National Defence committee  Sir, I would say that's a very, very rare thing. Right now, what we aim for, when a person wants or needs mental health care, is that they get that within four weeks at a maximum. Almost invariably we are able to achieve that. We have a fairly extensive mental health care network within the military, and we will refer people to civilian resources if we need to.

National Defence committee  In addition to that, a person can go in on sick parade to see their doctor at any point in time that they wish.

National Defence committee  In addition to that, if the physician has any concerns that the patient has any specific plans or knows of any specific individuals the patient has threatened to harm or is going to harm, the physician has the duty to report that to the police.

National Defence committee  I think often when the diagnosis is made, what happens is there is a sense of relief on the part of the patient, because now they have an explanation for what's been happening to them and now they can see that there's a treatment ahead for it. I don't think there's so much of an issue once they have the diagnosis, sir.

National Defence committee  Yes, sir. It's a priority to do that. What you find is that in our clinics there is usually quite a mixture of anglophones and francophones all across Canada. If, for example, a clinic has one doctor and that doctor is an anglophone and doesn't speak French, there will be a med tech or a nurse who does and who is able to translate for him.

National Defence committee  I do know that from 2004 to 2009 we're investing $98 million into health care. We are increasing the number of health care professionals in the military to 447 by 2009. Other than that, I couldn't tell you what percentage of funds are devoted to that.

National Defence committee  Sir, on my saying they do not seek help, actually I think what I did say was that they delay seeking help.

National Defence committee  It's very common in Canada in general on mental health issues for people to delay seeking help. I'm not sure if it's denial or if they're hoping they can solve the problem themselves. I'm not sure. With respect to the post-employment process, when they have the screening done there are two parts to the screening.

National Defence committee  To put the delay in seeking care into more perspective, of the people who are screened during their pre-deployment screening as possibly having an OSI, over 50% of those people are already receiving care for it. If you go back to 2000 or thereabouts, the average time between the person starting to have symptoms of PTSD or operational stress to getting treatment was five to six years.

National Defence committee  We do collaborate with them quite a bit. I don't know what specifically mental health may have done with them. You asked Captain Courchesne about the stigma and what we are doing about that, sir. Some of the things we have found to be very helpful in terms of reducing the stigma are to educate people when they come back from deployment, and educate the non-commissioned officers and the officers taking career courses regarding operational stress injuries and mental health in general.

National Defence committee  Yes, sir, absolutely. We would never deploy somebody who we knew was suffering from an untreated psychiatric or physical disability. However, we do deploy people who have successfully been treated for those things, and I know that if a person is given medication in theatre, it's under very carefully controlled conditions and they are watched very carefully.

National Defence committee  The nature is that we're a learning organization, and one of the things that's very important to the whole process is what we call “lessons learned”. After an event or an operation, we assess and analyze the operation to look for things that we could do to improve the service we provide.

National Defence committee  That's a good question, sir. I'm afraid I don't know specifically how long it would be.

National Defence committee  I've just read a summary of it, and of course I've read the comments General Jaeger made to the committee. We're continually evolving the processes we use to assess and to treat mental health and the processes we use for screening people both before and after deployment. So this study, which has just come out, may well contribute to the evolution of the process, but it's too early for me to comment on it.

National Defence committee  Some of this is a bit out of my area, but I'll talk about two general things. First is the challenge of ensuring that we provide the best possible medical care for our soldiers. Second is ensuring that we have enough commissions ourselves as well. With respect to the number of commissions, we have put considerable effort into attracting doctors to the military and retaining them in the military.