Madam Chair, I will begin with some brief remarks, but I want to spend the majority of my time on questions to the minister.
We all know that we ask the women and men of the Canadian Armed Forces to do difficult and dangerous work on our behalf each and every day, at home and abroad. As parliamentarians, we have a responsibility to make sure that they receive the training, equipment and support they need, both while they are serving and as veterans. Therefore, tonight, whether we are talking about actual dollars of spending, procurement or deployment, we have to make sure that we keep the serving members and their families central to what we are talking about here tonight.
The Canadian Armed Forces faces many challenges, as we all know, with recruitment and retention. Meeting those challenges is essential to make sure that the Canadian Armed Forces reflects the faces of our nation. Certainly the Canadian Armed Forces and DND have much work to do when it comes to dealing with some key issues, such as sexual assault within the military and mental health issues. This is both a matter of justice and a matter of how we are investing in those who serve their country, and it is a necessity if we are ever to meet those diversity goals.
As members will know, one of my concerns has been how the Canadian Armed Forces has been dealing with mental health issues. I acknowledge that there has been some progress made. However, I still have a large concern about death by suicide within the Canadian Armed Forces. We are still losing one serving member a month to death by suicide. That is over 160 members since 2005. It is a tragedy for all those families, and it is a tragedy for our country. That number does not even include reservists, because, unfortunately, we do not even keep good statistics on death by suicide of reservists, and of course, it does not count veterans who may be suffering from PTSD.
While there has been progress in acknowledging that not all injuries within the military are visible, we still have much more to do. We had one very big opportunity to do something in this area earlier this year. When we were talking about Bill C-77, the military justice reform bill, I proposed an amendment to remove self-harm as a disciplinary offence in the Canadian military code of conduct.
We held hearings and we heard from witnesses, such as Sheila Fynes, who lost a son to death by suicide while he was serving. We heard from experts on mental health. We heard from senior members of the Canadian Armed Forces. We had indications from a majority of committee members that they would support my amendment. I want to thank the Conservatives for their early support in trying to remove this barrier to treatment of mental health issues that is both symbolic and practical.
However, 30 minutes before we were to vote in committee on my amendment to remove self-harm as a disciplinary offence, the minister sent an email to every member of the committee asking us not to do this. The Liberals then voted against my amendment, saying it was out of order in a military justice reform bill, which is passing strange, since this is a bill that was already amending the code of conduct in several other places.
I have a very direct question for the minister. Why did the minister ask the committee not to remove this barrier to the treatment of mental health issues and to this very severe problem we have with death by suicide in the military? Why did the minister ask committee members not to remove paragraph 98(c) of the military code of conduct?