Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Brigadier-General, for meeting with us today.
I want to go back to something you talked about. You said that a soldier who is injured may not be able to perform all of their duties, but can have specific duties. You particularly mentioned—and I've used the same example when talking to people—that a soldier who had lost his legs could serve in his capacity in information technology and that sort of thing.
In Canada we have something called universality of service, which means you cannot be in the armed forces unless you can perform all the duties. As a result, a paratrooper who loses one leg but who could still, as you say, be in IT or something, could not be in the military and is medically discharged.
We have had an issue with soldiers with chronic injuries who are not readily diagnosed or not readily seen, such as a paratrooper who's starting to get chronic back pain or a person who's starting to get PTSD from their deployments. A lot of them are afraid they're going to be discharged because they've come forward and no longer meet universality of service. Sometimes these problems get worse.
Have you ever had this problem in your services, with people hesitating to come forward with chronic injuries, or do they tend to present right away when they have symptoms?