National Defence committee  We monitor. We have a performance measurement system to identify situations where there's an over-supply or under-supply of services and then redistribute accordingly. In some places, because mental health professionals are a rare resource in Canada, we're competing with lots of other organizations.

National Defence committee  The individual presumably has attempted, through his medical officer or base surgeon, to have those services and they've not been made available.

National Defence committee  We have to look at each case. If that case was brought to our attention, from the top down, we would look into it.

National Defence committee  The NATO research committee looks to Canada for leadership in mental health to the point that I was asked, partly for that reason, to be the chair of the NATO medical and health research committee. One of our specialists is the chair of the mild traumatic brain injury research group, and another is the mentor of the military suicide research group.

National Defence committee  We are working on a program with our three main allies, the United States, Great Britain and Australia. Canadian Forces Health Services and Defence Research and Development Canada are both involved.The program is called CASPEAN; it encompasses all our wounded and fallen in action.

National Defence committee  After their civilian training, all our medical personnel receive specialized training. So all those employees receive normal training, whatever their area, as clinicians, for example, as paramedics, as medical technicians, as surgeons or medical specialists. At the same time, they are also placed in university trauma centres in each region; that is especially the case with clinical specialists.

National Defence committee  At the end of the Cold War, we closed our military hospital system generally, not just for economies or anything like that, but primarily because seeing fit and healthy patients all the time did not clinically prepare our clinicians to be competent when operations occurred. So we integrated them into civilian hospitals, mainly university trauma centres, where they maintain their top-level skills.

National Defence committee  For that reason, the Canadian Forces health services led, with Veterans Affairs Canada and Statistics Canada, a study called the Canadian Forces cancer and mortality study. It looked at 188,000 serving or former armed forces members--because we don't follow them after they have been released from the armed forces.

National Defence committee  Mostly non-commissioned members as well, and mostly those who had been medically released or involuntarily released.

National Defence committee  The military. The Canadian Forces only follows those currently serving in the armed forces. Because a lot of the stresses that may lead to suicide are cumulative and can manifest in mental health conditions and subsequently suicidal behaviour years after release from the armed forces or years after the stresses have occurred, we would lose track of them.

National Defence committee  Suicide, even a single one, is a tragic event, and it affects all of us. Some of them are our own medics. We have all the mental health conditions as well. Our family is the armed forces. We're very tight. Any suicide is a great tragedy for all of us. However, to be statistically meaningful, we have to collate them, as do all statisticians, in blocks of about five years, because the numbers of rare events need to be cumulative to have adequate power to have any kind of statistical significance and to be able to show that they're not due to chance.