Veterans Affairs Committee on Nov. 18th, 2025

[Ernie Wouters]

That's an excellent question. Thank you for asking that.

First and foremost, I think it should probably shock almost everybody in the room that medical doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists have not a single class in trauma during their core degree granting. It's zero.

To become a trauma expert you have to put in the hard work. We've heard of Bessel van der Kolk, Gabor Maté and myself. I've put in—and I'm being conservative—50,000 hours on this topic. It's probably more like 60,000 to 70,000. The information's out there, but you have to go dig it up and then actually be on the front lines of being a practitioner.

The answer to the question is that I can provide that kind of training for the people here because that's what's required. It's that they must understand that trauma.... You can actually train people. We're designed as humans to actually overcome trauma. The key component is to address all three aspects of our design—body, brain and soul. I do three hours of psycho-education before I work with a client on how the brain is affected by trauma and what it's designed to do, how the body's designed and what its limitations are, and how the soul is the key to the story. The soul leads, the brain releases and the body heals. This is a science.

Training and equipping them with this would be the way to do it. Trauma-informed care is information. Trauma-empowered care is transformation. It means the person can actually resolve the trauma. In 12 hours of training, I can train a person to resolve all future trauma.

[Tatiana Auguste, Liberal, Terrebonne, QC]

What you are telling us is very interesting.

You talked about the ACE score a bit earlier. You said that you would often meet with veterans who had a score of ten out of ten, and you said they were 15 times more likely to die by suicide, sadly. Could you tell us a bit more about that?

[Ernie Wouters]

I missed the last part of that.

[Tatiana Auguste, Liberal, Terrebonne, QC]

Can you tell us a bit more about the ACE score?

[Ernie Wouters]

Just elaborate on that...? Okay. That ACE score is the number of individual traumas that person has. They would be checking. Are you living with someone who is suicidal? Yes. Have you been fondled sexually? Yes. Have you been living with someone who's physically abusive to you? Yes. Have you gone with dirty clothes and not enough food? Yes. There are 10 of those.

My recent client had 10 out of 10. He's suicidal.

Almost without exception, the measurement, when I'm doing my initial assessment, is that they're in severe psychological distress across seven mental health areas, which I can explain later. The issue becomes that it's a soul wound. Even on the moral injury that you were talking about earlier, the soul is the first missing component. The second missing component is the ability to actually release the trauma, which is actually forgiveness.

Globally, through all the major independent faith groups in 94% of the world's religions, no one really knows how to operationalize forgiveness. “Forgiveness” in Greek means to release, to let go, to no longer hold onto the events, which trauma is, which makes it 100% about the offended and 0% about the offender.

When I help these military people, I help them to release the offence with that definition, which means that it releases their soul from being captive. Then it actually shuts off your autonomic nervous system and the body heals. I can actually see this take place right before my eyes. They're no longer suicidal within two treatments like that.

[Tatiana Auguste, Liberal, Terrebonne, QC]

Thank you.

[Ernie Wouters]

It directs the therapy, the ACE score.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marie-France Lalonde]

Thank you very much, Mr. Wouters.

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

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

My time is short, but at the same time, we really have an opportunity to talk about some solutions and different ways of helping.

Ms. Duhaime, would you like to talk about the kind of treatment that helped you, or that didn't? How have you managed to get access to certain treatments?

[Marie-Noël Duhaime]

To get treatment, you need courage. To have courage, you need to realize that you are worth it.

When you get told,

truth, duty, valour, but don't get caught.

The Royal Military Colleges of Canada Alumni Association invests in “mission-critical Academic, Athletic, Bilingual and Leadership development opportunities.” You spend millions—billions—in training soldiers, but then you throw them out just like garbage.

The solution is simple. Just like for women who are terrified for their lives, we have an emergency shelter.

Let's call that the psychiatric ward, just for fun, and then we have a second-level shelter.

Thank you, Chloé, and thank you, Marion.

There, we teach these soldiers, who we have trained to kill, to not snap and kill others, just like I almost killed my neighbour after she threatened my life. I almost snapped.

Then I moved out. Everybody says, “You're crazy, you're crazy.” I am crazy. I am trained to kill and I'm about to snap. Do you really want me to complete this act?

You've trained. You spent millions. I was trained to kill, so let's train these soldiers to lead

solidarity cooperatives.

It's an easy solution. Two hours, is that what you said? Two hours...?

[Ernie Wouters]

Three hours.

[Marie-Noël Duhaime]

I have $3 million in debt that I have invested in this project. It's $3 million of my own money. Well, actually, it's everybody's money. It's my whore paycheque.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marie-France Lalonde]

Thank you.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marie-France Lalonde]

We'll go to Mr. Richards for five minutes.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Airdrie—Cochrane, AB]

I'm going to split my time with my colleague.

The last thing I mentioned in my first round of questions was commemoration. I just want to ask one question about that, Mr. McKay, because you were behind the Afghan monument that's in Amherst, Nova Scotia.

Can you tell us a little bit about that process and whether you got any help from Veterans Affairs in that?

[Justin McKay]

First off, I started it in 2022 as soon as I became the sergeant-at-arms at the Amherst Legion.

I had a meeting with the Town of Amherst CAO. Within half an hour he was on board with the project. He asked me when I wanted to unveil it. I said September 11, but then I said how about the end of Legion week, September 23, and that's when it was unveiled.

Veterans Affairs did not contribute to the project. I had multiple engagements with the commemorative partnership grant unit, the last being by Skype the day that the PSAC strike started two years ago. The answer I was given was that they were not funding new monuments, but if I were putting up a memorial for marginalized veterans, they had money for me that day. I said to the commemorative partnership manager, “You know, Ainsworth Dyer, one of the first four Canadians who died in Afghanistan, was African Canadian.” She didn't know what to say to me.

Our Legion raised $42,000 and paid for the whole thing, minus donations from the Town of Amherst and in-kind contributions from the Province of Nova Scotia.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Airdrie—Cochrane, AB]

Thank you for picking up the slack where Veterans Affairs failed.

Let me just ask one more question, because veterans have been waiting 11 years for a national monument for the mission in Afghanistan.

What does that do to a veteran when, first of all, they can't get the help they need, and then second they can't even get a basic monument to thank them for their service. What does that do to a veteran?

[A voice]

What's the point?

[Justin McKay]

It's demoralizing.

It's like, “Why did these guys go and die? Why do I have 12 friends who didn't come home?"

[Marie-Noël Duhaime]

It's garbage.

[Justin McKay]

When I started this project, I said to our CAO in the Town of Amherst that I didn't want my generation of veterans being like my grandfather's, who was a Kapyong vet, fighting for years and years to get acknowledgement for Korea.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Airdrie—Cochrane, AB]

You had something to say there. Just be very brief, though, because I want to give my colleague a chance to ask a question as well.

[Gordon Hurley]

I don't know what the government wants from us anymore. I don't understand what the point is of a military in Canada. I don't think we have adult conversations about what a military does and what they're supposed to do. I don't think we have adult conversations around the spending. I sure as heck don't think we have adult conversations around the care that we're supposed to be giving people who say, “Hey, I'm going to put it on the line for everybody in this room".

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Airdrie—Cochrane, AB]

Thank you for that.

It's understandable, but I really hate the fact that you feel that way. I understand why, though.

Mrs. Wagantall, I'll turn the rest to you.