National Defence committee  Yes, absolutely. We only employ registered health professionals. It's the same with the external providers I talked about using. We also only use external providers who have a college, basically, that registers them.

National Defence committee  Thank you.

National Defence committee  Huguette may want to add something to this. Since the time when we closed our military hospitals, which was in the early or mid-nineties, we have been dependent upon and working with the civilian system in different ways. For example—you're absolutely right—we assess, diagnose, and set up a treatment plan for every single member who comes with a mental health problem in our catchment area.

National Defence committee  It's a really good question. There is not a lot of really solid evidence yet. However, we do have some, and we've based our programs on them. We know that no matter how terrible the situation is going to be, it seems that the more prepared people are ahead of time, the less traumatized they are.

National Defence committee  No, there haven't been cuts.

National Defence committee  Just yesterday we had a meeting at our headquarters to look at revitalizing the treatment standardization committee—which had run for a number of years, and then I think everybody just got so busy that it fell by the wayside—and it's exactly to look at this. Over the last several years we've done a lot to develop pre- and post-deployment screenings, and looking at that and evaluating them.

National Defence committee  We can always improve, and this is one example for us, to start looking at outcome measures in a much more standardized way. I think this is going to be our next step. We know that we help people and we can see that their symptoms decrease, but to be able to capture that objectively would be very helpful.

National Defence committee  Heber. Not so fancy.

National Defence committee  Thank you for that question. I actually don't think it's more prevalent that people get frustrated and leave. When I think about the teams I know well across the country, Edmonton has had a very stable group of clinicians. As for my team and the team in Halifax, you can't get these people out of the clinic.

National Defence committee  I'll try to be brief. Thank you very much for that question. For the last three years we have been doing what are called medical professional technical suicide reviews. Every time there's been a suicide of a CF member, we send a team of a GDMO—general duty medical officer—and a uniformed psychiatrist from away, from another base, to do a review.

National Defence committee  We see still-serving members. Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean by veterans because there are still serving members from those peacekeeping missions, and we do see them. In terms of people releasing or on their way to releasing, we now have wonderful resources set up by Veterans Affairs.

National Defence committee  Sure. First of all, one of my priorities when I first started working in the Ottawa clinic and I met Colonel Grenier was to start forming a partnership with OSISS. I don't want to speak to what was going on before I got there because, really, I can't talk about that. We did a lot of joint presentations on how peer support and clinical care in mental health can work together.

National Defence committee  I have not had treatment for an operational stress injury, if that's your question.

National Defence committee  Yes, it would certainly be.

National Defence committee  Again, off the top of my head from my clinic, I can't.