Yes, automatically there was a board of inquiry and a criminal investigation when he passed. They had four suspects they had to rule out within the criminal investigation. Once the criminal investigation was done, DND did a board of inquiry as it was on DND property that it happened, and he was on active duty. They interviewed people from his first and second years of service, when he was the happy-go-lucky guy at work. He was always smiling and would give you the shirt off his back. That is what they testified to. They never testified in the BOI about his last five years in the forces. Everything was prior to that. All his deployments the last five years before he passed, none of that was in the BOI. [Technical difficulty—Editor ] We are missing a deployment to Kuwait in 2021, and all of his remedial measures are not in there.
The board of inquiry deemed it non service related, because they said his deployments were uneventful. To be honest with you, I don't know what that means. They just gave me a summary of it. It did not include interviews with whoever they had interviewed. I sat in for five of those interviews, which were all speaking to Michael's personal life, not to his service. Then, at the end, I was handed a brief summary of the BOI, which I have, and Veterans Affairs requested that. It took about six months for the Canadian Armed Forces to release it to VAC. Then I got the decision letter that it was a non-service-related death.