Veterans Affairs Committee on Oct. 30th, 2025

[The Chair, Liberal, Marie-France Lalonde]

I call this meeting to order.

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to meeting number ten of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs.

The committee is meeting for its study on suicide prevention among veterans.

Before we welcome our witnesses, for people who are watching, I would like to provide a trigger warning. We will be discussing experiences related to suicide and grief. This may be triggering to viewers with similar experiences.

If you feel distress or need help, please advise our clerk.

For all witnesses and for members of Parliament, it is important to recognize that these are difficult discussions.

Also for our witnesses, if you do not feel comfortable at any point, please let us know. We can pause our committee for you.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders.

Before we continue, I would like to ask all in-person participants to consult the guidelines written on the cards on the table in front of them. These measures are in place to help prevent audio and feedback incidents and to protect the health and safety of all participants, including the interpreters.

To ensure an orderly meeting, I would like to outline a few rules for witnesses and members to follow. Before speaking, please wait for me to recognize you by name. For those participating by video conference, click on the microphone icon to turn on your microphone, and please mute yourself when you are not speaking.

For those on Zoom, at the bottom of your screen, you can select the appropriate channel for interpretation: floor, English or French. For those in the room, you can use the earpiece and select the desired channel.

All comments should be addressed through the chair.

For members in the room, if you wish to speak, please raise your hand. For members on Zoom, please use the “raise hand” function. The committee clerk and I will manage the speaking order as best we can. We thank the participants for their patience and understanding.

I would now like to welcome our witnesses.

By video conference, as individuals, we have Marc‑André Bernard, a psychologist at Institut Alpha, and Samara Symonds, formerly a civilian employee of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, now retired.

Ms. Symonds, thank you for your service.

We will start by giving each witness five minutes to present their opening remarks. After that, we will proceed to a series of questions with the members of the committee.

Mr. Bernard, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Marc-André Bernard, Psychologist, Institut Alpha, As an Individual]

Good morning, everyone.

Today I will be talking about suicide prevention, which is obviously a very complex topic.

For military personnel and veterans, the risk factors for suicide are, for the most part, the same as those for the general population. They include mental illness, drug or alcohol use, isolation, grief, loss of relationships and chronic pain. However, we all know that the suicide rate is higher in this population, and it seems that some factors pose a greater risk for members of the Canadian Armed Forces.

I don't have enough time to talk about all the factors today, so I want to focus primarily on the unique processes of enlisting in and being released from the armed forces as well as notions of identity. I will base my remarks on the clinical observations I've been making for over a decade with this clientele.

It won't come as news to you if I say that enlisting in the Canadian Armed Forces is a professional commitment unlike any other. It involves developing a new personal identity that merges with one's professional identity. Ideals such as public service, common good, defending shared values and strong camaraderie are prioritized, and military personnel give up some of their self-determination and individuality to prioritize the collective, in some cases risking their lives to do so. These career choices must involve individual sacrifice, and it is those sacrifices we ask of them that later increase the risk of suicide.

While in the military, people must endure physical discomfort and pain, set aside their negative emotions and avoid focusing on their mental state, which is considered to interfere with the achievement of the ultimate goal: to act as one. It's a very taxing lifestyle for the family, as it can involve being uprooted, moving and straining support networks.

Being wounded on the job and no longer able to perform the same function within the group can trigger distress. When a person can no longer be part of the institution like their peers, they may struggle to manage mental states that have been ignored for some time. They may experience shame and humiliation in relation to their weaknesses and difficulty defining themselves as an individual. That is a direct legacy of their years of training and service.

Of course, that's in addition to the burden of enduring pain on a daily basis, having nightmares, mentally reliving difficult events, experiencing worsening mood and coping with a whole new allergy to stress and pressure because of an operational stress injury. Added to that is the stigma still associated with mental health issues. Many people find it difficult not to equate psychological problems with weakness.

As I said at the beginning of my remarks, today I want to discuss suicide risk related to the nature of enlistment in the forces.

It won't come as news to you when I say that the moment people leave the armed forces, they enter a period of high risk for depressive episodes. I've seen this in my clinic. Suicidal thoughts may emerge. There are a lot of things we need to consider. The absence of continuity of care is experienced as a loss of stability. The repetitive, redundant assessments former members must undergo can ratchet up humiliation and shame when they have to face their shortcomings. They may become intensely angry when they find their experience has become run-of-the-mill and bureaucratized. Aggression and humiliation are two documented risk factors for suicide.

Furthermore, the expectation that former members of the military will be successful at self-determination after serving 15, 20 or 30 years in the forces may simply be unrealistic. It makes them feel terribly inadequate because they feel they have to prove themselves when they have just devoted years of their lives to serving their country. Let's not forget that we have, to some extent, trained these people to think in dichotomous terms, sometimes strictly in black and white with no shades of grey. While this served them well in the field, it is detrimental to them in times of distress.

Although they were undoubtedly designed with the intention of providing effective guidance and support to Canadian veterans, the standardized rehabilitation services currently available from Partners in Canadian Veterans Rehabilitation Services seem to me to be largely unsuited to veterans and do not allow for adjustments to be made for those who are vulnerable and whose military identity was all they had. Those people are the reason I wanted to testify today.

I am very aware of the complexity involved in supporting these men and women as they leave the Canadian Armed Forces, often with significant and chronic injuries. I also recognize the generosity of the programs in many respects, as well as the progress made in destigmatizing mental health in the forces. However, I believe that if we want to think about suicide prevention among veterans, we need to consider the nature of what is asked of them in the course of their service and the fact that the transition to civilian life, a very difficult process, is in fact a process of acculturation in their own society. It's a process in which they experience alienation from civilian society once they are released from service.

Good soldiers pay attention to their psychological health. A psychological diagnosis should therefore never end a military career if it is dealt with, as was unfortunately the case in the past. I'm told that times are changing and that young military personnel are less concerned with rigid and harmful conceptions of mental health. I hope that's true.

In closing, in one of this committee's reports on the release of Canadian Armed Forces personnel, I read that it was recommended that Veterans Affairs Canada be able to process all veterans' claims and that veterans be assigned a civilian family doctor before being allowed to leave. I think this is a very good example of what could really make a difference in the lives of some former military personnel and reduce their feelings of helplessness, humiliation and frustration around the profound identity loss they must grapple with. It remains our responsibility to take care of these people, who have sacrificed some of their health to public service.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marie-France Lalonde]

Thank you, Mr. Bernard.

Next is Mrs. Symonds for five minutes.

[Samara Symonds, As an Individual]

Thank you for the opportunity to speak with all of you today.

I wear many hats in relation to this issue and will attempt to speak to all of them in this short time.

I am a veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.

I was a civilian member intelligence analyst of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and spent most of my service working on homicides and national security. My PTSD from the trauma exposure is real, but many times it was discounted in comparison to Canadian Armed Forces service members or regular members of the RCMP. This includes comments from Veterans Affairs employees stating that I am taking away resources from veterans who have lost limbs. My experience was consistent with mental health injuries not being treated or respected the same way as physical ones.

I can echo much of the testimony you've heard about processes being difficult to navigate and taking too much time. My initial decision took about a year, which is actually very good, and I needed the assistance of the bureau of pensions advocates, which is a fantastic service, to receive a fair decision a couple of years later.

Once I began having children, I realized that PTSD in either parent makes for added challenges during childbirth. At the recommendation of my psychologist and midwife, I applied to Veterans Affairs to cover a doula to help manage my PTSD during childbirth. This is a readily provided support [Technical difficulty—Editor]. After a five-minute conversation, they could all understand how little I was asking for and how much benefit it would provide.

However, processes reign. I applied in fall 2024. I provided my rationale. I provided medical documentation, and I provided research papers attesting to the benefit for PTSD. I looked into any possible health care professional who could assess me and verify my claim, but I lived in the north, so my options were limited.

I'm awaiting the result of my final level of appeal, and my daughter was born over six months ago. I walked in to meet with a Veterans Affairs representative just days before I went into labour. They suggested that the local Legion pay. This is charity I was not comfortable taking. I sought assistance from the bureau of pensions advocates, and they provided helpful advice for my appeals but said they can't help with treatment benefits. I believe this to be a major gap.

This one story is exactly the type of battle and wait that veterans and families face when seeking support from Veterans Affairs for service injuries or death. To sum it up, it's onerous, isolating, adversarial and damaging.

I am also the spouse of a veteran. To respect his privacy, I won't be sharing much about my personal experience in this regard. However, almost every day I grieve for my husband before his injury and I fight to support him and maintain my own health while doing so. I am unique in that I have VAC treatment benefits for my own service injury. These end up covering my mental health needs as a spouse. I have the treatment that many other family members need and deserve. Regular sessions with a psychologist experienced with PTSD and policing have gotten me though unbelievable circumstances. I've accessed counsellors through the VAC assistance service who describe my family as in crisis and don't know how to help us when we're just surviving.

I am also a mother. I see the impact of our service already on my very young children. I worry about their ability to access mental health care in their own right one day. I also think it's important to note that you're hearing from survivors and spouses, but the experience of children is lacking to date.

I am the co-administrator of an informal support group for spouses of RCMP members and veterans with PTSD. Our group has approximately 700 members. I invited others to testify before you, but the stigma is still significant, so you'll hear from me and from Jessica Ruth only, despite a strong following and support for this issue from the group. Until spouses find the group, many feel isolated and are in complete disbelief about what their life has become.

Divorce is an all-too-common outcome. Other women have lived with decades of abuse as they attempt to honour “in sickness and in health”.

The point I would like to make is that almost every unbelievable story is accompanied by multiple responses saying, “I completely understand and have been through similar” and then recommending counselling.

Not only do we have the role of caregiver to our veteran, but we often have the absence of a caregiver as the veteran may struggle with the capacity to provide the typical support of a spouse. It is not sufficient to fund mental health care for spouses as a caregiver. Most of the spouses I've met struggled with their member's PTSD before the member accepted their condition. Most have struggled when their member or veteran refused further treatment. Many still struggle after a divorce. Mental health care in its own right could be a lifeline for the veteran's well-being and can help their family to be healthy and continue to contribute to their communities in their own way—as nurses, teachers, social workers and in other important roles.

Finally, I am the organizer of petition e-6654 and co-organizer of the group “Improving Mental Health Care for Families and Survivors of CAF/RCMP Veterans”. The petition was inspired by Jessica Ruth, whom you heard from. What we're asking for is something the veterans ombudsman has been recommending for nearly a decade: service-related mental health treatment for families in their own right. It's unconscionable that families are still waiting to be offered more than short-term counselling and lip service when they contribute so significantly to veteran well-being and often provide support to the veteran well beyond their years of service.

The veteran community is watching. We are encouraged to see senators asking the minister about progress on this recommendation, yet we experience more sanctuary trauma when the question is answered repeatedly with a simple “There's more for us to do.” I've received more informed answers from MPs on and off this committee. It's easy to say that the minister is new, but we all know there is a team of professionals behind her that is meant to prepare her for these questions. The bureaucracy continues to fail veterans and their families.

True prevention would start with a similar study focusing on RCMP and CAF individually. For the purposes of Veterans Affairs, though, I want to leave you with the simple answer to suicide prevention and answer two questions that have been asked by members of this committee already.

MP Auguste, you've been asking for innovative approaches to preventing suicide. Sadly, VAC hasn't even figured out the basics yet. It's so fundamental that the experts don't mention it: Fund mental health treatment, independent of the veteran, for families before death, so they have the skills and capacity to support the veteran.

MP Wagantall, you asked if there is anything you should be doing immediately to help. Provide mental health treatment to families before suicide, so they can help their veteran. Fund mental health care after the veteran's death, so that the suicide effects don't ripple through families as we know they do.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marie-France Lalonde]

Thank you very much, Mrs. Symonds. Thank you for your courage today. I think I heard well that you just became a mother again, so I wanted to congratulate you on the birth of your child.

We will be starting a round of questions. Each member will have six minutes.

We'll start with Mr. Tolmie for six minutes.

[Fraser Tolmie, Conservative, Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK]

Thank you, Chair.

I appreciate our witnesses coming this morning.

Ms. Symonds, I'm sorry to hear about what you had to experience and what you had to go through with VAC. VAC should be there to help all members. It should not be there to pick and choose and prioritize. I offer my apologies that you had to experience that.

You touched on your petition, e-6654. I'm wondering if you could please expand on that for those who may be watching this committee and share a little bit more about that.

[Samara Symonds]

Sure.

Currently, VAC allows for some counselling for family members, provided that the veteran is alive and engaging in treatment. What happened to start the petition is that a family member was receiving funded treatment from VAC, had an established relationship with a psychologist and was getting much-needed support. Unfortunately, their veteran committed suicide, and she was immediately cut off from her mental health treatment at a very vulnerable time. She had the bravery to walk into a town hall with the veteran ombud and confront her with the situation that she couldn't believe was happening to her. The ombud provided the answer that this was contained in a report from 2021—family members needed to have mental health treatment, funded by VAC, in their own right, not as a caregiver to the veteran.

Despite being recommended in 2021 and being agreed to by VAC in the media and in spotlight reports following up on the initial report, we haven't seen any movement to allow this. Often, what we hear is pointing to the VAC assistance service, which is equivalent to an employee assistance program. You're not guaranteed to get a psychologist or anyone who is particularly specified in the area that you're seeking assistance with.

The petition was really a simple call to pay attention to this report from 2021, which asked for this simple thing.

Furthermore, in our research since we started this, we realized that really the veteran ombud was talking about it back in 2016. This is why I say it's been a decade since we understood that families have service-related impacts and very badly need access to their own mental health treatment for those impacts.

[Fraser Tolmie, Conservative, Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK]

Thank you very much for that answer.

Can I ask you where people can find that petition so they can sign it?

[Samara Symonds]

Unfortunately, the petition closed, with just short of 5,500 signatures. It was presented to Parliament just yesterday afternoon.

[Fraser Tolmie, Conservative, Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK]

Thank you very much.

In your testimony, you shared a bit of what we've heard from other witnesses about sanctuary trauma, where the organization is supposed to be there to help you, whether you're an RCMP officer or a military veteran.

Could you please expand on what your experience has been with that?

[Samara Symonds]

Whether you're Canadian Armed Forces or RCMP, you take an oath, and it's a very deep thing. It's life-changing. You commit yourself on a level that no other employee is expected to commit themselves, and you do so with the understanding that it is service that is taken very seriously by this country. You're going to do unbelievable things for your country, and the result is that you're going to be supported when you inevitably have unbelievable damage from that commitment for the good of your country. With that comes an expectation that we accept that we have these injuries, and we turn to something like Veterans Affairs to try to make us healthy once we leave.

To have your service judged, to have your injury judged or questioned, and to not have any support in your options feels very much like you receive a cheque once a month to compensate for the damage caused to you, and that is all you're going to get for the rest of your life, when all we really want is support to try to get us to a healthy place where we can be a new form of employee, where we can be a healthy parent, where we can be a healthy spouse.

[Fraser Tolmie, Conservative, Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK]

Thank you. That was an amazing answer. I really do appreciate it.

I want to circle back. You mentioned in your testimony how you were judged, and you mentioned in this last answer how you feel you're being judged on your injuries or your condition.

Do you feel like you're being judged...? I want to see if there's a difference between veterans in the RCMP and veterans in the military. Is there a difference? Do you feel you're being treated differently because of your service in a different organization?

[The Chair, Liberal, Marie-France Lalonde]

Mrs. Symonds, unfortunately, I can allow just 15 seconds.

[Samara Symonds]

Yes, I do feel that we are treated differently. Furthermore, we are eligible for less in benefits, which complicates things.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marie-France Lalonde]

Thank you, Mrs. Symonds.

I would like to now go to Mrs. Hirtle for six minutes.

[Alana Hirtle, Liberal, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Dr. Bernard, thank you for being here today and for all the work that you do in serving the Canadian veteran community.

Committee members, at our first meeting we ensured that we received trauma-informed practices training before any study was undertaken, knowing that witnesses would be bringing forward both powerful and challenging stories and issues. The committee has heard from witnesses in our study about the benefits of ensuring that trauma-informed practices training is made available to those who are working with and ultimately serving the needs of veterans.

We've also heard from family members of veterans that there are difficulties, and you've indicated what they sometimes characterize as insurmountable challenges in navigating services or communicating with veterans who are struggling with PTSD, which is where I'd like to begin today.

I understand that you encourage a range of therapy techniques in your practice. Can you tell us what are some of the most commonly effective types of treatments in your experience with veterans suffering from PTSD and how you view emerging therapies in contrast to more traditionally relied-upon approaches?

[Marc-André Bernard]

That's an excellent question.

Yes, I was trained initially in CBT. There is prolonged exposure therapy that's used, trauma-related exposure.

What I was talking about is that I don't like the cookie-cutter rehab that's going on, because it's about trying to fit everybody into the same kind of process. I do feel that with vets or with the RCMP the journey is so different that new approaches might be necessary.

I have some vets who really benefit from therapy with horses. I don't know what you call it in English, but it's a new kind of therapy that helps vets. One of the main problems with PTSD is the digestion of emotional baggage, which a lot of people have trouble with. Whatever helps the person connect with their emotions and learn to manage their emotions will prevent the PTSD from getting bigger. All those approaches that help the veterans connect with their emotions in a non-threatening way—therapy with horses is one of them—can be very beneficial.

I know that EMDR is something that's used. This is one of the approaches I've never used before. It's not part of my arsenal, so I cannot comment on this.

There's another type of therapy that's used more than that. It's called “narrative therapy”, where there is the idea of making a story about the whole journey the person goes through—in this case, in their professional life—to make milestones. Trauma is something that changes you forever, but it doesn't mean that it has to change you only negatively. Post-traumatic growth and resilience have been studied, and a lot of people journey out of that. There is a possibility for growth through it, but there is a very tough moment when people need to be helped. What narrative therapy does is connect or integrate all the parts of your life together and make sense of them, which is what resilience is about. It's about integrating every part of your life together and being comfortable with it, with better emotional management, which is not something that is thought of in the armed forces. We can understand that in a certain way, but I think the way people are trained to do difficult work like police work or military work sometimes requires putting aside the emotional world. That doesn't mean it goes away. It just gets accumulated and complicated.

All the approaches to trauma are about making it simpler to digest those things and making it okay to address those things. That's what I was saying about humiliation and shame, because I feel that those are things that can lead to suicide. People would rather disappear than have to face those emotions. They don't know how to deal with them, and they are not in an environment where it's okay to deal with them.

I don't know if this answers your question.

[Alana Hirtle, Liberal, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

That was wonderful. Thank you.

I think I have just under a minute left, so I'm going to ask a quick question. The answer might be yes or no.

Do you find that a combination of talk therapies and monitored acute or long-term pharmacological solutions is effective?

[Marc-André Bernard]

Yes, I do, although there was a period when people used medication way too much, which brought a lot of problems.

In some cases, the combination of the two might be the best way to pass through the hardest part. If there is talk therapy or strategies to help the person cope, in combination with medication, that could be indicated in many cases.

[Alana Hirtle, Liberal, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marie-France Lalonde]

Thank you.

Ms. Gaudreau, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I thank the witnesses.

Mr. Bernard, thank you for taking the time to take care of our veterans. I also want to thank you for summarizing the situation for us and cluing us in to that very important critical mass. You said you see between 15 and 20 veterans a week, on average. I believe you're well qualified to make recommendations.

First of all, did you hear Ms. Symonds' testimony? If so, is that a unique case, or is it the case for many people?

[Marc-André Bernard]

It's definitely not a unique case. What Ms. Symonds talked about is something I see every day in my practice. I often have to invite my patient's partner to individual therapy to provide information, answer questions or get their information, because they don't have access to support elsewhere. I also see a lot of RCMP officers because they don't get the same services and it really is harder to access services.

Families are heavily impacted by military service and the ensuing psychological problems. Indeed, as Ms. Symonds said, families are the primary supports for veterans. It's often at the spouse's suggestion that a veteran seeks help and receives support. The story Ms. Symonds shared today really isn't unique at all.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

I heard you say that when people leave the forces, it's extremely important to maintain that connection, not only because there's a kind of brotherhood, but because people have a deep need to stay in touch. I imagine people tell you they feel they don't matter after they leave the forces. Did I understand that correctly?

[Marc-André Bernard]

Absolutely, yes.

One thing I've noticed that is problematic and specific to the military at the moment is that continuity of care during the transition from service to release is lacking. In many cases, Veterans Affairs lacks access to files. When military personnel leave the forces, they lose their doctor and other providers. I am in a privileged position because, as a psychologist outside the military, I can treat military personnel while they're on duty, when they leave and after they leave. In many cases, I am the only care provider present throughout this process.

There are many things that make the veterans I am currently working with vulnerable. One of the biggest ones is having to repeat the same things ad nauseam in the context of repeated assessments. These veterans were properly assessed while in the service. They are completely reassessed when they leave the forces, as if the forces' assessments didn't count. Many of them have to fight with the officials to get me to do the assessment, because the officials want someone else to do it. Continuity is not a priority. I know that it's extremely humiliating for veterans to have to tell their story over and over again. It's extremely frustrating to come up against a bureaucracy that, by all appearances, has no continuity. I think that greatly increases the distress upon release.