Madam Chair, I am so pleased to have the opportunity to speak in this take-note debate on mental health this evening. I will focus my comments on the challenges that our Canadian Armed Forces and RCMP veterans, and indirectly their families, face with mental health injuries.
Our veterans have unique challenges to their mental health that very few civilians face. They embody the emotional and mental toil of having been deployed to many theatres where they or their comrades face peril, injuries and death. They participate in and witness violence that they cannot and do not want to begin to share with anyone outside of those who have also lived that experience.
Many have experienced mental, physical and sexual abuse from those they thought were their mentors or had their backs no matter what. Many come home with physical and/or mental and emotional injuries after serving and struggling to cope. They struggle on a whole other level, as they know they are failing in their relationships with their spouses and children. Many struggle with trying to fit into a civilian world, where, from their life experience and perspective, they struggle to find their place.
Then there is a challenge that is so counterintuitive and disturbing to me. Having served for seven years on the veterans affairs standing committee in this place, this is something that grieves my heart and keeps me awake, as I think of the added injury sanctuary trauma inflicts on so many of our veterans.
Sanctuary trauma is what happens to the spirit and mind of a veteran when they experience the failure of the government to fulfill its promise to take care of them and their families. The number of veterans who take their own lives is a significantly higher percentage than that of the civilian population. These are the ones who have been failed the most. The recent revelation of a VAC employee pushing a veteran to choose MAID to end his struggles with a brain injury and PTSD shows just how broken our duty to care is.
I will share only one of so many instances where the needs of the veteran are undervalued because those who are making the decisions about their care failed—