Veterans Affairs Committee on Nov. 18th, 2025

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

Should it be covered by Veterans Affairs?

[Darren Simons]

I think Veterans Affairs has to expand and try different things. What works for one person may not work for another. Did that work because I believed it worked? Maybe. Did it work for my wife because it was more spiritual? Maybe. The fact is that we both were willing to try something to help us. We want to get better. We're willing to try things.

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

As service becomes more complicated, care should become more specialized, in my opinion. Would you agree with that?

[Darren Simons]

Yeah, and another challenge is if you're a rural client. My mom has a friend who's a veteran, and he goes to a one-stop shop in Edmonton. I've asked for assistance in advance for a trip to Regina. I have to go 12 weeks to see my psychologist for sessions. I asked in advance if I could get my wife pre-authorized to drive me or maybe get an overnight stay. I've been driving three hours there and back. I have to get a doctor's note and say exactly which day I think I'm going to need. After a three-hour drive, I'm going to have an hour-and-a-half-long session. I know I'm going to be drained, but I don't know which day, so it's challenging.

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

Thank you.

Mr. Hurley, I'm sorry I have very little time here, but you mentioned how the care narrows when you start dealing with Veterans Affairs.

Would you be in agreement that we need to expand the services we provide for veterans?

I see Mr. McKay shaking his head, and Mr. Bona is also agreeing.

[Gordon Hurley]

Just recently, I was informed that the wife of one of our friends who was in the military and killed himself is no longer able to get treatment for herself for any type of psychological issues. Maybe someone can explain that a little bit more clearly.

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

That is shocking.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marie-France Lalonde]

Thank you very much.

We have Mr. Casey for five minutes, please.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to all of our witnesses for being here and for sharing some very powerful stories, and thank you for your service.

Mr. Wouters, I'd like to start where you left off in your opening statement when you talked about the perfect storm. I was trying to jot it all down. You talked about drugs, unresolved trauma and global misapprehension.

Can you first walk us through the elements of the perfect storm?

[Ernie Wouters]

Yes, sure.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Then I'm going to ask you for some specific recommendations for where we can make a difference in this phenomenon of veteran suicide and what the key recommendation you'd like to see come forward would be.

[Ernie Wouters]

Thank you, Madam Chair and committee members.

The perfect storm is first and foremost unresolved trauma. Everybody has unresolved trauma. Have you heard of the ACE study, adverse childhood experiences study? That study was done in 1997 and they basically interviewed almost 20,000 people in North America. It had to do with the top 10 reasons that people have childhood trauma and there were 10 categories. Every form of abuse, so physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, are in the categories. There's incarceration, living with somebody with mental illness, and the list goes on. The number is 10.

The average person in the military has an ACE score of six before they don a uniform, which means they have PTSD before they start—before they start—so we should be helping them before they start. Unresolved trauma is the number one issue.

Psychiatry and psychology in their own documents state they have no strategy or plan to resolve trauma. That's not what they're after. They're there to maintain and manage. Their entire approach is a symptoms approach, which isn't a root-cause approach. What I'm delivering is, let's find the root cause and let's resolve the trauma, which we can do. I can help people in three hours who were diagnosed with PTSD to no longer meet the criteria for PTSD using this approach.

It's the entire science of the soul, brain and body being used.

Number one is unresolved trauma. If you solve the trauma, all of the symptoms go away. My clients have symptom reductions of 60% to 80% on average. There are 82 symptoms in the Federal Emergency Management Agency's categories. The average person here will have 15 to 45 symptoms per trauma. The average person has on average 15 to 45 unresolved traumas at any one time. If you just do the math on that, let's say 10 traumas with 20 symptoms, you have 200 symptoms walking around at any one time. This is not just 15 to 30 people. This is 1,500 life stories I have completed at 20 hours per person in four categories over their life of physical, personal relationships, spiritual education and vocation. This is all categories.

The second issue is the mind-altering drugs. There have been studies done in the past that showed that this issue started in the early 1950s when the Sackler brothers in the U.S. bought a marketing agency and a pharmacy and started releasing slow-release opium and heroin in pills, which led to the opioid crisis. It's also responsible for the current overmedication, which is also the history of psychiatry, in that it's also not a science. In fact, the people who started the process have admitted that there are no biological markers, so there's nothing scientific about psychiatry. However, it is also causing a rapid point towards death by suicide.

The average military personnel diagnosed with PTSD have three or four major drugs, all with black box warnings on them, and this means they're six times more likely to commit suicide. This is a constant, regular diagnosis for those in the military.

The other thing about ACE, which I talked about earlier, is that if you have an ACE score of six or more, you're 15 times more likely to commit suicide. Then just with those two right there, you're 21 times more likely. We're actually moving our vets with the current system towards death at a rapid rate, and that's what's happening within our ACE score.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

What is the term you just used?

[Ernie Wouters]

The ACE score, adverse childhood experiences. Our military, the average person, goes in with a six. If you have a six or more.... Last month I had a military personnel whom I did an evaluation on right up front. I sent him the ACE score and he had 10 out of 10. On average, most of my military guys have a 10 out of 10 ACE score, which means they're not only 15 times more likely to commit suicide, but it's even higher.

Combine that with the meds and now we have a perfect storm for suicide.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marie-France Lalonde]

Thank you very much.

I apologize, Mr. Wouters.

[Ernie Wouters]

Okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marie-France Lalonde]

I apologize, Mr. Casey.

Ms. Gaudreau, the floor is yours for two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ms. Duhaime, I see there are a lot of little notes in front of you. If you want to add something, you have two minutes to do it.

[Marie-Noël Duhaime]

It's going to be too violent, and we don't need that. What I want to say is that, personally, right now, I have a $3 million debt. I am ready to invest in my project. Into the future together, feed the earth and care for souls.

December 10 is International Human Rights Day. I don't want to say "droits de l'homme" because there are women. There are also children and babies dying in bus shelters. Three million dollars of a prostitute's pay. It is your money, ladies and gentlemen. The government doesn't have money, but the taxpayers provide that money. All I need from you is a little handkerchief. I ask for help, but everybody asks me:

“What's in it for me? What's your mission?”

My mission is to combat the capitalist aberrations. People would rather have "Sephora kids," or babies, I don't know, Amélie isn't here to correct me. Down with capitalist aberrations.

I believe in you.

Thank you for being 100% you. Into the future together, with a signature. Another capitalist aberration is that you can't join the movement, a solidarity cooperative, if you don't pay $10. Do you think the little baby who died had $10? No.

Three million dollars of my money that I won after being repeatedly raped in the Canadian Forces.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marie-France Lalonde]

Thank you.

Mrs. Wagantall, go ahead for five minutes, please.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Thank you so much, Chair.

I do appreciate all of you being here. We need about 10 more hours.

That being said, Mr. Wouters, you talked about brain, body and soul, a healing of the whole triangle, and began to speak about the core findings. Just so that everyone at the committee knows, SEPTR is “seven edge program for trauma recovery”. That is Ernie's program. He has trained many people. It's very effective, so it's an opportunity, I would say, after this.... You've submitted all of these notes, have you?

[Ernie Wouters]

Yes.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Okay. Great.

I would like to carry on from where Mr. Casey was. You went through unresolved trauma and mind-altering drugs. We don't have a lot of time, so...just a very quick overview of three, four and five, and then how that works into this system we're using right now, which treats only the fragments because we aren't dealing with the whole. Can you do that?

[Ernie Wouters]

That's correct. The non-scientific models go back to psychology and psychiatry, and this is the one thing that the committee must look at: Psychology and psychiatry are self-governing. There's no external regulatory body that expects or demands them to actually prove that it's scientific. The National Institute of Mental Health in the U.S., the past director for 15 years said that, even in 2011, they wrote a paper—and they were getting 500 signatures a day—requesting the APA to have an independent third party scientific evaluation of the DSM-5. This was 2011. It's now 2025, and it has not been addressed, so they're refusing to allow an independent study on psychiatry.

The other major issue is that psychologists use the DSM-5 for their diagnosis, which means that now there are two dysfunctional bodies that Veterans Affairs is using as criteria for approving programming. My program has amazing results, with a 60% to 80% reduction in symptoms, but also PTSD, in three hours and less—multiple hundreds of people have been through it. As a result of this approach as well, people no longer meet the criteria for lupus, fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis issues and autoimmune disorders, because once the trauma is resolved, the autonomic nervous system shuts off and the body will heal on its own. I have hundreds of clients who can testify to this.

This is a scientific model. With my engineering degree, it meets all the six criteria of a science. Psychology meets none. Psychiatry meets none. We have to look at who's allowing the process to be approved when they don't have independent credentials to actually fulfill it—and they're not claiming this. Psychology and psychiatry are not claiming that they have a solution. Why are they directing...?

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Can I comment on that?

Dave, when we did the study on mefloquine here in 2016-17, I asked the psychologist who was in Somalia whether, when people faced traumatic scenarios, he saw a difference in those who had faith, or soul development, as being more able to cope. He didn't even hesitate. He said he absolutely did.

That shows a bit of that, but you have one more here. You talked earlier about professionals without trauma education. Can you talk about repeated betrayal within the system?