Thank you, Chair.
I would like to thank the witnesses for coming today and sharing. Some of the testimony we heard from the witnesses is very troubling, and not easy to hear, and certainly from this chair. I will maybe touch on that a little bit later on.
Time and time again at this committee we hear testimony from witnesses. Time and time again we hear about the machine, about Veterans Affairs and the military and how they fail to support veterans needing care.
Ms. Smith, you mentioned this care.
Care, for me, implies feelings. It implies comfort. Care implies support. Care implies understanding.
When I go into a doctor with symptoms, I'm working with them so that I can tell them what I am experiencing and find a course of action so I can be healed. It seems as though when I hear testimony from veterans like Ms. Doucet that the cart is before the horse. You're jumping through hoops explaining and re-explaining and trying to prove why you aren't well and why you got sick, instead of what is ailing veterans. In my opinion, that's not care.
Ms. Doucet, you made a recommendation that for anyone who has worked in the military with any form of chemicals, VAC should recognize this exposure to chemicals as a cause of symptoms.
Could you please expand on that? It is something I believe we should be supporting.