Veterans Affairs Committee on Oct. 2nd, 2025

[The Chair, Liberal, Marie-France Lalonde]

Thank you, General.

Thank you very much.

You have the floor, Ms. Hirtle.

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

You mentioned five-year blocks, and I'm wondering if COVID played into that. In the pandemic, did you see any kind of uptick or downtick in suicides during the pandemic years?

[MGen Scott Malcolm]

The rates remained stable through the pandemic, and again, it's how the blocks play out as well. Dr. Hall can help me out on some of the more statistical and technical terms.

What happens is we use that sliding five-year average, and while we publish the report annually, we will try to move to five-year blocks so that we can provide that firm five-year block, rather than moving....

Depending on how you line up that five-year block, it cuts off part of the pandemic. Things have remained globally stable with our data from 2002 to the 2024 report.

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

That's interesting. Thank you.

Does the department follow support efforts that are working in the community, the service groups? Is there any liaison there?

That question is for anybody.

[Steven Harris]

We're all looking at one another.

I mentioned earlier a VAC assistance service that's provided from Veterans Affairs. It's actually delivered through Health Canada. It's the equivalent of the employee assistance program, but slightly scaled.

We do get some follow-up from those kinds of organizations. Another member mentioned earlier whether other organizations that are assisted by Veterans Affairs or that we work with come back to us with instances or anything they might see as trends. They do, as well. When we talk with our own service providers who may have direct contact with veterans on a regular basis, we want to hear back from them as to difficulties they're encountering or difficulties they're seeing among the veteran population. There is a good discussion there.

There's also good discussion with the centres of excellence that we have. We have two centres of excellence from Veterans Affairs, one on PTSD and another related to mental health conditions and chronic pain. As Dr. Malcolm said earlier, there are a whole host of related issues, including chronic pain and perhaps issues of suicide as well. We do have those connections on a regular basis, both from a research point of view and anecdotally.

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

Thank you.

I'll pass the rest of my time to MP Sidhu.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Thank you.

The Canadian Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Canada launched a joint suicide prevention strategy in 2017. How will you be able to measure the strategy's success?

Either department can give an answer.

[Cyd Courchesne]

Madam Chair, as mentioned, we continue to follow it through rates, which are an indirect indicator for us of the success of the strategy. Right now, we've measured the rates up until 2016. We'll have to wait for the first five-year block to see if there was any effect of that. Regardless, we know that all the measures we have put in place were good measures, were improvements on things we had done in the past.

As I mentioned, it's difficult to prove something that didn't happen or to demonstrate or measure that something didn't happen, so we have to rely on statistics and measuring trends over time to see if there are any effects or any changes.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Do I have more time, Madam Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Marie-France Lalonde]

Yes.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Do you consider that maintaining the operations of physical VAC offices is important in providing suicide prevention services for the veterans?

[Steven Harris]

I apologize; I missed part of your question.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

Do you think that maintaining the operations office or physical VAC offices is important to providing suicide prevention to the veterans?

[Steven Harris]

Absolutely. Being able to come into an office if you want to is very important. We've had about 50,000 visits since the office reopened since COVID-19, in-person visits with veterans and families. As an option for veterans, that is very important.

[Sonia Sidhu, Liberal, Brampton South, ON]

If this federal government did not reopen the nine VAC offices in 2016 that were closed by the previous government, would that have impacted veterans in local areas and access to VAC services?

[Steven Harris]

We would still ensure that veterans could access services. They could access them remotely, but they wouldn't have had an opportunity to come in to those local offices.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marie-France Lalonde]

On behalf of the committee, I would like to thank you all for coming. We will suspend the meeting for a few moments to say goodbye to Dr. Courchesne, Mr. Harris, and Brigadier-General Ménard.

Major-General Malcolm and Dr. Hall, thank you.

Thank you for spending nearly two hours with us on this Thursday morning.

We will now suspend the meeting to see you on your way, and the members of the committee will return shortly to review the schedule for the coming weeks.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marie-France Lalonde]

We will now resume the meeting.

I have a few technical details to go over with you.

I want to make sure that everybody is in sync.

Our next meeting will take place on Tuesday, October 7, 2025, at 3:30 p.m. We will resume our study on suicide prevention among veterans.

Before our meeting ends, I would like to briefly discuss a scheduling proposal.

Pursuant to the motion adopted on September 18, 2025, once the committee has completed its study on suicide prevention, which will most likely be at the end of October, its next study will be on barriers to entrepreneurship for veterans. This new study will likely begin sometime in November.

Is the committee ready to agree that the deadline for members to submit their lists of proposed witnesses will be Friday, October 24 at 4 p.m.?

We would like to have an agreement to obtain the lists of names so that our clerk can contact these individuals. That way, in November, we could begin the new study, if possible. We will see how things progress. At least we would have names to start the next study.

Do you all agree?

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

For which study is it?

[The Chair, Liberal, Marie-France Lalonde]

Basically, according to our subcommittee report and pursuant to the order determined on September 18, we would go to barriers to entrepreneurship for veterans. That would be some time in November. Leading to that conversation, we would like all of you to send names of possible witnesses. The date proposed is Friday, October 24 at 4 p.m.

Is that agreeable?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marie-France Lalonde]

Thank you very much.

Finally, I would like to ask if the committee is ready to adopt the budget for the September 18 briefing on trauma-informed practices and the budget for the September 23 briefing with the veterans ombudsman.

The budgets were distributed by the clerk on Wednesday, October 1.

Is it the will of the committee to adopt these two budgets?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Marie-France Lalonde]

Thank you very much.

Is it the will of the committee to adjourn the meeting?

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

I have a couple of questions.

You mentioned that our next meeting next week will continue on this study. Do we know who the witnesses will be at this point?

I have another couple of questions. Maybe I'll just ask them all at once and then you can answer them all at once.

How many witnesses were submitted overall for the current study? How are we generally planning to lay out the panels for that in terms of the number of witnesses, how they'll be structured and how that will all be grouped?