Mr. Speaker, last May I asked the Minister of Veterans Affairs why Canada was abandoning its former soldiers, leaving them to languish on the streets, even after they have given so much to all of us and to our country.
In response to my question, the minister said that “the problem is, by its nature, very difficult to identify because many of these men and women suffer from alcoholism and drug dependency”.
Sadly, it was easier for the minister to find reasons to blame soldiers and veterans for their lot than it was for him to actually name real measures that his government has put in place to prepare for and to help this new generation of war veterans.
A few weeks after I asked the question, David Bruser, a reporter with the Toronto Star, penned a series of investigative articles for the Toronto Star dealing with the emotional aftermath being felt by Canada's Afghanistan war veterans. It was a heart-breaking story that I know was felt by all of us who sit on the veterans affairs committee, and I would expect by the minister himself, because it was quite an eye-opening story.
These articles tell of tragic stories, stories about the serious hardships and mental strains caused by many things, one of them of course being post-traumatic stress disorder. When viewed from a veteran's perspective, his or her home may be the new Afghan war-front.
In one of these articles, Mr. Bruser talked about a young infantryman who was charged with assault after returning from combat in Afghanistan. These were real stories. These were not fictional stories. The story touched upon issues such as mental illness and violence, but more to the point, it explained how a 26-year-old man was emotionally devastated because he enlisted to help his country.
As if that were not bad enough, it would seem that the military threw this young private to the wolves by ignoring the fact that he was facing trial for actions that may well have been caused in part by PTSD.
Even the judge in the case was stunned and confounded by the absence of a military representative in the courtroom. While he was trying to establish the conditions of the private's house arrest, Judge William McCarroll said:
There should be somebody here from the military, right? To take responsibility. And I don't understand why there isn't. I mean, he went to Afghanistan. He did his part. He's back here now. So what is he, cut loose?
I wonder if this private has indeed been cut loose. Have his fellow veterans been cut loose too? Has his government abandoned our war veterans, even after they have given so much to us?
Mr. Bruser's articles talked about several officers and the suffering that they were feeling, how domestic violence was occurring in their families as soldiers were waking up in the night thinking that they were still on the battle fronts in Afghanistan, and beating up their wives at a time when they were suffering from PTSD. The wives were bearing the brunt of that response.
These are very difficult times. I would hope that the government would take a more proactive role in meeting the needs of many of our veterans out there and establish a strategic plan to do so.