Veterans Affairs committee  The Department of National Defence would be the best to speak to the details of this, but it has to do with the way information is collected on reserve members. There are different groups of reserve members, and they come in and out of full-time service and reserve service, so th

Veterans Affairs committee  As a quick follow-up, we have been working on a feasibility study with Statistics Canada to look at how we could collect information on this group and study them effectively. Everyone agrees that it's a priority and an important topic.

Veterans Affairs committee  We don't know why, but we do know who is at higher risk of suicide. Males were at a three times higher risk. Non-commissioned members—that is, the more junior members—have a risk about two and a half times higher. Those who had shorter service, less than ten years, were about two

Veterans Affairs committee  It was a very comprehensive study, in the sense that Statistics Canada was able to get a list of everyone who released over the ten-year period from 1996 to 2007. There would be some that were dropped, but for the most part it would be an inclusive list of everyone who was releas

Veterans Affairs committee  No, the sample of the survey was a sub-sample of the group that released. So there were 4,000 in the survey that we did, which was a sample of the broader release population.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, they were contacted by Statistics Canada in a telephone survey that took about 30 to 40 minutes. The group is broadly representative of that release population.

Veterans Affairs committee  I think a member earlier talked about the transition interviews. A really great example of how you can use this in a really practical way is that because of the way we're able to link data we're able to look at who participates in transition interviews, who doesn't, and we also k

Veterans Affairs committee  You are correct that the overall rate was 8%. Within the way we did our analysis, we could identify some other groups. For example, the unemployment rate in 2010 for clients in the new Veterans Charter programs was about double that of the regular rate. It was about 15%. However,

Veterans Affairs committee  Maybe I can start with that and Charlotte can comment as well. I know that Veterans Affairs has been across the country, and I think we've visited 20 sites, military bases, over the fall, sharing information about our programs and the new Veterans Charter. I understand that our

Veterans Affairs committee  Right now in Canada this is the year when the number of World War II veterans and the number of new veterans, after the Korean War, have intersected. With this new group of veterans there are new challenges. World War II veterans were primarily an older group, whereas this younge

Veterans Affairs committee  In the studies we have information on deployments--in other words, that they were in Afghanistan--so we can analyze those as a subgroup. We have not done detailed analysis of that group yet because the ten-year group we're looking at actually participated in a number of difficult

Veterans Affairs committee  In fact we have done some of that already. That's one of the major areas we're working in right now. You are basically right, not everyone experiences transition the same way. In fact, some people had a very difficult transition. Members who had involuntary release had a lot of d

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you, ladies and gentlemen of Parliament. Thank you for the invitation today. My name is Dr. David Pedlar. I'm the research director at Veterans Affairs Canada. I work in Charlottetown. My colleague Charlotte Bastien joins me today. The work of your committee on the health