Veterans Affairs Committee on March 6th, 2017

[BGen Joe Sharpe]

I'll just add a very quick footnote to General Dallaire's comments.

We were talking earlier today about a young soldier I was working with on Thursday last week, a young corporal, who was telling me very candidly that he suffers from PTSD and is being cared for, but he said, “Sir, you're hearing all the right words from the senior leadership in the organization.” It's an honest commitment coming from the senior leadership of the Canadian Armed Forces. This young lad is an infantry soldier in the process of being released. He said, “On the ground, the sergeants and the warrant officers do not believe a word of that. To them, it's purely BS. If you come forward in your platoon or in your company and ask for help, you are a weak link, and they don't want you there.” That's Thursday of last week that this was described.

Is the stigma gone? Absolutely not. The stigma is still there, but it's because we focus very, very strongly on changing that immediate behaviour. If we caught you, from a leadership perspective, badmouthing these guys, we're all over you. We're worried about behaviour, and we didn't really focus at the belief level that we really needed to focus at, and ultimately to the cultural level below that. It's a long, tough battle to change the culture. I think we were focusing on behaviour, not beliefs and not culture.

[Scott Maxwell]

The only other point I'd add is, not from those still in the Canadian Forces, but those who have released and are forming the civilian veteran population. With them, I think things have improved a little bit with regard to the stigma. They're obviously already out so there's a lot less risk, but there's more comfort in talking about their situation. They're comfortable to put themselves out there in a very, very vulnerable position, often among their own peers. It's happening all across the country. As I mentioned earlier, our problem is expanding access to programs, not trying to find ill and injured people to come into our programs. I think that certainly highlights that there is some progress being made for those who have released and for the veterans on the civilian side of the world to come forward, put their hands up, and seek help. There's a little bit of optimism there. The downside, of course, is we've have to make sure we can help them when they come forward.

[Doug Eyolfson, Liberal, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Mr. Fraser.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you so much, General, Mr. Sharpe, and Mr. Maxwell for being here today.

I want to preface my comments by saying that on Friday night in my riding of West Nova, I was at an event in support of the military family resource centre at 14 Wing Greenwood. It was an excellent event to bring awareness to the issues of mental health and PTSD within our military and veteran community and to raise funds for the military family resource centre.

I was glad to hear you talk about how families can access military family resource centres and how this should be expanded to include veterans' families as well. I wonder if you can expand on that. I know the good work that they do. How do you see that actually taking place? How would it work within DND expanding those services?

[Roméo Dallaire]

The VAC has signed an agreement now with the Canadian Forces that we can take care—I say “we”, there you go, proof—

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Roméo Dallaire]

—and I say that after 10 years in the Senate—of injured veterans who are no more in the service, and their families.

I would consider that family support centre is one of those pivotal bridges they can cross, and survive, into a new world. The family support resource centres have a lot of the expertise and have access both provincially and locally, let alone within the military and within VAC, to influence the battle and get people more timely support.

However, they're hurting because the money is not going there and they can't hire and veterans can't then get that special support. The horrible scenario that I think is still unresolved is that we are improving the individual members, the forces members who are still serving, and we're improving the case of the veterans who are out there with our different clinics and so on, but we're not improving the case of the families.

You have one half of the problem solved; the other half is not, and that half is hurting. It's going to drag down everything you're doing. Until you look at the family as also deploying.... I would argue that the days are now here when the family is part of the operational effectiveness of the forces, and not just in support of the operational effectiveness of the forces. They're on Skype with them an hour before they go on patrol. Come on, how is it possible to disconnect them?

If the family is intrinsic to the operational effectiveness of the forces, they should have access to the same level of care. That means, yes, more money into VAC and more money into DND to take care of the families. We're already transferring a whack of money to the provinces. We're telling the provinces that we're going to clean up our own mess. We created these injured people and we're going to take care of them. We'll buy the resources from you instead of simply dumping them and having that very serious disconnect.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Yes, Mr. Maxwell.

[Scott Maxwell]

I think the other part of it is that they're great hubs, they're physical locations, and they're places for people to go and have that peer-to-peer support.

I would caution, though, that like anything, the issue is so vast and the scale is so large that not one agency, not one MFRC, is ever going to be able to do this on their own. We confront this all the time at Wounded Warriors Canada. If we fund a program, if we make a $375,000 donation to a program to run the program across the country, that's wonderful. However, there are limitations on the ability to help people and get them all in. The goes for MFRC.

One of the things we're working with, and we talk a lot about in this space, is partnerships. We're working with military family services, which administer MFRCs across the country, to allow MFRCs if they identify a couple—in this case, supporting families—to attend one of our programs, to have those costs covered from the referral from the MFRC to a program administered by Wounded Warriors Canada.

You can see how fast this would multiply and duplicate on a national scale, so you don't have this regionalized framework where something is very good out there somewhere, and less so in Esquimalt or wherever the case may be. We have to focus on making sure when we're having these discussions that its implementation is national, because that's where the population is. It's in every corner of the country.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

I think you're right. I appreciate that comment. It's really important to recognize that in smaller communities, having this vehicle can be the way to reach out in the community. A trusted facility like that is really important.

[Scott Maxwell]

And we wouldn't get them on our own. Let's face it, if we want to run a program, how do we identify the people who need help? We use the likes of OSISS and MFRCs, and we partner with them and military family services more broadly.

You're absolutely right: it's about partnership and linking the information and the tools and ultimately the programs together so if someone does walk into an MFRC and they could benefit from X program, which might not be administered within that MFRC, then at least the MFRC is able to get them the program they deserve to receive.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

My time is very limited.

Do you see as well, though, the importance of the family being involved and integrated into the mission is also to ensure that if there is an intervention, it will perhaps be made earlier on? You've got somebody there who can maybe spot some challenges a soldier is facing and maybe be able to identify the problem earlier.

[Roméo Dallaire]

Mr. Fraser, you've pulled one of the gems out of this.

If the family feels they are intimately engaged in the operational effectiveness of the forces, they will feel that sense of responsibility of helping the member understand that's part of the exercise of that member re-becoming operationally effective or being adjusted to some other worthy sort of employment.

Right now, you will have members fighting their families to not get support, whereas if the family were integrated into the program, they wouldn't be able to do that; they would be reinforcing each other to get that help. There's the ick; that's the crux.

[The Chair, Liberal, Neil Ellis]

Thank you.

Ms. Wagantall.

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

Thank you very much for being here today. This is so helpful.

I want to focus specifically on your first comment regarding the Canadian Armed Forces suicide prevention strategy and how to implement it with ministerial oversight committees. You mentioned Somalia.

I'm very involved with our veterans on the issue of mefloquine. We are still hearing from the powers that be that only one in 11,000 forces members is affected. Our own Minister of Health, as recently as February 22, has written with respect to the continuing use of mefloquine that as a malaria prophylaxis, the department considers the benefits of mefloquine to outweigh its potential risks under the conditions of use described in the CMP.

I'm hearing from veterans from Somalia, Rwanda, Uganda, Afghanistan, and Bosnia who have been taking this that they did not have freedom of choice with its use. Our allies—Germany, Britain, Australia, and the U.S.—have taken steps, and yet our government still doesn't recognize what happened in Somalia and has carried on. It's impacting suicide rates. I know this what I'm hearing directly from veterans.

Can you please talk about this?

[Roméo Dallaire]

I was on mefloquine for a year. About five months into it, I wrote the National Defence Headquarters, and I said this thing is affecting my ability to think. This thing is blowing my stomach apart. This thing is affecting my memory, and I want to get rid of it. At the time, the Germans weren't using anything, but then when we lost two people in 48 hours to cerebral malaria, they changed their policy.

I then got a message back, which was one of the fastest ones I have ever got back, which essentially ordered me to continue, and if not, I would then be court-martialled for a self-inflicted wound because that was the only tool they had.

Mefloquine is old-think, and it does affect our ability to operate. Those statistics to me don't—

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

They are not accurate.

[Roméo Dallaire]

—really hold water. Even if it they do, what if it's the commander who's affected by it, which I was at the time? My executive assistant kept an eye on exactly how I was handling mefloquine. There are other prophylaxes that are much better.

Just on the command side, let alone on our ability to respond to the very complex scenarios in which we find ourselves, when you're facing children and so on, and you have nanoseconds to decide whether you are going to kill a child or not to save other people, we don't want to have any booze, and yet maybe we're still being affected by a drug.

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

What do you say then? Should we be doing studies to determine—

[Roméo Dallaire]

I say get rid of it, and use the new stuff.

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

Thank you. That's the faster route I would love us to take.

[Roméo Dallaire]

Yes.

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

One of the groups that is helping veterans, Veterans Helping Veterans, talked about the need for us to deprogram. We program soldiers. I understand the fight or flight, the get out there attitude, that you think of the other person before yourself, but when you come home, you don't know how to sleep in a normal pattern. Yet, they claim this could be reprogrammed, that you can recreate a proper sleep pattern, with proper food, etc. All of those things are so crucial to health.

I know you have struggled deeply with sleep. Is this something you see as an avenue that could be taken to help our soldiers?

[Roméo Dallaire]

I was about to respond by saying, “Read my book”, but I'm not going to say that.