Yes, sir. We spend vast amounts of money. We send it out, and then what I see as an advocate and a service officer is that the money, those sums of money, are put out there to the public across Canada to say, “See, we're addressing and fixing the problem. Look how much money we spent.” If you don't look at the end use of how that money was spent....
Again, the Veterans Association Food Bank in Calgary applied to the veteran and family well-being fund for a housing project, because Homes for Heroes can get them off the street and stabilized, but now the rents are so high that, when they move out of there, they end up in a system they can't afford. They end up back on the streets again because they cannot move to the next level.
We say, “Here's how much money we've spent”, but we don't track the results. We don't look at the successes. The 10 people who I talked about who took their lives, to me, 10 are just the ones I could put out there with a few days' notice. I can tell you there are hundreds of them. Remember, when each veteran takes their life, they're leaving a family behind to deal with the aftermath. How do we track that? Do we look at the family and what's happened to that family?
I have my own family, generations of family, serving our nation. I have friends who have gotten out and who are struggling with their own PTSD and mental health, whose kids are now in the service. They're all saying, “What's going to happen to me when I get out?”
In answer to your question, we spend a lot of money, but we're not accomplishing what we should be accomplishing, which is making sure that we put them back on track and give them the right to a good, solid life.
Mr. Bruyea was a good example. Why would anybody think it was okay to take away funding from a six-year-old boy? It's absolutely unheard of, when they gave money to a convicted police killer because his father was a veteran. It's absolutely absurd that we would allow that in a nation like ours.