Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
To the Australian Department of Veterans' Affairs, thank you very much. We're extremely grateful to have access to your expertise.
I was very interested in what you said about the potential for a co-operative study between Australia and Canada's Department of Veterans Affairs in regard to mefloquine. I'm sure you know that this committee has been working on a study in regard to mental health and suicide prevention, and mefloquine has come up. It's been referenced by both experts and veterans with regard to the veterans who were given mefloquine during deployment. I have some concerns about our ability to finish this study. We're very close to the end of this session, and we'll be going away for the summer. If we prorogue, this study will be lost. But we'll see when the time comes.
I'm very concerned that this work will go astray, particularly in light of the fact that you said Veterans Affairs Canada has indicated an interest in co-operating with your department to look at the impact of mefloquine. First, can you give us a sense of what has been determined in regard to that co-operative study? Second, obviously there was something that compelled you to look at mefloquine. Was it the anecdotal reports from veterans? Was it concern from the medical community? What precisely prompted the decision to look at a potential study?