Good evening, everyone. My name is Johanne Isabel, and I've been working at Veterans Affairs Canada since 2001. My spouse is a retired member of the Canadian Armed Forces.
Mr. Chair and committee members, we're pleased to be talking about the Veterans Affairs Canada assistance service, a counselling and referral service offered 24 hours a day, seven days a week to our veterans and retired RCMP members and to their family members. The service is confidential. If a veteran isn't registered for a Veterans Affairs Canada service or program, the veteran can still use this program.
Here's a brief history of the program.
In 2000, Veterans Affairs Canada worked with Health Canada to provide a service that was similar to the Canadian Armed Forces member assistance program. We wanted to make sure that veterans and their families could transition more smoothly from military life to civilian life. We wanted to provide this service to serve our clients properly during the transition.
On December 1, 2014, your committee recommended that the assistance program for veterans be improved. From 2000 to 2014, veterans could receive up to eight individual counselling sessions with a health professional. As I already mentioned, based on your recommendations and since April 1, 2014, the program has been providing 20 individual counselling sessions to all our veterans and their family members and to retired RCMP members.
I'll now turn the floor over to Ms. Malette.