Veterans Affairs Committee on May 28th, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Good afternoon, everyone. I will forgo the preamble. I just want to thank the witnesses for their patience. Technology is not always our friend.

I call this meeting to order. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on October 27, 2020, the committee is resuming its study of service dogs for veterans.

We're going to start the first hour with Audeamus Service Dogs Program. We're joined today by Brigadier-General Peter Holt, retired, and Corporal Christopher Lohnes from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The next 10 to 15 minutes, gentlemen, are all yours.

[Brigadier-General, Retired) Peter Holt (Audeamus Service Dog Program]

Mr. Chair, thank you very much. I am honoured to be here in front of members of Parliament.

This is not my first rodeo. I used to appear in front of something called SCONDVA back in the day. Then, I was wearing a uniform and I was actually in a building, which I kind of liked, in a committee room, but this is virtual, so we just take what we get.

I also want to say that as a general in the Canadian Forces, I am able to speak French, and I like to do so. If you have any questions for me in French, I will be very happy to speak in the language of Molière.

I'm going to cut to the chase. That's one of the things you have to do when you're in uniform, and since we had a bit of technology I'll note that I am an engineer but my speciality is armoured vehicles not IT. If you need help with a tank, I can work with that, but with IT systems, maybe not so much. I have the same pains with them that you do.

Who are we? Audeamus is Latin for “we dare”. It's always handy to have your name in Latin, because then you don't have to translate it. The term is very accurate. We dare because we are an all volunteer, not-for-profit organization run by mostly veterans and some serving members of both the Canadian Armed Forces and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Our mission, if you want, because the military likes to have mission statements, is to assist veterans dealing with PTSD and operational stress injury return to a more normal civilian life. The means we choose to do that with is that we try to use psychiatric service dogs.

I'm extremely pleased with the mandate of your committee or the area you're focusing on right now. It is something that is desperately needed. I have served in uniform for far too many years. I am currently an honorary colonel, so I guess I'm still in uniform. I am very much interested in the welfare of the people who served with me and who are still serving. That's what my passion is.

How does it work? I am the chair of the board of directors. I must admit—I told you that I'm an army general with a speciality in engineering armoured vehicles—I can't say I know a lot about dogs, except that I love them, but I know about veterans. I've lived through many of the experiences that they've lived through in some of the wonderful places that Canada has sent us to, and we won't talk about that.

On my board, I tend to have a mixture of, again, serving and retired folks who served in uniform with either the Canadian Armed Forces or the Mounties. Our head trainer is Corporal Chris Lohnes. He's here with us today. He has had many years' experience training dogs on the force, and you'll hear from him about that.

We were going to be joined by Dr. Susan Brock, our mental health professional. However, and this is ironic, she was already planning to take a mental health break in a small cabin without any Internet connection this weekend, so she's on her way to that place right now. Trust me, knowing what mental health professionals have been going through the past while, I commend Susan. She was worried about this, and I said, no, I would read her comments into the record. Susan is an experienced clinical psychologist who has worked for many years with us and has worked with veterans for many years. That is her field of study.

Of course, Dr. Colleen Dell is going to be saying her own piece. She'll probably be joined by Dr. Darlene Chalmers of the University of Regina. They'll talk about the excellent research that's being done in the field of psychiatric service dogs.

I'll just focus on my piece. We've spent five years developing a mental health-focused curriculum with researchers and people like Chris and other people who have trained dogs, because we want to focus on the connection between the veteran and the dog.

That has been complicated since March of 2020. Hands-on training has been rather difficult to have. As a matter of fact, it's been expressly forbidden. We have been forced to do a bunch of adaptation, using online training and formats like this, which we have learned to work with. It's been trialed and we've tested it. Dr. Dell and Chris can talk a bit more about the details. You can work things through, even if you can't meet in person, as we are demonstrating today.

I guess one of the things that anyone who looks after taxpayers' money is concerned about is cost. One of the things I mentioned is that it's not for profit, and I'll say it again. We rely on generous donors. We often use rescue dogs, if you're interested, when it comes to paying a whole bunch of money for a dog. Chris can get into the details, but we can put a dog into a veteran's hands for between $3,000 and $5,000. As I said, we have generous people who donate money to us. We sometimes have dogs donated.

We do everything we can, because we are trying not to put a burden on the veteran. I'm very conscious of some of the veterans who come back and have to leave the military or the force and who don't have a heck of a lot of money. We try not to impose on them. We try to find ways to help them in that regard. I do not think it is right to take money from veterans. That's just another personal passion of mine. We can get into that in questions, if you want.

Let me cut to the chase. What's my key message? You always have to have a key message when you're speaking. When you're speaking to a parliamentary committee, I've learned that it helps. My key message is that I believe in building on research done in Canada. I'm very happy that Colleen is here. She can talk more about the details of the research. We should never be shy about it. I've worn the uniform of Canada in a lot of different places around the world. I've never been shy about where I came from or what Canada brings. In this case, I would suggest that we have a world-class approach to dealing with the challenges of veterans with PTSD or, if you prefer, operational stress injury. Veterans we've sent off into places of difficulty have come back not as well as they were when they left.

There's a secret sauce, if you will, to our organization. When I joined the military many years ago, I was taught to work in teams. I was taught to have a battle buddy.

In Quebec, we say “compagnon de combat”.

The translation may not be perfect, but we spoke our own jargon in the army, and that was what I learned—compagnon de combat. Your battle buddy is with you. You look after him or her and they look after you. In a very strange way—well, not a strange way at all—the battle buddy for our veterans is a bit furry compared with the previous battle buddy, but that's okay. The same principle applies. It's a team. It's working in teams. Canadians are very good at working in teams. That is something I was proud of in my time in those strange places I ended up, some of them pretty hot and dusty. I'm proud of it now. That is the focus we have.

Again, I am not an expert on training dogs, nor am I an expert on researching human-animal interaction. We have those experts, fortunately, on the call with us. I am, however, an expert on veterans. I can see the difference it makes in the veterans' lives who have a battle buddy to assist them. It's just a different one in a different context. Really, it is integral that we teach our people to work within the team and as part of the team. That is a saving grace, if you would.

The whole service dog team, as you will hear in more detail, is what sets us apart. It is a really important thing for building on what I know the training of our people in uniform is based on—the whole team approach.

I'm just trying to figure out how to do this. I have Susan Brock's testimony, which of course needs to be read into the record. I have to pretend I'm a clinical psychologist, I guess. Maybe, to get you away from listening to me, it would be good to switch you over to somebody who knows about dogs, Corporal Chris Lohnes. I know that Chris has some words to say about the hands-on and now on-screen training we do.

I don't know, Mr. Chair, if you want to break up our testimony. There are three parts to it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

If you have opening remarks, please make them now. You have about five more minutes, Chris.

As a suggestion—and this is up to you, of course—if there is written testimony from the witness who wasn't able to attend, it could be submitted to us in writing and we can share it with committee members to speed things up a bit today.

[BGen (Ret'd) Peter Holt]

Good.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Mr. Lohnes.

[Corporal Christopher Lohnes, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Audeamus Service Dog Program]

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to present today.

We work with individuals who have PTSD, TBI, OSI and physical limitations due to their injuries.

The premise of our program is “Are you present? Are you safe?” If you're present, you have the awareness of your surroundings and are capable of being safe. If you are present and safe, you have the timing to reward your potential service dog to develop skills, routines and rituals. This allows the ability to connect as one with your potential service dog. The daily routines help you regain a sense of worth.

Our program develops connection-based activities and training that fosters the reclaiming of the injured veteran or first responder's life. Matching the veteran with a service dog that is complementary to them reinforces a connection to caring for the dog through daily routines and walks. It's an integral component of our program.

You may not know Karen Pryor, who conducted research in the 1970s around shaping and marker signals by training dolphins. The dolphins are trained by teaching the end through a reward marker. This allowed the researchers to learn which behaviours were reward based and how, with no reward, behaviours became minimal. Many people do not realize that positive marking behaviours were led by this researcher and how she contributed to animal training in the world.

I've been using this approach for over 30 years with the RCMP police dog service, and I've spent eight years training service dogs with injured people with PTSD, OSI, TBI and physical injuries in both Canada and Ukraine. Karen Pryor's finding is key to injured veterans and first responders. The marker for them is feeling present and gaining the ability to function through reward, which is their service dog's connection for supporting them.

How do we do this approach in training? We begin with a connection base, where the injured person connects to a non-judgmental dog. This fosters connection within the service dog training through small increments of positive and attainable goals. This leads to regaining connection and engagement with family and friends and, slowly, engagement in the community.

What have we learned through the research we've put into practice? Having a holistic environment, where you are with nature, fosters the ability for the injured person to have a positive state of mind. Within this environment, routines and rituals are developed for the injured person that are unique to them, to learn how to do activities with their potential service dog. Routine building fosters the injured brain to make reconnections and to develop improved long-term and short-term memories.

Additionally, we have learned that when a person has been injured, over years of exposure, their brain injury generates different learning requirements in the amount of time required to learn and develop skills. Learners go at their own pace, and they move through the program as they develop. We are supportive. In many cases, people take over a year to get through our program, and we have several people who have taken up to two years.

The service dog is part of the overall treatment and augments conventional treatments, such as the person's ability, through talk therapy, to last for longer periods without shutting down from triggers. For example, if triggered 15 minutes into a session, they will do a regulating activity that we have taught them and can return to the session for a longer period and improve the success rate of their treatment.

Due to COVID, we spent over a year developing the ability to deliver online Zoom training in line with our program. This was done by working with the research to determine best practices and how long learning and connection can be done, and the parameters required within Zoom. How to foster connection, how long you can train and how many skills you can be taught at one time were examined. We learned that using the safety of the home and making connections with the training team and participants' cohorts is a critical component of the program.

We now know that having 12 to 15 pre-learning lesson modules are required for someone to start the program. That means we've determined that there are 15 things that someone needs to learn or be able to do before they can be successful in training a service dog.

Connection is established through learning how to touch your dog, and the dog learning how to want to be touched. The reward increases in the presence for both by improving the timing and the use of the handler to know when to be present, and for the dog to want to do tasks for that handler or user.

There's working through feelings of anxiety and having tunnel vision during the various drills and skills that we work on. The user of the dog returning to being present makes it possible for them to feel safe and have awareness of their surroundings.

Obedience is used to develop the connection and understanding of being present and safe through the dog. Obedience is not the driving force of our program. We are not a 52-week obedience program. We use obedience to foster a connection. The result is an obedient dog that is working, present and safe.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you. That brings us to the end of the time for opening remarks.

We're going to jump right into questions.

Up first, I believe we have MP Brassard for six minutes, please.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you both for your presentation.

I really want to focus on the issue of standards.

I guess my question is for either to General Holt or Mr. Lohnes. Were you part of the study group or stakeholder group that was involved with the Canada standards board study that was being done on the standardization of service dogs in Canada?

[BGen (Ret'd) Peter Holt]

I'll lead off and then I'll let Chris jump in, sir, if you don't mind.

My predecessor was involved. I took over as chair after the regrettable falling apart of that initiative. From what I gather, there was a lack of agreement within the committee about standards. In a strange way, that led us to go back and focus on doing standards ourselves, based on research. Chris will be able to talk more about that.

You're right. That initiative, which everybody had high hopes for, did not work. The details of why it didn't work were before my time. Sometimes when you face difficulties, you have to regroup and take a different path. That forced us to go back and look at the whole concept of standards and look at how we were going to base them. We went with an evidence-based and research-based approach to doing standards.

Chris referred to a little bit of.... There's been a lot of research on animal-human interaction. The application of it—you'll hear from Dr. Colleen Dell in the next hour—has been supported by Health Canada in quite a large study. We've taken part in that. We feel that we can build on that research base to have a coherent, logical and consistent model for standards. We actually have something in the works with the Province of Saskatchewan, which is proceeding but hasn't got there yet.

Again, I do the big picture. Chris can talk about the details.

[Cpl Christopher Lohnes]

Thank you.

Yes, I was part of the standards board committee. At the time, I was part of another organization. The falling apart of that board to develop a standard happened because there appeared to be different interests in what a standard should be. Then, from what I understand, a complaint was put forward to the Competition Bureau, which stopped the board from functioning.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Chris, out of curiosity, what were some of those differences of opinion that you spoke about?

[Cpl Christopher Lohnes]

For an example, in what detail should the training of the dog be? What should be included in the standard? For example, there were parties at the table that thought very strongly that there should be a breeding program attached to the standard. I pointed out to them in one meeting that the RCMP didn't start with a breeding program and then develop a standard. It took us a while to develop a very strong standard that is world-renowned. We've gone through three different breeding programs in the RCMP to the present one, where we're very successful.

There were some things like that going on in the board that I think made it difficult for it to come to a baseline standard.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Based on your experience as the volunteer chair for the organization, or that of General Holt, what do you think some of those standards should look like if we were to develop or engage in a national standard for service dogs for PTSD for veterans?

[BGen (Ret'd) Peter Holt]

I'll start off, and again I'll pass it to Chris.

As I said, there are existing standards. The RCMP, for example, have a very good standard, but they don't deal as much with the mental health issues, obviously.

What you need is sort of a.... I hate to use the word “synergy”. I know it's too often used. You need, perhaps, an amalgamation of existing standards that focus on dogs that do other things. You also must bring in the mental health component, and that can only be brought in, once again, by using very focused research.

As I say, luckily Health Canada has come to the rescue by assigning funding to research projects in this field. That has led us to a number of iterations, the last of which is in the hands of the Province of Saskatchewan, as we speak.

We have 10 provinces and three territories, and you're well aware of that. Given this federal structure of our wonderful country, the division of who does what to whom is what it is. We find that working through, in this case, the Province of Saskatchewan, because coincidentally the research is taking place in Saskatchewan, we have found a pathway there. The national standard came adrift, as my naval friends would say.

Life is a war.

That's the other thing we'd say in the military. It happens.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Chris, do you have anything to add to this, as far as a national standard is concerned, on top of what General Holt said?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

That's time, but I'll give you the opportunity for a brief answer, please.

[Cpl Christopher Lohnes]

I would suggest that if you're going to look at service dogs, then it has to be specific to service dog testing. A well-trained, obedient dog is not a service dog, but a service dog is a well-trained, obedient dog because of the outcome of doing the work.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Now for six minutes we have MP Lalonde, please.

[Marie-France Lalonde, Liberal, Orléans, ON]

Thank you very much for taking the time to meet with us today.

Thank you for your patience with the technology.

I want to say thank you for the great work Audeamus is doing to help our veterans and, as well, the first responders and war correspondents.

Having seen and heard some of the coverage of your team's work, I appreciate the evidence-based and holistic approach you take when it comes to providing assistance to veterans in need. I was very impressed to know that it's run by and for injured veterans. I'm also very impressed by your resilience and certainly your quick action in the repositioning to continue to train our dogs.

My question is this. I believe and I understand that you have also worked internationally, specifically with Germany, to develop service dog programs for veterans in other countries. I understand that Germany doesn't yet have specific policies on service dogs. Is there anything that you feel they, or possibly any other country, have done differently that could help us with our Canadian veterans?

[BGen (Ret'd) Peter Holt]

Once again I'll go to Chris. Chris has worked with Germany and Ukraine. There are other countries that have valued our approach to doing things. I'll let Chris speak to that, because he's been there.

[Cpl Christopher Lohnes]

I've been working since 2015 with an organization that's based out of Canada—Hero's Companion—led by Kalyna Kardash. We went to build a service dog program in Ukraine, but the culture there is extremely different so we morphed it into a therapy dog program, with the therapy dogs doing many service dog types of tasks with the veterans. When we first started there, we weren't allowed on any hospital grounds. There is now an MOU with three leading hospitals in Ukraine for treatment there.

On my third visit to Ukraine in 2017, we stopped off in Germany. Through a contact with one of our researchers in B.C., we were able to meet with the head psychiatrist for injured veterans in Germany. We started a dialogue with them and opened the door for them to gain information from us to help with their program. We're still working on building a relationship with them.

The relationship in Ukraine is extremely strong. We have 25 handlers in that country and they're having very good results there.

[Marie-France Lalonde, Liberal, Orléans, ON]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Brassard, I was asking you—somewhat—about the history behind Veterans Affairs, and certainly about the current lack of a definite policy on service dogs. I'm not sure who will answer, but if the department were to develop one, how would this impact the work that you do? Do you think this will improve your ability to serve veterans?

[BGen (Ret'd) Peter Holt]

Once again, I'll lead off.

I come from a technical background—engineering—and open standards are what we want. What worries me is getting standards that are closed and just focused on one particular group. That's a challenge. We believe in open standards, where there's no “you have to have this particular colour of vest on and you have to have this particular logo on your uniform or on your dog”. I'm being silly there but what I'm saying is it's openness, an open standard. That's what we have been working on in Saskatchewan, for example, to have something that's open, that anybody can apply to. Again, it's based on what we've learned. As a matter of fact, if you look at international activities, we're trying to be open and share this.

Looking after injured veterans is not just a Canadian problem, it's a problem that is prevalent in quite a few nations. I think we have some very good ideas here in Canada, and we should maybe let other people in on them. There are no secrets here. We're trying to look after people who have served and who need assistance. It's something we should do in an open manner.

Chris, we've talked about this. Do you have any more to add?