Mr. Speaker, it is an absolute pleasure for me to rise to speak to this opposition day motion on behalf of the residents of Davenport, who I am so proud to represent.
A couple of my colleagues asked why I was speaking to this motion since I was from a downtown riding of Toronto. I said I am very proud to have a very active Legion in my riding, the Royal Canadian Legion Earls Court Branch #65. It has a great Legion Hall where there is a lot of fun, mirth, and activity, and where a lot of people in the community come together. It is on Ossington Street near Bloor Street.
Every single year at Prospect Cemetery in my riding, there is a really wonderful Remembrance Day ceremony, where people come from right across Toronto to attend. It is in its 89th year. This year will be its 90th year. At the Cross of Sacrifice, the Royal Canadian Legion Earls Court Branch #65 holds court, and has a very beautiful service to honour all Canadians who fought in past wars and sacrificed their lives for Canada. I am very proud, on behalf of Davenport residents, to be speaking to this opposition day motion.
That said, this government is committed to providing all current forces members and veterans with the support and services they so rightly deserve. The Department of National Defence, the Canadian Armed Forces, or CAF, and Veterans Affairs Canada take the health and well-being of CAF members and veterans very seriously.
On November 4, 2015, our government pledged to ensure that veterans receive the respect, support, care, and economic opportunities they deserve. We delivered the first of our changes with a $5.6 billion investment in financial security for veterans and their families in budget 2016. On that day, our finance minister said, “Our veterans have dedicated their lives to the defence of their country. They deserve our gratitude, our respect and our support. We made a solemn promise that they will have it. And we will keep that promise.”
That day, we increased the disability award from a maximum of $310,000 to a maximum of $360,000; we increased income replacement, from 75% of a veteran's pre-release salary to 90%; we reopened the nine offices closed by the Conservatives; we announced that we would hire staff to make up for the Conservative cuts; and much more. Just to be clear, we reopened offices in Kelowna and Prince George, B.C.; Saskatoon; Brandon, Manitoba; Thunder Bay, Windsor; Sydney, Nova Scotia; Charlottetown; and Corner Brook; as well as opening a brand new office in Surrey, B.C., and expanded outreach services to the north.
A year later, in budget 2017, we announced $624 million to further improve the health and well-being of veterans and their families, including an all new education benefit; career transition services to help employ those skills unique to the men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces, as well as create a new centre of excellence in post-traumatic stress disorder.
This year, we are delivering on the promise that we made to restore the pension for life option, as well as to continue to improved service delivery, and enhance programs that will benefit veterans with service-related injuries and illnesses. That is what I want to talk a little more about.
Since we were elected just over two years ago, we have listened to veterans, their families, and advocates to better understand their reality. We have heard them, and in response, we have invested over $6 billion to improve benefits and services for veterans and their families over the last two years.
With an emphasis on overall well-being, the new pension for life invests another $3.6 billion in benefits that can be tailored to meet the individual needs of veterans and their families. We know that every veteran is different. However, one unifying experience is the major life change that results from the transition to life after service. The most successful transitions occur when a veteran has a positive state of well-being: a balance of financial, mental, physical, and social factors.
While most veterans transition smoothly, some struggle for various reasons, and of the approximately 1,500 members who are released each year due to illness or injury, almost 20% suffer with a mental health condition. It is paramount that those veterans and their families know what programs and services are available to them. That is why the Minister of Veterans Affairs, the Minister of National Defence, and the Chief of the Defence Staff together launched the joint suicide prevention strategy on October 5, 2017.
I believe that every member of the House appreciates what a tragedy it is if any member of the Canadian Armed Forces or one of Canada's veterans suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder or any other mental health condition that impacts their health and well-being. We know that when a member or a veteran is affected, their families are affected too.
The CAF and VAC are committed to a coordinated, collaborative approach and identified over 160 initiatives dedicated to saving the lives of veterans and Canadian Armed Forces members. One suicide is too many. While this strategy supports the government-wide healthy Canadians priority and fulfills another of the Prime Minister's mandate items for Veterans Affairs Canada, more importantly, it is about these two departments working together to help military men and women and veterans reduce their risk, build resiliency, and prevent suicide to the fullest extent possible.
This joint approach will improve CAF members' and veterans' well-being and support them by reducing stigma and encouraging them to seek the help they need. A key resource is Veterans Affairs Canada's nationwide network of over 4,000 mental health professionals. They are ready to deliver services to veterans and members of the Canadian Armed Forces and RCMP who have post-traumatic stress disorder and other operational stress injuries. Veterans and their families can also find mental health information support and resources from 11 operational stress injury clinics across the country, plus satellite service points from coast to coast to coast. They also offer telehealth services for those in remote areas.
Each clinic has a multidisciplinary team of specialists who have been professionally trained to address the unique needs of veterans. They are equipped to refer serving Canadian Armed Forces and RCMP members, veterans, and their families to mental health professionals who provide individualized assessment and treatment. These programs and services are complemented by an additional seven operational trauma and stress support centres operated by the Canadian Armed Forces.
Earlier in my speech, I mentioned the centre of excellence in post-traumatic stress disorder that was created by our government. This is of personal importance to me, because I also have veterans in my riding who have served in Afghanistan, Kosovo, and various other places, and PTSD is impacting them. They were okay for a while post-release, but then it hit them, the anxiety, the lack of sleep, the nightmares, the depression. It took them a while to actually ask for help.
I am so proud that we have created this centre of excellence in post-traumatic stress disorder. The centre is a place where we can access the best in research, the best tools, and the best support for our veterans. We can also work to try to find ways to prevent PTSD moving forward, and we can do all we can to share our best practices with others around the world.
Veterans Affairs Canada is clear in its mission to improve the well-being of veterans and their families. This is at the core of everything it does in providing the treatment, support, and services veterans and their families need when they leave our country's service to successfully transition back to our neighbourhoods.
I also want to mention that I am very pleased with our recent announcement of the pension for life. This was something that came up when I was knocking on people's doors during the election in 2015. I know that residents in Davenport will be very pleased that we are fulfilling this promise. They continue to ask that we continue to serve our veterans and help support them on an ongoing basis. I know that they are very pleased with everything we have done to date.
We are deeply committed to supporting our veterans. We fulfill our sacred obligation to them by ensuring that, should they come back injured, we will be there with the benefits and services they need to feel well enough to participate fully in post-military life. Of course, more needs to be done: more services, less complications, more help with getting jobs, and the list goes on. However, we have made a tremendous degree of progress with a $10 billion investment.
This government is going to continue to make things better for all veterans and their families. More than words, and more than 10 years of inaction, we have demonstrated real action behind our commitments and there is more to come.