Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for the opportunity to appear here today and talk to you about the operational stress injury network.
I'm Dr. Cyd Courchesne. I am the director general of health professionals and the chief medical officer for the Department of Veterans Affairs. I've been in this role since October 2014, after serving 30 years with the Canadian Forces health services.
Here with me is Mr. Michel Doiron—you know him—the associate deputy minister for service delivery, who is also my boss. We also brought along Mr. Joel Fillion, who is our new director of mental health. He's sitting at the back here. He's new to the organization, as of just a few months, and he's still orienting to the department. We want you to meet him, but we thought we'd spare his having to.... Also, as mentioned, we have with us Dr. David Ross. Dr. Ross is the operational stress injury network national manager and the national clinical coordinator.
The OSI network that we present to you today is the product of 15 years of development and collaboration with our partners. This is a network that's 100% funded by the department but fully operated by our provincial partners. In my view, this is an exemplary model of federal–provincial partnership.
Together with our partners from National Defence, we have accumulated 20 years of experience in the assessment and treatment of operational stress injuries. We have more specifically focused on post-traumatic stress disorder among military members, veterans and first respondents, such as Royal Canadian Mounted Police members. I am confident that no other organization in Canada has more experience in the area than us. When I say “us”, I am referring to our military and provincial partners, as well as us, on the federal level, at the Department of Veterans Affairs. We have worked tirelessly and selflessly over the years to develop our expertise and our treatment methods, carry out research, innovate and measure our results.
The work, however, is never done. It's a journey of continuous improvement and of learning, and we continue to improve and to grow our capability.
Just last week, Mr. Fillion and I had the privilege of being invited to the University of Waterloo for the launch of a new operational stress injury service at the Centre for Mental Health Research in the faculty of psychology, where, in collaboration with the Parkwood OSI clinic in London, Ontario, they're training Ph.D. candidates and clinical psychology residents in the assessment of operational stress injuries.
This is a significant event because, while we've been very present in the health care domain in Canada, now we're entering into the education realm, whereby future clinicians will come to us already educated and trained in military and veterans' mental health issues, and in this case, specifically in the assessment of operational stress injuries.
I would say that the greatest strength of our network is the partnerships. It's said that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, but we've worked over the years at maintaining and strengthening our partnerships, to the point that from an outsider's point of view they could be mistaken in thinking that we own and run those clinics, but we don't. From the outside, it looks like a very cohesive and high-performing unit, and it is.
The additional partnerships we have developed over the years are another strength of our network. Our mental health strategy is based on the information we receive from the Veterans Affairs Canada Research Directorate, especially information and data stemming from the study on life after service, the usefulness and quality of which are matchless. All the information arising from the research conducted by the Canadian Institute for Military and Veteran Health Research—which has a network of more than 40 academic institutes—is invaluable to our network's growth, as is our close collaboration with our Canadian Forces colleagues. Worthy of mention are the Canadian Military and Veterans Mental Health Centre of Excellence and the Chair in Military Mental Health, which were established in collaboration with the Ottawa Royal Hospital.
I'm going to stop my comments here.
I want to highlight the fact that just recently, in January, we started up a new directorate of mental health, which is comprised of all the mental health resources that we had, but now they all report directly to me under the leadership of Mr. Fillion. Later this year, we'll be welcoming our own chief psychiatrist, a former military psychiatrist, with extensive experience in operational stress injuries and PTSD.
Thank you.