Veterans Affairs committee  Good morning. I'm pleased to be here today to testify before your committee. I had the opportunity of meeting some of you during your visit to St. Anne's Hospital, last year in November. Today, you'll have an opportunity to get a better understanding of what the department does

Veterans Affairs committee  Not all psychologists are able to provide services to veterans. Criteria have been developed based on experience and education. There is a plan being currently developed in order to improve the training programs offered to these service providers. In fact, on May 7, 8 and 9, we'l

Veterans Affairs committee  Training courses are being developed at our centre of expertise. We work with clinicians in various clinics, and in conjunction with National Defence. We're developing programs with the National Centre for PTSD at the USDVA. It's not the training programs themselves that are a pr

Veterans Affairs committee  I'm sorry, I missed your question.

Veterans Affairs committee  That's not exactly what—maybe I should clarify. We have five clinics, actually. These are out-patient clinics. We have one in Ste. Anne, which is a departmental clinic. We have MOUs with four provinces for our clinics in Quebec; in London, Ontario; in Winnipeg; and in Calgary. W

Veterans Affairs committee  In Homewood and Bellwood, around Toronto. And there's Edgewood, in Nanaimo. So there are six together. We have beds in Ste. Anne's for a specific program called the stabilization program, and we're looking at how we could expand that program. The problem we have, related maybe

Veterans Affairs committee  In the public hospital system, there is the same classification of services, that is primary care, emergency services and walk-in clinics. There are also secondary services, for example when somebody is referred to a cardiologist, etc. There are also ultra-specialized services,

Veterans Affairs committee  The quality of the services is the same, but they are specialized and deal with operational stress problems, and our clinicians also take into account the military culture.

Veterans Affairs committee  It's currently being renovated.

Veterans Affairs committee  The facilities are fine. The main problem is access to treatments. The other problem is with people who live in the regions; that's a major issue. People need to be able to actually go and get health care, ask for help, and we must be in a position to provide the best of services

Veterans Affairs committee  I think early intervention or prevention is really a key factor that helps improve the outcomes. DND has put a lot of work and effort on this, and we have to realize that someone who comes back from Afghanistan with PTSD will not become a Veterans Affairs client the day after. He

Veterans Affairs committee  If that person needs to be accompanied, we will pay for the travel for the person when there is a medical requirement for the person to be accompanied to go to a treatment. For example, we had a client in southern Ontario going to the PTSD program in Nanaimo. It depends on the ne

Veterans Affairs committee  We will have to look at that one, because we're looking at telemental health as a means to provide services in the remote communities. We have a project on the table with the Alberta Mental Health Board in Calgary. Our west side clinic would provide telemental health through thei

Veterans Affairs committee  If I may, we deal with it by asking our clinics, our specialists, to give back to the community in support, in providing training and education, and working with them in dealing with the clients we have in a community. So there is some give and take. We take for our clients, bu

Veterans Affairs committee  PTSD is a diagnosis where some of the symptoms are intrusion thoughts—the thoughts are coming back, and you have avoidance. With an operational stress injury, it's not only a trauma that can cause a condition to develop. As Bryson was saying earlier, the most common mental heal