Good day. I am providing key points as testimony to assist in the study of mental health and suicide prevention. I draw on 35-plus years of service to Canada with both the reserve force for 16 years and the regular force for 21 years, and with my ongoing efforts to reintegrate into civilian life since being medically released on December 15, 2013.
My views on mental health and specifically suicide prevention flow from having lost a friend who was a reserve officer; my involvement with a veteran of Bosnia who attempted suicide while I was his commanding officer; my experience on Operation Attention, roto 0, in Kabul, Afghanistan, from July 17, 2011 to February 15, 2012; and my ongoing transition struggles.
Preparation and training allows small teams to overcome even unimaginable conditions. Recovery requires similar support systems, which are not yet there for many veterans.
I enrolled as a private soldier in the 26th Field Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery, during December 1975. My entire career in uniform has been as a gunner or gunner officer.
From my initial class in military psychology and leadership at the Royal Military College of Canada, I realized that successful leadership required a profound understanding of human desires and fears. The knowledge and experience bestowed upon me by Canada has helped me to better appreciate the words of my grandfather, a veteran of the First World War, with service at the front and in the Home Guard for World War II, and my military mentors, and it has been augmented by the study of Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, Viktor Frankl, Toffler, Roméo Dallaire, and Chris Linford.
When the call for testimony to this committee originally went out in 2016, my thoughts were that limited services were available to Canadian Armed Forces veterans from Veterans Affairs Canada to address reserve force mental health suicide prevention, and that both the CAF and VAC could and should be involving veterans in the process of change.
I am recommending the use of a systems approach to the integration of veterans, especially reserve force veterans, in a metric that leverages the existing operational stress injury social support—or OSISS—framework. This requires a modification, a change of attitude, so that we focus away from full-time OSISS coordinators, expand the volunteer opportunities, and stop the budget roller coaster.
Military theory—Sun Tzu, Clausewitz—which has been immortalized by the words of Napoleon Bonaparte, who said that “the moral is to the physical as three to one”, is a guiding principle. When I was in Afghanistan in August of 2011, I injured my right knee. While I was laying on the operating table getting seven stitches with the assistance of morphine, I knew that the injury I had was similar to ones that I had experienced over my career, which should have resulted in two weeks or more on crutches. Those were the medical orders in the past.
When they finished, I was asked if I could bear weight on my leg. I put my game face on and said yes. The reason was that if I had more than two days of light duties—forget about crutches—I would be returned to unit. My unit would have had serious problems. Shortly after I arrived in theatre they changed the operating procedures to prevent travel outside the wire with less than four personnel. Our team consisted of six. We lost one person—RTU—shortly before my injury, and we had another individual go home on compassionate leave for two weeks approximately two weeks after my injury. My team would not have been able to go outside the wire if I had been on light duties or on pain medication that would have precluded my driving.
During 2000-01 as a newly appointed commanding officer I found myself struggling to assist a reserve force officer recently returned from deployment in Bosnia. The system failed then to identify the obvious alcohol abuse symptoms he was exhibiting, and after his attempted suicide, provision of assistance only occurred through his wife's extended health care benefits. During 2012-13 on return from deployment to Afghanistan I felt like a failure and this was repeatedly reinforced as I fell into almost every conceivable crack in the system: no follow-up on a mental health recommendation for OSI assessment; limited, incomplete communication of information to the release base, the reserve unit; financial issues, eight months before pension resolved; access issues for mental health services, wait, wait, and end up bridging through the Canadian Forces member assistance program; and confusion on the medical release process.
I was actually assigned a VAC case manager and then, oops, they realized that I had to go back and wait for the Canadian Armed Forces to sort it out. I didn't get a CAF case manager until 2013. At that point, despite testimony to this committee, JPSU was not identified as an option even though it was very clear that I had recently returned from a deployment. There was confusion at every stage of the disability claim process. I actually had to go to Archives Canada and get them to provide the information because the system had not gotten around to addressing things in a timely manner and the documents went to archives.
A possible way forward is to involve veterans in change management. Warrior Rising, which is a book produced by retired Lieutenant-Colonel Chris Linford, on page 356 highlights, as has other testimony to this committee, including that of retired Lieutenant General Dallaire, that “a highly skilled ill/injured military veteran needs relevant work.”
Since 2012, I have spent a significant amount of time studying what has been done for operational stress injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder. There are lessons learned from work, both positive and negative, done by the U.K., the United States, etc. It offers more than a starting point that would entail many years of further study before action is taken, which is what I perceive to be what the Government of Canada is currently looking at doing.
There are post-traumatic stress disorder best practices and knowledge. I make these comments in the context that from 2012 to 2014, as part of my retraining, I completed my master's degree in social work and I became a registered social worker in the province of Ontario. I was able to do that because I had 20 years of experience as a drug education coordinator, and health promotion coordinator, prior to my deployment to Afghanistan. My take-away on this is that veterans have the experience to help if attitudes and full-time limitations can change.
What do I mean by attitude change? Most of the medical priority job opportunities are for full-time positions and the ones that I have looked at require that the individual obtain health provider sign-off that they are stable and will not be triggered. I do not currently satisfy these requirements. I am reading to you from a prepared script because I tend to lose focus and I get triggered by things if I'm not careful.
With the encouragement of my psychologist, I pursued part-time opportunities only to be confronted with failure as my qualifications fell short of Calian criteria for providing mental health assistance to Canadian Armed Forces members. This was despite becoming an authorized Blue Cross provider for social work and being a clinical care manager in 2014, based on my extensive experience as a military officer and a drug education coordinator, working in health promotion with all of the courses and background that I'd taken.
I had a total of one referral over the last three years, and then they cancelled it because they decided that it was inappropriate. That was all I was told.
Over the last three years, I have successfully worked in a volunteer capacity in reserve force mental health suicide prevention. Reserve units are geographically located across Canada. They offer a simple way to connect with many veterans who move away from larger communities. Working with reserve units offers one of the few ways to more appropriately address reserve force mental health challenges.
Although far from perfect, the OSISS framework currently offers a mechanism to connect JPSU transition services to the community. That could be enhanced by the integration of veterans, especially reserve force veterans, and could also benefit by linking to ongoing efforts to help veterans, like the Royal Canadian Legion operational stress injury special section. These are not competing entities; they're part of an overall system.
One of the problems is, if we go back to the budget issues, OSISS puts limits on its coordinators. They're not allowed to take calls after hours, because that would be considered overtime. If you don't have an extended group of volunteers, the March 2017 stop travel, then restart, offers a perfect example of the kind of roller coaster that we get into. The volunteer training course for OSISS volunteers was cancelled because of budget shortfalls, and now we're having to play catch-up, which will cost months.
Thank you.