I believe it to be one of the most important issues on the table here. We know that moral injury is a component of mental wellness. I'm not sure if you've been introduced to that term with regard to it being a component of post-traumatic stress injury or disorder or operational stress injuries.
Certainly, we have seen it be an aggravating factor in recent suicide cases for veterans who have served in Afghanistan, many of whom have questions about their service there and whether or not it.... Given that the entire world is now looking with interest to determine the outcome of that mission, in the absence of government recognition of that service in Afghanistan, veterans are left to their own devices to fall back on media statements that it was a waste and a failure. Therefore, if you pulled the trigger and killed someone, or if you lost a fellow soldier in combat or suffered an injury yourself, posing the question to yourself as to whether it may not have been worth it in the first instance is a powerful burden to put on someone.
That's Afghanistan. Afghanistan is a case where there has been some degree of public recognition, even if it's grassroots recognition from the people of Canada, as well as the government, at least in the early years of the war. But when I mention the case of injury to the soul, I think mainly about those veterans who served in the 1990s, my own generation, and not just from personal bias but from an awareness that at the end of the Cold War, we saw a tremendous spike in global conflict and a tremendous ratcheting up of the level of violence. I'm sure Sean can attest to this too, from the look of the ribbons he's wearing on his chest, that peacekeeping became peacemaking. I'm sure you're familiar with this phenomenon. We see too the spike in mental illness and mental injuries and claims in Veterans Affairs as a result of the massive growth in exposure to combat trauma in Somalia, in the former Yugoslavia, in Cambodia and of course in Rwanda.