Veterans are our best source of recruitment. I tell young people that the military is the greatest experience of your life as long as you stay healthy. If you become injured or ill, or are deemed unfit, the rest of your life is screwed.
The military has no concept of managing individuals. They will deploy the same people over and over again until those people can't continue anymore and are released, while there are able-bodied people throughout the military who never deploy. I have two friends who have deployed numerous times over the years. For one it was nine times, and for the other, 10 times. You can't miss them. They're the ones carrying their medals around in wheelbarrows. Both had to take a release to make it stop. What a wealth of experience was lost there. They each have a wealth of knowledge to pass on in a training capacity, but they were denied this opportunity. It seems to me that more lives would be saved by keeping our experienced members to train the next generation of soldiers rather than throwing them away.
Unfortunately, every soldier is a razor, only used as long as it's sharp and then thrown out. It would be better to go back to the old pension system. Take away that financial burden from the veteran. Put us to work; use us. If you tell a veteran, “You can't be in the military; you can't work in the government sector”, what private organization is going to want us? Add that we're mentally ill and nobody is going to want us. If you won't accept us, my God, there are jobs all over bases, all over Canada, all over federal buildings, we can mop your floors, we can drive your vehicles. There are things we can do to still be productive. You're already paying us, so use us.
One other thing, there are three videos I would like you all to watch. They're all on YouTube. One is called “The Sound of Silence”. The name of the band is Disturbed and it's a Canadian military tribute. It was done by the Conservative government, so take that for what you may, but it was well done and I think it's one of the greatest tributes to our soldiers ever done. The other one is “We Are Canadian Soldiers”. Again, it's another music video. The third one is Mark Tapsell's “When the War Comes Home”. It's a small documentary that was done on me, and it explains my story a lot better than I can do here today.
I ask you to watch those three videos and ask yourselves if this current situation we have today is what you really want for your veterans.
Thank you, Chair, committee members. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today. I welcome any comments or questions you might have.