I'll be moving quickly because I have a big mouth and not a lot of time.
I'm going to throw some numbers at you.
One hundred and fifty-eight Canadian soldiers were killed in Afghanistan. Active service member suicide rates equalled that in nine years.
Of course, we don't know about veteran suicides because there are no reliable numbers in Canada. However, the estimate is that there are one-and-a-half to two times the number of veteran suicides compared to civilian suicides, despite military members having screening, financial stability, employment, medical care, a strong peer group, mental health services and lower addiction rates than civilians, which are all predisposing factors for mental health crisis and suicide. Don't tell me there's not a crisis.
Zero is the number of veteran and military hospitals in Canada. There's not one. We have clinics—good old 10 to 3—and that's it.
Zero is also the number of brain scans I had from any veterans' service provider, despite being released from the military for traumatic brain injury. Thank God for organizations like Project Trauma Support and Concussion Legacy Foundation Canada. How many members are being treated for PTSI, post-traumatic stress injury—it's not a disorder; it's an injury—but are never investigated for TBI? We've been briefing this since 2009.
Two to three months was the wait time for a VAC settlement in 2006. One and a half years is the wait time now, despite better technology, more studies, more departments and more employees.
Once is the number of times I presented to military emergency mental health care because I was suicidal. Incidentally, they were closed, but they had a nice sign requesting that I go home and call a certain number that they had posted. That's not bloody useful.
Zero is the number of proven supplements and nootropics prescribed to veterans with TBI or PTSD. There's not one. Ironically, 90 is how many grams of weed per month a veteran is eligible for with no questions asked, despite its proven impact on nervous system dysfunction. For psychedelic treatment coupled with counselling, which is proven to be of benefit for those suffering both TBI or PTSD, good luck. You're on your own. You're better off to be sponsored by an American charity, as some of our SOF members were, and flown to the U.S.
Seven is how many agencies veterans have had to wade through for health coverage, rehabilitation or education. It's a debacle. It should all be under VAC. Stop shuffling things around under different shells of money.
Three is the number of agencies veterans must deal with regarding their pay. Again, it doesn't take “rocket appliances”.... It should be one agency.
Sixty-four is the percentage of my pay that I receive. Ninety is the percentage of my pay that the government claims I receive.
My name is Brendan Hynes. I served our country for five years as a reservist and 26 as a full-time member. I was an IEDD operator and a breacher instructor with both the combat engineers and special operations. My exposure to blast-induced overpressure resulted in my medical release due to traumatic brain injury, though VAC labelled that as CTE, which, oddly, is impossible to diagnose in the living.
Despite a litany of smaller injuries, my brain injury was the worst. It changed my life and tried to steal my life from me. My balance was so bad that I had to sit in the shower. I couldn't stand with my eyes closed without falling over. I've had headaches daily for several years and often wake up feeling hungover without having consumed a single drop of alcohol. If I push myself too hard or I'm not mindful of my sleep, diet and life routines, I become symptomatic again.
The worst is the effect on my mental health. I spent years stuck in neutral. There was little that caused emotion in me and when it did, it was generally frustration or anger. My panic response was heightened. I barely slept and when I did, it was fitful. I occasionally acted recklessly to see if I could feel something. I rarely could. I was failing at both work and home. I had panic attacks.
In 2019, I took my little girls Christmas shopping. I forced myself through time at a busy mall until finally escaping to our car on the journey home. All day I'd thought about what I felt I had to do.
As we drove home, my girls sang Christmas carols in the back seat. In the front, I had tears streaming down my face. I thought of how I'd failed them and how much I'd miss them. I had a plan to end my life and to do it so there would be no horror for my family. I planned to leave directions with 911 for a body recovery.
To those of you who have not experienced this, it's lunacy, absolute insanity—and I agree, it was—but at that time of pain and panic, it was the only way to stop being hurt and confused. I thought and hoped it would be like a deep sleep.
To members of this committee, I thank you for your time. You've seen a lot of anger and frustration from veterans. It's warranted, every goddamn bit of it. We have met, shared, briefed and advocated for brain injury mitigation, for mental health care and a streamlined and coherent system. What have you given us? You have applied bullshit bureaucratic band-aids, nothing of substance, no improvement and no ease of navigating the system.
Your military and veterans face a degree of abandonment that causes more loss of life and more mental health issues than any trauma they ever faced overseas. It’s not what we see and do; it's the lack of assistance in recovery, the lack of reliability and a cohesive plan for treatment.
We keep trying to apply a rote methodology of injury assessment, emotion, pain and abandonment. You cannot apply a unit of measure to these things. We require guidelines and, for a refreshing change, some common bloody sense and maybe some compassion, some facilities, some clear answers and a clear path.
We were sent to fight on your behalf and wound up having to come home and fight with the very people who sent us there in the first place. It’s about accountability and responsibility.
Get a number that members can call when they're in need, where somebody will answer and be able to respond to questions about pay and health care, not one to suggest MAID or to pass off vets to yet another bureaucracy.
We cannot end this by only looking at VAC; however, if you, the people who are elected to be servants of your nation, decide to be biased towards action and leadership rather than simply closing the books on yet another long-winded, myopic committee meeting with sunshiny platitudes, then we can start a change, but we've seen enough of that.
It’s not shocking that we lose so many along the way, because few fights are ever won alone, so please, please, not for me, but for those who come after me, those who served with me and those we've lost along the way, for once, become our allies.
While I eagerly await your questions, I have some for you. I wonder what the logic has been in the application of things like Manulife and PCVRS to this system rather than it being coordinated by Veterans Affairs.
It is the government that sent us into harm's way. It is their duty to look after those who went. “Here I am; send me”, was what we said, so please explain to me how we gave a non-competitive contract to the Loblaw family to set up PCVRS to lay over thousands and thousands of more sheets of administrative miasma for veterans to wade through.
God bless our veterans, our fallen and their families. I was blessed to be able to stand on the shoulders of heroes.
Thank you.