Mr. Chairman, we are trying to engage with Canadian Armed Forces much earlier in the transition process. When a man or woman gets injured while on duty or off duty, we hope that they recover, rehabilitate, and get back to their primary duties and responsibilities and carry on with their careers. Unfortunately, many cannot recover from a serious injury or illness. The Canadian Armed Forces have this policy of universality of service that I'm sure you've heard of. From a career administration standpoint, the armed forces make a decision that an individual must retire at some point with a medical release.
It is our intent to move our engagement with that veteran as far as possible before that decision. Since your study—and your study was very useful, as I mentioned earlier—we have created an enhanced transition service where we are at this point now engaging at least six months before the release date. We are continuing to work with the armed forces to move that date up even earlier. As the former chief of the defence staff, I know we were able to accommodate folks for up to three years after a decision was made on their career disposition, and there is some discretion. This is not hard and fast, but there's a period of time that individuals are being accommodated in the Canadian Armed Forces, and our intention is to try to engage with the Canadian Armed Forces so that we can provide services to those individuals as early as possible.
I'll be very frank with you. One of the challenges is that many of these men and women aren't ready. They're not ready psychologically and, again, I speak about a lot of the soldiers who served for me, they're not ready. They're not ready to leave their cohort, and being with their cohort is absolutely vital to their well-being.
So what we're trying to do is to provide those services to them and work with them and at the same time stand ready, indeed, if they're ready to go. I spoke to one veteran last year. It's taken six years, but he's finally going back to school.