Thank you, Chair—I appreciate it—and Mr. Desilets.
I want to go back to my initial line of questioning. I believe that my colleague, Mr. Samson, and I want the same thing. It should be a bipartisan issue, but we may take different avenues.
I keep going back to this notion of triage and proactive triage. I'm struck by something from earlier on in my career. I was a federal parole officer before I embarked on a career in law. I remember that within five working days of their admission, you had to see a federal inmate face-to-face. The reason was to look them in the eye and see what was going on. In other words, we don't trust people to check a box saying, “I don't have feelings of self-harm,” or “I don't have immediate needs.” That's the problem I have with having just a check box system. It's one thing to tick a box. It's another to look somebody in the eye and ask, “What are your needs right now?”
When we talk about proactive triage, then, my question, in a roundabout way, is this. We've talked about looking past the numbers. What better way is there to look past the numbers than to look somebody in the eye? Is that human interaction not what we need at this point? If we give it to federal inmates, why don't we give it to veterans?