Jack Harris

[National Defence, February 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, once again, that is evasion, pure and simple.

We are not asking what the commissioner for CSEC has said in the past, or on Friday. We are asking the Minister of National Defence what he knows now. Canadians deserve answers and they are not getting them from the minister or the government.

Was CSEC collecting personal information at Canadian airports, and did it share this information with other foreign countries?

[National Defence, February 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians deserve honest answers, but instead the minister is once again evading simple questions about the activities and oversight of Canada's national security agency.

On Friday, and again today, the minister refused to say whether CSEC had been conducting domestic operations. Canadians are worried that their government is spying on them.

Will the minister now tell us if Communications Security Establishment Canada has been collecting information on Canadians at our airports, yes or no?

[Business of Supply, January 30th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, it is true that the Service Canada centres we are talking about as points of contact are the same organizations that are already overburdened with calls and with layoffs of their own. They have so many calls, for example, in the area of employment insurance, which the service centres also handle, that the wait times for getting access to employment insurance are actually increasing from what is supposed to be a 28-day maximum window to now in excess of 33 or 34 days, and more than that in some places.

People are actually being sent to centres where there are already complaints about how long it takes to get through. We are not satisfied that employees will have the kind of training necessary to ensure that the veterans who do manage to get in contact with them will be able to get the help they need. We understand that it is essentially a referral service to a telephone number or to a website, which people may or may not be able to get access to.

[Business of Supply, January 30th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I, too, would like to acknowledge the parliamentary secretary's work at the defence committee and formerly as chair of the defence committee. He is quite familiar with this ongoing study. We are working together to make, hopefully, very strong recommendations to further improve the care and treatment of ill and injured soldiers.

Unfortunately, it has taken until today to get a commitment from the minister to speed up the process of these military boards of inquiry. I hope it will lead to very quick conclusions and hopefully to some recommendations that can help to prevent further issues of suicide within the Canadian Forces.

[Business of Supply, January 30th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to rise today to speak to this extremely important motion. It is important because it is sadly necessary for this motion to be brought before the House of Commons. One would think that we would not have to debate a motion such as this in the House of Commons.

For those who are watching and have not had a chance to see it, I will read it. The motion sounds like something that would be taken for granted and reads:

That, in the opinion of the House, the men and women who bravely serve Canada in the armed forces should be able to count on the government for support in their time of need, and that the government should demonstrate this support by (a) immediately addressing the mental health crisis facing Canadian soldiers and veterans by hiring appropriate mental health professionals;

Should that need to be addressed by the House of Commons? It should be taken for granted.

The motion continues:

(b) reversing its decision to close veterans' offices;

We have had a significant debate about that already.

It continues:

and (c) prioritizing and concluding the over 50 outstanding boards of inquiry on military suicides so that grieving families may have answers and closure.

Those are the three matters before the House for debate today.

I should add that one of the extremely important aspects of a board of inquiry is that its purpose is not only to find out the cause of death and what contributed to the death of a soldier in the case of a suicide, but also to examine what preventative measures may be undertaken to ensure that it does not happen again.

We have the shocking situation that in excess of 50 boards of inquiry, whose numbers are going up not down, have been outstanding, some going back as far as 2008.

The minister made an announcement today that some action will be taken. I saw the release. It indicates that a task force will be undertaken to speed up this process. What disturbs me is that in the release these inquiries are called technical efforts. The words used are that there is “a special team to clear the backlog of technical investigations into suicides within the ranks”.

These are not technical investigations. These are military boards of inquiry, headed by a senior military officer, with investigations. It is a formal approach taken under the Department of National Defence Act and a defence administrative order directive as to how these boards are undertaken, because they are or ought to be taken seriously within the military, particularly when determining the cause of, and contributing factors to, the death of a serving Canadian Forces member.

I am glad that the minister has finally taken it seriously. This matter has been raised for almost a year now. In the case of these outstanding boards of inquiry, questions have been raised in the House with not very satisfactory answers.

At long last, it seems that the government is now prepared to speed this up and get them completed. It is shameful that it was not given the priority it deserved. This is something that should have happened. We have no rules within the administration of the Department of National Defence for the timeline as to how soon these things should be done. What is astonishing is that we do not have any guidelines or rules as to when a board of inquiry would be released. It could sit on the Chief of the Defence Staff's desk indefinitely, without a board of inquiry being released. That is important to know for many reasons. The families of anyone who loses his or her life are concerned about the cause of death, no matter what it is.

The contributing factor to that death can be particularly important in the case of a suicide. In fact, the idea that the board of inquiry would potentially come up with some means of preventing such action in the future is something that is very important to a family and to all serving members of the Canadian Forces.

The mental health of Canadian Forces members has received a lot of attention of late, and rightly so. We have soldiers who have served their country in Afghanistan, Bosnia, and other places where they have endured trauma. They have what has been defined as operational stress injuries.

That is the overriding term for trauma that comes about as a result of participating or being engaged in combat or enduring a serious traumatic experience. It happens in wartime; it happens in combat; it happens in other aspects of life. Sexual assault and sexual abuse can cause post traumatic stress disorder. It is a well-known and recognized disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders. It is something that is well researched and well known.

There are a huge number of incidents of post traumatic stress disorder coming out of the Afghanistan situation and previous engagements by Canadian Forces soldiers. There was a warning early in the Afghanistan conflict that this was going to happen and that we should prepare for it. I do not think that was done. In fact, the urgent, continuing and growing need for these services has outpaced the department's response.

A recent report by the Canadian Forces ombudsman mentioned the number of mental health professionals that we have. The numbers in 2008 were approximately the same as they are today, despite the fact that we have members of the Canadian Forces returning from Afghanistan in large numbers since that time. Nearly 25,000 deployments to Afghanistan have taken place. Far too many injuries have occurred as a result of these deployments in the war.

These Canadian Forces members need assistance in an urgent manner. These disorders need to be treated just as seriously and importantly as any physical injuries that our Canadian Forces members have suffered.

A problem that has recently been identified is that the positions available to be filled have not been filled because of bureaucratic decision-making inside the Department of Defence. We had information that 200 people were waiting to fill positions, but the positions could not be filled because there was a hiring freeze within the Department of Defence placed on it by Treasury Board. It was all designed to save money and to cut back on expenditures in the military and all across government, to the detriment of the needs of Canadian Forces members. This has to stop.

Our leader has asked the Prime Minister to take this on as a personal priority. We need urgent recognition that we have a crisis on our hands that must be dealt with to ensure that our Canadian Forces members and veterans have access to the services they need. We say “Canadian Forces members and veterans”. Some of them are actually still serving members but are veterans of combat in Afghanistan. There is an overlap in the terminology. We have people who have left the Canadian Forces who are veterans under the care of Veterans Affairs.

That gets me to the third problem we have on our agenda today, the closure of Veterans Affairs offices. We hear about the 600 points of contact. That is exactly what those are, points of contact. One can call a number and eventually there may be someone to talk to. This is what the veterans were told yesterday, that there is someone there who can help them get to a computer app. One of the veterans asked what an “app” was. They will get the veterans to a computer or to a 1-800 number.

That is the kind of service implied in these points of contact. It is not the kind of service that has been delivered by Veterans Affairs employees in the offices that are being closed tomorrow. Eight more offices are being closed, and one has already been closed.

I would like to have unanimous support for this motion. I think the members opposite ought to change their minds on the veterans' centres closures. The other two matters are matters that ought to be accepted by everyone anyway.

[National Defence, January 30th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, on issues like the F-35 and numerous others, the previous Minister of National Defence oversaw some of the most incompetent and out-of-control military procurements in our Canadian history. Things were so out of hand that the President of the Treasury Board was brought in to take over supervising the department's operations. The minister responsible for gazebos and glow sticks is now supposed to solve the problems at Defence.

Can the defence minister tell us how long he expects his department to be under another minister's control?

[Canada-Honduras Economic Growth and Prosperity Act, January 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the member's presentation, and he seemed to think, in using the phrase “a rising tide lifts all boats”, that if there is prosperity in Honduras, this is going to make a difference to the lives of everybody in Honduras. We know the regime is unequal and repressive and subject to human rights abuses.

One of the witnesses before the Standing Committee on International Trade, representing the Canadian Council for International Co-operation, expressed the concern that Canada has validated the existing regime by adopting a business-as-usual approach in signing a free trade agreement with Honduras in spite of its human rights record. We know there are no mechanisms in this legislation, that we are aware of, that would have any effect on enforcing or doing any of the things that the member suggests would result from this agreement.

Why should Canadians be involved in a situation of actually validating a regime that is guilty of such egregious action against its own citizens and the whole human rights standards of the world?

[Request for Emergency Debate, January 27th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, in accordance with my letter to you today, I rise to seek an emergency debate on the question of the chronic shortage of mental health staff currently affecting the Canadian Armed Forces.

We do know that the number of mental health professionals in the Canadian Forces has remained constant since about 2008, despite the urgent and growing need for mental health services to our Canadian Forces veterans of Afghanistan and other conflicts.

We have a problem, a bottleneck, in failing to fill these positions. We have had 50 boards of inquiry into suicides in the military that have gone without completion since 2008. We have had a spate of suicides in the last couple of months that have caused shock to the national consciousness. We have further statements on positions that are available to be filled which have not been filled. The current Surgeon General said that in November 2012 over 200 applicants were waiting to fill vacant positions, yet we have seen no action on this.

The urgency is the fact that we have no allotted days available on the agenda, aside from tomorrow, and it is too late today to give notice for that. Therefore, we want an opportunity for hon. members to speak to this issue and offer their opinions as to what might be done. This is an urgent and serious concern for Canadian Forces members and their families. We need to determine ways to move forward in addressing the mental health needs of the Canadian Armed Forces.

For these reasons and those outlined in my letter today, I would urge you to allow an emergency debate on this issue.

[National Defence, January 27th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, we are witnessing an urgent and growing need for better access to mental health services for Canadian Forces members. However, the hiring of mental health professionals was stymied by internal red tape and budget cuts. Under the Conservatives, we are not meeting the needs of the military. This is unconscionable. Military suicides have shocked the country.

The Leader of the Opposition has asked the Prime Minister to make this a personal priority. Will he now do so?

[National Defence, December 10th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, last night the CBC released documents concerning the activities of Communications Security Establishment Canada. CSEC cannot spy on Canadians, but the documents allege that the agency invites the United States National Security Agency to operate inside Canadian facilities in this country and inside CSEC facilities in approximately 20 countries around the world.

Can the government confirm that this is the case? What plans does the government have to beef up parliamentary oversight of this agency?