Madam Chair and members of the committee, thank you for the invitation and the opportunity to appear before you today.
My name is Chief Warrant Officer Christopher Hennebery. I have served in the Canadian Armed Forces for nearly 41 years, beginning as a reserve infantry soldier in 1985.
I currently serve as the chief of employer support for western Canada and will conclude my service at the age of 60 in two years. I live in Vancouver with my wife, who is also a veteran, and I am a member of the Métis Nation of Ontario.
In addition to my military career, I have built a parallel life in business and the arts. I completed a master's in IT business administration in 2004 and have founded, owned and sold three companies since 1991. For more than 20 years, I have balanced entrepreneurship with reserve service.
In 2015, after selling my consulting firm, I joined SAP and currently serve as an account executive supporting some of the largest Fortune 50 organizations in North America. My civilian career has taken me into complex global boardrooms, but it was my military service that prepared me to succeed in these environments.
Art has also been a central part of my life. I studied at Emily Carr, and in 2011 I went to Afghanistan as a Canadian war artist. Today, that body of work hangs in galleries, messes and museums across Canada.
During the pandemic, I founded the Veterans Artist Collective, an initiative that focuses on two outcomes.
First, we deliver immersive weekend workshops in disciplines such as plein-air painting, metalsmithing and ceramics for veterans, serving CAF members and RCMP members and their spouses. Over 300 participants from across Canada have attended. Many live with operational stress injuries, depression, anxiety or PTSD. Our goal is to create a positive pathway to mental health through structured creative practice and community.
Second, we provide platforms for veterans to exhibit and sell their work. Our inaugural national exhibition in November 2024 coincided with the lead-up to the Invictus Games in Vancouver. This program exists solely through the generosity of True Patriot Love and the Royal Canadian Legion.
Over the past decade, I have observed something that's pretty concerning. There remains limited flexibility and tolerance for veterans who wish to transition into non-traditional careers, particularly entrepreneurial ones.
In 2014, I was introduced to a medically released soldier from the 3rd Battalion, PPCLI, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry. Danny was severely injured in an IED attack. He wanted to become a tattoo artist. He had passion but no formal training and no pathway within the existing retraining programs to pursue that goal. We explored whether his education benefits could support foundational training, but his VAC caseworker refused to allocate. Despite setbacks and no formal training, he persisted.
I contacted over 20 tattoo parlours in Vancouver that did not respond. Two actually did, and one owner said that he would have coffee with Danny. He was moved by his story. That coffee turned into a part-time cleaning job in the tattoo parlour, and Danny is now a successful, sought-after tattoo artist with his own business.
My journey was different. My service gave me leadership training, resilience and discipline, qualities that translated directly into entrepreneurial success. I was fortunate to find mentors who helped me interpret my military skill set into business language, but not every veteran is as fortunate.
The more complex the injury, physical or psychological, the more individualized and bespoke the transformation pathway needs to be. Entrepreneurship is a legitimate and powerful transition option for many veterans, yet our systems often default to conventional employment pathways that are not constructed to accommodate non-traditional ambitions.
If we truly believe in lifelong service and meaningful reintegration, then we must create flexible, responsive frameworks that recognize veterans as potential job creators, not only jobseekers. That's my ask. We need to create a more flexible program that allows our veterans to apply for those funds of $80,000, especially the veterans who are suffering from PTSD, as most of the people in my program are, who cannot fit into those traditional models. Not only are we dangling the $80,000 in front of them, but we're telling them they can't have it.
Thank you for your time. I look forward to your questions.