Evidence of meeting #29 for Veterans Affairs in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was ptsd.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5 p.m.
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
I want to start off by saying thank you to our guests who are here, our witnesses who are here.
Mr. Cousineau, thank you for your testimony today. Thank you for outing me again about my friend MJ and her service dog, who aptly was able to detect that I was facing some anxiety regarding my bill.
Can you tell us where Thai is right now?
5:05 p.m.
Co-Founder, Paws Fur Thought
Yes. Thai has wandered back and forth between sitting on my feet and watching my wife, who is in watching the testimony.
For both of us, if you can imagine, after dedicating almost eight solid years of your life to this, it's a pretty emotional issue. She has worked me hard. In fact, earlier we had to remove her from the room. She was becoming so animated I wouldn't have been able to continue my testimony.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
Yes. That was one of the reasons I asked that question. I sensed that at the very beginning, and I know first-hand.
I want to share another example with my colleagues here. A friend of mine by the name of Jason Burd is an Ottawa firefighter. Jason is about six feet, eight inches. He's a giant of a man. When I first met him, I was speaking at a first responder conference with respect to post-traumatic stress disorder and my Bill C-211. Jason was a shell of a man. He could hardly stand up without shaking. PTSD had absolutely racked both his emotional and physical well-being. Sixteen months later, he was given a service dog by the name of Blaze. Jason was able to come out of his house without being impacted by all that was going on. Blaze absolutely transformed his life.
Mr. Cousineau, we talk about it so much, about trust and the emotional support that these dogs provide. I'm wondering if you can touch on that a little bit more, about how Thai has transformed your life.
5:05 p.m.
Co-Founder, Paws Fur Thought
Yes. Thank you for the opportunity to do that.
I'm sorry for outing you.
5:05 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
5:05 p.m.
Co-Founder, Paws Fur Thought
I considered the fact that you had spoken about it first as my licence to be able to bring it up here. I should have checked beforehand.
5:05 p.m.
Co-Founder, Paws Fur Thought
No, you have my apologies.
Because of the physical security threats that accompany PTSD, whether it's a combat threat, whether it's a military sexual trauma scenario, whether it's search and rescue, or whatever happens to be the underlying cause of the trauma, oftentimes it involves a loss of personal security and with that comes trust.
In the military we're taught three things. When your HPA axis fires, you either fight, flight or freeze. Doing nothing is frowned upon. Running away is frowned upon even more, so we fight. That's why veterans become very aggressive when they become threatened. It has been bred into us. It's not that we're bad people. It's just the way—I'm sorry—that....
The military made us the way we are. I won't apologize for it. It's necessary. However, now that we've been made that way, when we are done we need to find a soft landing place for us to land on. That includes our dog. I trusted nobody—nobody—and that included family members. It was dark. It took a long time for me to re-establish some of that trust. Unfortunately, in my work in this space, I have dealt with betrayals, being told that we were going to do certain things on this file and we haven't, and it hurts and causes that. Now, however, because I have Thai—you saw her come in here and check on me a minute ago—I can function in ways that I hadn't in years.
I need to share this with you about another one of our service dog handlers. His wife was approached by neighbours after he had gotten paired with his service dog. The comment was, “My God, you have a husband? We thought you were a single parent.” I don't need to tell you anything else. That's what you need to know.
That happens to be one of Mr. Samson's constituents.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Andy Fillmore Liberal Halifax, NS
Thanks, Chair, and moreover, thanks to all the witnesses for giving their time and testimony today. It's very much appreciated.
Medric, it's nice to see you again. You may remember we spent an evening together at Pier 21 a couple of years ago, and Thai was under the table with us that night. You taught me something that day, and you're teaching me more today, so thank you very much.
Although my questions are going to be for some others, they're going to build on something you said, which is that there is an off-the-shelf option here.
My question is for Ms. Forbes and Ms. MacKenzie, because we're in a Canadian context here—forgive me, Ms. O'Brien. We heard from previous witnesses that this is really quite complex. The dog needs to be trained, the trainer of the dog needs to be trained and the service person who's going to be with the dog needs to be trained to be with the dog. There's the prescriber regimen. This is quite a complex thing.
I wonder if you could, in that context, either one of you, Ms. Forbes or Ms. MacKenzie, talk about whether there is an off-the-shelf option that can achieve that kind of complexity in the Canadian context?
5:10 p.m.
Executive Director, National Service Dogs
Do you want to go first this time, Laura, or do you want me to dive in? Okay, I'll dive in.
With “off the shelf”, in terms of there already being pieces of the puzzle in place, I'm going to go back to what Laura said in her opening remarks. There are a few different lanes.
If you want to qualify programs that do all of those things, like one-stop shopping, you have Wounded Warriors that brings in programs to do that, but so does ADI. You can have something in place that can help you to understand that dogs coming out of certain programs are fully qualified, legitimate dogs.
Where the challenge comes in is the team end of it. For dogs that aren't coming out of programs where it is more easy to put standards in place and hold them to accountability, where I think I've seen, in this space, things get difficult are when people aren't going through programs like mine or like Laura's. They don't have guidelines or a mechanism to qualify their dogs legitimately for doing the good work.
I think for you guys, it's twofold. There's one lane that's service-provider oriented and another one that's owner-trained oriented, because they are a section of your constituency that is demanding access to Veterans Affairs and the greater community. Currently, they're under-represented. It's not my job—I don't service those folks—but that is from the standards board piece that I was party to. They have to be dealt with separately. The standards we have for programs do not cross over well into dealing with individuals.
The outcome standards that Laura referenced for the teams is what we are working on at CGSB to address that. It is sitting on a shelf in Ottawa, and it's darned good. We did good work on that. Medric's not wrong.
5:10 p.m.
Owner and Master Trainer, K-9 Country Inn Working Service Dogs
Danielle has hit on the big problem. The majority of our clients are in our owner-trained program. The reason behind this is that we can service a lot more people and get more dogs with more handlers.
That being said, there is a huge process that we have to go through to make sure that this handler is ready to be able to train. We don't get a group of dogs or puppies from one litter. We specifically test specific puppies. Maybe out of 12 puppies we take two and give these to the handlers. There is a whole bunch of pieces of the puzzle that I really can't explain in just five minutes.
One of the biggest problems out there right now is that we are just overwhelmed with the number of people who require dogs. We have been having great results. It is owner-assisted, and that means through public access. We have two trainers who go out with a maximum of four people to help our handlers go out in public, because that's the biggest thing. We want to make sure that they aren't traumatized when they go out. If we see that they are being traumatized, we have somebody who can go with them and take them away from the crowds. If they start to disassociate, we have somebody there who can help them.
All of my handlers have been trained by me and are service dog owners. A lot of them no longer need their service dogs because they may be on their third dog with me, and now they can do things without them. They are there. They understand what's happening to the person, and they are there to help facilitate if something does go wrong. There's a whole bunch of pieces to the puzzle.
Where it doesn't work is when you have trainers who don't understand the process, who try to train the dogs. I believe—
5:15 p.m.
Owner and Master Trainer, K-9 Country Inn Working Service Dogs
No problem.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bryan May
We're getting close to the last 15 minutes of the meeting, so I have to be a little more litigious.
Up next, we have MP Davidson for five minutes, please.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
John Brassard Conservative Barrie—Innisfil, ON
Mr. Chair, I think I'm going to be taking Mr. Davidson's spot, if that's okay.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
John Brassard Conservative Barrie—Innisfil, ON
Thank you, and I'm sorry we didn't....
I want to ask a very difficult question, but I think it's an important question when it comes to the issue of service dogs. I want to address this to all four of you, so it should take up the five minutes. On the issue of veteran suicide, from your experience, maybe you can address the issue of their having a service dog at their side and how it's helped veterans who would otherwise have suicide ideation say to themselves, you know what? No, not today.
Maybe we can start with Medric and then go around. Please give enough time for everybody to answer.
5:15 p.m.
Co-Founder, Paws Fur Thought
Having the dubious distinction of being a veteran who has survived multiple attempts on my life....
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
John Brassard Conservative Barrie—Innisfil, ON
I know it's emotional. I know it was a tough question, Medric, but it needs to be asked.
5:15 p.m.
Co-Founder, Paws Fur Thought
You're goddamn right it needs to be asked. You have to ask yourself: What the hell is so goddamn powerful that people who would willingly step into harm's way for other people try to kill themselves? When you can answer that, you can answer why we need these dogs. If you can't answer that question, you shouldn't be invited to the discussion.