Mr. Chair, of course the Department of National Defence and Veterans Affairs Canada share many ties. I am pleased to speak to this committee of the whole as the official opposition critic for Veterans Affairs. The ties between the two departments stem from the fact that all soldiers will one day become veterans, and any cuts made to the Department of National Defence will have a direct impact on the well-being of our veterans.
I am a member of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs. We are currently conducting three studies, specifically one on service delivery, one on mental health, and one on the transition from military to civilian life. My goal is to ask the minister and his officials a few questions and to get some answers in real time to some of the questions pertaining to our studies at the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs.
The three topics I want to address with the minister have to do with the integrated personnel support centres, the veterans family centre pilot project, and finally, the medical diagnostics done by the Canadian Armed Forces medical corps.
The integrated personnel support centres were created to mentor serving members who are released from the Canadian Armed Forces. Soldiers sometimes have to leave the military because of mental or physical injuries that prevent them from meeting the demands of their job and the more general requirements of the department, such as the principle of universality of service.
These integrated personnel support centres have been in operation for a number of years now and so it is necessary to determine whether the mentoring is meeting its objective of preparing members to be released or sometimes helping them to fully reintegrate into their regiment, unit, or occupation.
My questions on this topic are as follows. First, could the minister tell me what is the total budget allocated by the Department of National Defence to all integrated personnel support centres?